Berlie Doherty and Tamsin Rosewell introduce The Seamaiden's Odyssey
About Author
Berlie Doherty is the author of the best-selling novel, Street Child, and over 60 more books for children, teenagers and adults, and won the Carnegie medal for Granny Was a Buffer Girl and Dear Nobody. She also writes plays for radio, theatre and television. Berlie lives in the Derbyshire Peak District.
Tamsin Rosewell is an artist, historian and broadcaster with a background in politics. She was a bookseller for 15 years, with a specialist knowledge in children's and picture books before moving to illustration. She is based at indie Kenilworth Books, but divides her time between London, Oxford and Warwickshire.
Interview
The Creation of Contemporary Fable, The Seamaiden's Odyssey ( UCLan )
September 2024
This stunning contemporary fable for older readers, drawn from local folk tales and myths, takes the reader on a journey with a seamaiden, Merryn, after she is caught and taken to a research centre.
Written by Berlie Doherty and stunningly illustrated in silhouettes by Tamsin Rosewell, The Seamaiden's Odyssey explores sisterhood and community, difference and exploitation, and taking responsibility for the choices we make.
Review: "The writing is evocative of traditional tales, mixing the familiar with the surprising and new, offering a deeply satisfying and poignant story."
ReadingZone spoke with author and illustrator Berlie Doherty and Tamsin Rosewell to find out how The Seamaiden's Odyssey was created and to explore some of the questions the story raises for the reader.
Q&A with Berlie Doherty and Tamsin Rosewell: Creating The Seamaiden's Odyssey
"The notion of people who resemble us and yet who live in the sea is fascinating and seductive.
That they could exist seems to bring hope and meaning to our human race."
1. Can you tell us a little about yourself, career highlights to date, and what kinds of stories you create or illustrate?
Berlie: I've been writing for over 40 years now - that means a lot of books! They cover a large range, from stories for picture books, through young readers to novels for young adults and adults. I also like to cover a range of subjects, from folk tales, fantasy, family stories and stories from long ago and far away. Many exciting and wonderful things have happened to me in my writing career, including visiting schools here and throughout the world.
I was thrilled to receive the Carnegie medal for two of my books, Granny was a Buffer Girl and Dear Nobody, and to see television adaptations, operas and theatre and radio adaptations of many of my books. I've been extraordinarily lucky to have had my books illustrated by amazing artists like Ian Beck, Tony Ross, Christian Birmingham and Jane Ray, and now I have had the immense pleasure of working alongside the wonderfully gifted Tamsin Rosewell in co-creating The Seamaiden's Odyssey.
Tamsin: The Seamaiden's Odyssey is my fourth book with Berlie, although it is my first which is fully illustrated: there are full-colour spreads throughout the book, and even more cyanotype-style tonal drawings - black, white and cyan.
Before I started to work full time as an illustrator, worked as a bookseller, specialising in children's and illustrated books. It has been wonderful to work on a fully illustrated novel for older readers - to me that is the holy grail of illustration! Who decided that fully illustrated books should be only for very young children?! Being visually literate is just as important as being verbally literate.
In pretty much all my illustration, I'm drawn to folklore and to mythology - that character of our landscape that is swarming with old gods, ghosts and hobs, sprites, mermaids and fairy folk of all kinds. In many ways these are the ghosts of ourselves - the spirit that gets left behind when humanity moves on. Folkloric stories are incredibly important; they tend to hold their shape and contain deep truths. I think that love of landscape and folklore is something Berlie and I share.
2. What happens in your new book, The Seamaiden's Odyssey, and how did the ideas for the illustrations begin?
Berlie: A wounded sea creature is brought into a marine sanctuary and placed into the care of a young biologist, who is astonished to find that she can talk. The seamaiden tells her the story of her family of sea people, which begins with the frightening capture of Jania by fishermen. Jania's young sister, Merryn, is warned never to let herself be seen by people of the land. But one day, in defiance of her father, who has great plans for her, she hides in an underwater maze of tunnels and eventually finds herself in an inland pool from which there is no escape.
