Amanda Wood

About Author

Amanda Wood began her career as natural history illustrator for a private press. She was one of the founding directors of Templar and its principal publisher for over 30 years. In her time there, she published and nurtured numerous Kate Greenaway winners and edited and wrote several groundbreaking series, including the 'Ology' books that began with Dragonology. Today she writes and runs her own small press from her home in Surrey.

Her books for Wide Eyed Editions include: Curiositree: Natural World; Curiositree: Human World; Spot the Mistake: Journeys of Discovery; Search and Find Alphabet of Alphabets; Sport the Mistake: Lands of Long Ago

Interview

CURIOSITREE: NATURAL WORLD and CURIOSITREE: HUMAN WORLD

WIDE EYED EDITIONS

NOVEMBER 2018

The CURIOSITREE series explores the connections that nurture and maintain our natural world and the human world. CURIOSITREE: NATURAL WORLD, clearly laid out with colourful illustrations, takes children through each of the major systems in the natural world, while HUMAN WORLD explores the developments that have helped shape our world today.

We asked co-creator AMANDA WOOD to tell us more about the CURIOSITREE series:

Q: What is your background in creating non-fiction?

A: Non fiction has been a big part of my life. I was an illustrator for a limited edition natural history publisher before I started Templar, where we tried to find novelty ways to impart non-fiction information, like the 'Ology' books that began with Dragonology. Curiositree is a much more traditional way to approach non-fiction, with large spreads and illustrations.

Q: What was your aim when you started to develop the Curiositree books, Natural World and Human World?

A: I work with Mike Jolley and together at Chapter 2 we create ideas for books. What we wanted for the Curiositree books was for the reader to be able to dip into the book and find connections to different subjects, just as you would do on the internet, which gives you prompts to follow a subject through onto different websites. That is why we wanted to have three book marks in each copy.

We started with natural history because that is one of my passions, it's so important for children to learn about. As David Attenborough said, "No one will protect what they don't care about". Children who are divorced from nature will tend to ignore it, and therein lies the danger.

That book about natural history has been followed by a second Curiositree title, Human World, which also explores connections and how one development lead to another in human history.

Q: Will the books be useful to schools as well as being used in homes?

A: Absolutely, we wanted to help children see the connectedness in nature and how one thing influences another, and so we cover what they are learning about in upper primary. The book aims to gives very succinct explanations about different subjects. Each spread covers a different topic with key points - for example, in Curiositree, they will learn about subject-specific topics like what is a reptile, or snapshots of the key systems of life such as pollination and migration.

Q: What role do non-fiction books have in the age of the internet?

A: If you're using the internet to research something, or if you're a parent struggling with a child doing homework, you very quickly realise the failings of the internet. It can be hard to find the facts you're searching for and often so much of what you find is wrong and outdated.

For education, non-fiction books have an enormous role to play, both school books and hopefully the kinds of books I have created. Novelty or not, I hope these kinds of books make children want to find out more and also make them want to read. Non-fiction books can take quite dry subjects and make them something a child wants to learn. I remember publishing one book, How the World Works, where there are pop-ups and flaps to lift, and children can pull a tab and make a mountain. That's how you make subjects like these exciting.

There is a desperate need for really good non-fiction, especially in difficult subjects like global warming and politics. Children are more and more aware of things like this at an earlier age but booksellers don't necessarily want those 'bad news' stories, even if the parents need them. Children also need books that will help them navigate the world, so books about keeping safe and keeping safe on the internet; parents are often reticent to talk about these subjects with children and books have an important role to play in enabling them to talk about difficult subjects with them.

Q: How do you use the internet in researching topics for the Curiositree books?

A: I have a huge personal library of books that I use for research but of course I also use the internet because things change and new discoveries take place and it's very useful - although often you will find two facts that directly contradict each other. So when we are developing the text, we work with very good consultants to fact check. For Human World, we worked with someone in the British Museum who really understands the evolution of the human world and how humans have developed as a species, the interconnected breakthroughs and how one thing leads to another.

Q: What makes Curiositree: Human World different from other books about human history?

A: This book doesn't take a step-by-step approach to our history, and like Curiositree: Natural World it's more about connections - so, how human beings have evolved in our abilities and skills and how that has changed the world around us.

We don't focus on Ancient Rome or Tudor England, it's more about helping children understand how we arrived and where we are today. For example, we have a spread on 'food exchange', where children can find out that we wouldn't have potatoes or tomatoes if we hadn't discovered the New World.

We want children to discover lots of unusual facts, things they might not have found out otherwise. But we do take a traditional approach to contents and indexing in these books to help children navigate the subjects.

Q: You cover a huge sweep of history in Human World. Were there any areas that were more difficult to approach?

A: Well, you can't produce a book like this without covering religion, especially in the Medieval world and the first wars between Muslims and Christians, but how do you approach it?

In the end, we decided to cover the perpetual rise and fall in people fighting each other because of their religious beliefs. We focused on the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, which started as a pagan monument, then became Christian, then was central to the Muslim faith. Now it's a museum. We looked at all the different people who have claimed it for their own.

Q: How did you choose the illustrators for each of these books?

A: It is hard to get realistic style illustrations into bookshops and using stylised illustrations is a challenge because they need to say so much; is the illustration correct, is it giving enough information? We had worked with Owen Davey before so knew we wanted to work with him on Curiositree: Natural World.

Curiositree: Human World was even harder in some respects because you need an artist who can really draw people, and then it also needed to be stylised which added another layer of difficulty. The illustrator, Andres Lozano, also brought it a wonderful sense of colour and lightness to the book.

Q: What else do you plan to cover in the Curiositree series?

A: Our next book will look at geography and the systems that drive our planet and the relationships between them, so what it means to our temperatures on land if the ocean conveyor changes, for example. The challenge is how to make that interesting, but also to show children how we all have a part to play in how we shape our world's future.

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