My inspiration came from an inland pool below Kinder Downfall in the Derbyshire Peak District. It is known as Mermaid Pool. Not many miles from it, in Staffordshire, is another inland pool, Blake Mere Pond, which is also said to be haunted by a mermaid. I have since heard of others, but these pools, nestled in the bleak moors so close to my home, have always fascinated me.
Tamsin: My involvement was from the very beginning, which itself is unusual. Most often an illustrator is brought in very late in the process. Berlie and I were chatting about future ideas and started talking about our now largely lost inland mermaid folklore. We think of these creatures as part of our ocean folklore, but there are lots of geographical and architectural references to mermaids near our rivers and inland lakes and pools. Berlie told me about Mermaid Pool and nearby Blake Mere Pond, both of which are about as far inland as you can get, and both of which have folkloric stories associated with them.
As Berlie started to develop the story, she would send me fragments, and notes and messages about ideas, and I'd respond visually. I've several sketch books full of our discussions about what we wanted our sea maidens to look like, for example.
'She could just see from one side to the other of it, enough for her to know for sure that it was completely surrounded by land.'
3. We don't often see women featuring as the protagonists in an odyssey. Why did you decide to give your book this title, and to focus the story on mermaids?
In my story, when Merryn embarks on a journey of defiance and anger, she travels far from her home and family. On her way she faces trials of loss, despair, fear and danger, and by her own resourcefulness she overcomes them all. She becomes mature and ready to overcome any dangers in order to return to her family; no longer a child but a powerful and confident young woman.
I feel hers is an emotional as well as a physical journey, and that her trials are at the same time deeply personal, universal and epic. Because of the mythic and magical nature of her story, I decided to give the seamaiden's voyage the status of an Odyssey.
And why mermaids? Or seamaidens, as I prefer to call them? Mermaids, like unicorns, are creatures of beauty and magical properties. Many of us believe, or long to believe, that they truly exist, and swear to have seen them. They have appeared in myths and folkloric stories, art, dreams and gossip throughout time.
Our oceans are vast and largely unexplored, home to intelligent and beautiful animals that we know little about, and the notion of people who resemble us and yet who live in the sea is fascinating and seductive. That they could exist seems to bring hope and meaning to our human race. I have written about the selkie (Daughter of the Sea) and the unicorn, (Spellhorn), and with The Seamaiden's Odyssey I have turned to the most elusive imaginary creature of them all.
4. Home and belonging are a strong part of the story, but also othering and questioning who are the real monsters. How have you approached these themes in this story?
Berlie: Merryn and her sisters are fascinated by the idea of landpeople; what they look like, how they behave, why they risk their lives by leaving the land and travelling across the sea. The people of the land are different from the people of the sea, yet they share many things. In the sanctuary where the story begins, the marine biologist longs to study the strange sea creature who is brought to her. More than that, she wants to know her, to possess her.
When Merryn finds herself in a moorland pool surrounded by curious villagers, she is as curious about them as they are of her. Yet she can't understand why, though some of them express wonder and awe at her beauty, others show antagonistic feelings about her: disgust, contempt, fear. She has no such feeling about them until, inexplicably, they try to harm her. They want to abuse her or even destroy her, just because she's unusual and different from themselves. She finds herself responding with anger and harmful magic that she didn't know she possessed. Yet she refuses to become a victim. She doesn't want to behave like them; she must find her own way of overcoming their animosity.
5. Can you tell us about your setting. which is such an important part of this tale. How did you decide what the seamaidens' world would be like, and how did you develop the landscape of the sea?
Berlie: I wanted to show the vastness of the ocean in its many moods. The fact that Merryn yearns for the freedom to be an explorer of her own element had to contrast with the confines of the inland pool, where she feels she may now have to stay for ever.
The setting and the senses have always been a major element of story writing for me; I always feel that if the characters are at home in their setting the reader will be too, so I had to imagine and describe the sounds, sights, smells, of the ocean; the touch of water on skin, water as air, and also movements; the movement and currents of water, of sea-animals, and of the sea people. I had to avoid our familiar words of standing, running, walking and find many different words to describe movement through water. It was challenging!
6. What is the reason for using silhouette cut-outs to illustrate this story, and how did you go about creating them?
Tamsin: I work traditionally, in ink on paper and canvas, not digitally; so my first discussion once the text was ready was with my designer, wonderful Becky Chilcott, and it was quite a technical discussion. I need to know the exact size and shape of the book, and the precise location and space for each of the tonal drawings too.
I think people don't realise quite how much maths is involved in creating illustration. I love that geometry aspect; I use both mathematics and colour science to control how I want the image to be looked at: How does your eye move around the image? I'll often rule a page into thirds, or place a Fibonacci spiral to end where the action is taking place, for example. If you look at my art, you'll see a lot of precise geometry going on.
Berlie and I had already worked through how we wanted our seamaidens to look; beautiful in their own way, but very 'other' too, like tropical fish with frills that blend into the water; but the idea of pure silhouette work was designer Becky's suggestion. Silhouette is a very classical language of fairy tales and mythology, and it is culturally universal too. I like the idea that anyone, from any culture, could look at these images and find a resonance in them.
We see silhouette everywhere from the art of the ancient world, with sirens and minotaurs in black on Greek vases, and the development of shadow puppets in China 2000 years ago, to tell mythic cycles. We even find it in neolithic art; there's an amazing silhouette sequence of a deer hunt in a Neolithic wall painting from Turkey that dates to around 5750 BCE - nearly 8000 years ago.
Silhouette has always been part of illustrated storytelling; we can trace its use from then, through the work of Augustin Edouart, Arthur Rackham, animator Lotte Reineger, illustrator Jan Pieńkowski, the brilliant Jane Ray… and so many others. I'm following in a very long tradition!
'She swam towards the greenness as if she was being hauled into it.'
7. What were the greatest challenges in illustrating The Seamaiden's Odyssey, and what do you feel the images have brought to the story? Any favourite spreads?
Tamsin: When your characters are all pure silhouette, exaggerated gesture and expression are your first tools to capture the emotion of the moment, so you need to be very precise and use everything, from the tension in fingers to the movement of hair. And you need also to extend that into your use of colour and structure. You need to find a way for that moment or emotion to spread out into their entire landscape - if Merryn is frightened and in a dangerous situation, both she and her whole landscape need to portray that.
I have to think about how I can use colour and texture to create movement and atmosphere. It is also important to think carefully about where the light is coming from. If you're underwater, the light from above travels through water creating pattern, tone and shapes, rather than neat shadows.
I think my favourite image in the book is actually one of the tonal images: on page 146, in which Howie is confronted by Jenny Greenteeth. I reversed the silhouette so that she is suddenly illuminated and deathly pale, with hollow eyes, and her pool sinks into darkness. I wanted that illuminated image to feel like a sudden shock, like the torch flicked on in the night to revel the monster.
Berlie: Tamsin's illustrations have beautifully captured the moods of the story, from the drama of Jania's capture to the terrifying fury of Jenny Greenteeth, to the glorious majesty of Merryn's salute to the sun. In her vision of the seamaidens she has peopled the sea with strange, exotic characters - instead of using colour for them she has expanded the notion of trailing fins and used silhouettes to create a decorative and mysterious elegance. These are wonderful, fantastical images of seamaidens. Neither of us wanted them to look like conventional mermaids, and they certainly don't! I love these illustrations.
To choose a favourite spread is so difficult! But as I've already referred to three I'll choose another - on pages 98 and 99, Merryn is swimming through a series of cave tunnels that will lead her to the terror of Jenny Greenteeth's pool. The greens, blues and yellows make the tunnels look as mysterious and threatening as mountains or forests, and Merryn is a lone, purposeful and unknowing figure searching for a possible way of escape. The use of colour here is wonderful and atmospheric.
8. There is a strong inter-generational aspect to the story, can you tell us a little about this and why you decided to introduce it?
Berlie: This is very simple to answer! I never had any grandparents! They had all died before I was born. And now I have the joy of seven grandchildren of my own, and another from my husband.
There is a special quality of generational memories, storytelling, behaviour and the physical imprint of features that connects each of us through our ancestors with past centuries. When the Sea Lord announces that their race is under threat, it resonates back through the ages to the very essence of being.
9. What else would you like your readers to take from Merryn and her sister's experiences? What kinds of discussions do you hope it will encourage among young readers?
Berlie: I would like young people to think about the beauty and fragility of the oceans and other wild places. When the reader reaches the end of the story I would like them to feel hopeful, and that something precious and important to do with love and forgiveness and the importance of family has been celebrated.
I would also offer some ideas for discussion:
- What do think about the way the seamaiden was treated in the Marine Sanctuary? What does it tell you about the way humans think about other creatures? Do we humans have a right to intervene in the lives of other species? Sasha wants to keep her seamaiden because she loves her. Is Howie behaving in the same way? Do they have a right To these possessive feelings?
- What do we need to learn about wild creatures and other societies?
- Was Merryn's father right to expect so much of his youngest grandchild?
- Was Merryn right to oppose her father?
- Was Jania's behaviour wrong?
- Did you want Merryn to stay with Howie? Why, or why not?
- Why did the landfolk behave in the way they did towards Merryn? Are you surprised?
- Should we explore wild places like the oceans, the jungles, outer space, or should we leave them just as they are? Why do we want to know about them? What do we learn from our discoveries?
10. Are there other retellings of mythologies that you have enjoyed or that have helped inspire your own stories and illustrations? What are your top recommendations for our readers?
Berlie: The Seamaiden's Odyssey isn't a retelling, but an echo. Many writers look at folktales and legends for inspiration, and create original stories as well as retellings. But for the moment let's go with Kevin Crossley-Holland's The Seeing Stone, Joseph Coelho's The Boy Lost in the Maze, and Adele Geras's Troy.
Tamsin: My own dedication is this book is to an illustrator called Errol le Cain (1941-1989), he was such a great illustrator of fairy tales, but his work is generally out of print now. When I was four years old I was given for my birthday a copy of Thorn Rose, his retelling of The Sleeping Beauty. It was the first book that I owned, and I LOVED it! I still have it today. He illustrated a great many fairy tales and traditional tales, and I think it was the combination of his ability with colour, and the level of detail that was to be found in his work that appealed to me so much.
It is a huge mistake to believe that young children can only cope with simple, clear, blocky illustrations - I think they often love sophisticated, complex images where there is lots to notice. Children are visually literate long before they can read - it is adults who give illustrations a cursory glance and move on, but a child they are reading to will often notice things in an illustration that the reading adult has missed. As a four-year-old, I really didn't need to be able to read to love that book - in the detail of those illustrations, there was everything I needed to enjoy the story.
As well as looking up Errol le Cain's illustrations, my top three recommendations of illustrated books I'd love everyone to know would have to include Jane Ray's wonderful silhouette work in her Classic Fairy Tales, written by Berlie Doherty (Walker 2018). Also in silhouette, but very different, are Jeffrey Alan Love's illustrations to Kevin Crossley Holland's Norse Myths (Walker, 2024). Finally, I'd really love people to take the time to really look at the work of James Mayhew, I think he's absolutely one of the best colourists of our generation. His texture and papercut work work in the Mrs Noah series with Jackie Morris (herself a great illustrator as well as a writer), is beautiful, powerful and timeless (Otter Barry, 2017).
The Seamaiden's Odyssey
