Exploring the cycle of violence in Julian Gough's When Tad Kicked Vlad

About Author

Julian Gough's hilarious new picture book, When Tad Kicked Vlad, explores the cycle of violence from a child's perspective, helping to guide children towards managing their anger.

Julian Gough is the Irish author of five beloved children’s books about a rabbit and a bear, four acclaimed novels about human beings, a couple of BBC radio plays and a charming stage play. He also wrote the ending to the computer game Minecraft

Interview

February 2025

Exploring the cycle of violence in Julian Gough's When Tad Kicked Vlad

Holding back anger can be tricky for children, but Julian Gough's new picture book, When Tad Kicked Vlad, takes a funny look how a single kick can set off a cycle of violence - and also what can be done to stop it in its tracks!

ReadingZone caught up with Julian and found out how being bullied as a child helped inspire the story, and how laughter can be used to deliver a powerful message.

Review: "This clever book gently and humorously reminds children how any form of violence can take on a life of its own." More about When Tad Kicked Vlad

Q&A with Julian Gough: Introducing When Tad Kicked Vlad

"I think the most useful tool is seeing the world from the other person's point of view. Almost everyone thinks they're the good guy in any given situation."

1. Hello Julian! Please can you start by telling us a little about yourself and how you started writing for children. What kinds of books you like to write, and to read?

OK, about myself… I was born in London to Irish parents, and until I was seven lived beside Heathrow Airport (where my dad was a fireman), right at the end of the north runway. Since then, I've moved to Ireland, studied philosophy in Galway, recorded four albums and had a hit single with a band (Toasted Heretic), moved to Berlin, written several novels, a book of poetry, a couple of radio plays for the BBC, etc.

I started writing for children when my daughter Sophie was five, because I was in charge of her bedtime stories. Basically, some of the children's books she was given as presents by relatives were extremely boring, which annoyed me. So I started writing my own for her, with her enthusiastic and excellent editorial help.

Books I like to write… Weird ones! Interesting ones! Funny ones! Original ones! Ones that haven't been written before! Books I like to read… Oh God. Where to start? We are about to move house (and country) and so I am packing all my books in boxes. So many boxes… Glancing at those thousands of books as I pack them, I can say I like to read any book that will surprise and delight me, in any genre, fiction, non-fiction, drama, poetry, cartoon, whatever, from any time.

2. We've heard you wrote the ending to Minecraft. How did that happen, and did it make you even more famous than for writing the Rabbit and Bear books, which we also love?

Well, as some of you may know, Minecraft (to my surprise!) went on to become the biggest selling computer game of all time (350 million copies so far), so yeah, I'm pretty sure my ending to it has been read by more people than most books ever written have, including Rabbit & Bear. My ending is the smallest part of the game - it's just nine minutes of scrolling text at the end - but yeah, I get messages all the time from people who were moved by it. They read out quotes from it at graduations, at weddings, at funerals. People sometimes want to take selfies with me. Some people get tattoos of the words! It's as close to being famous as a weird writer like me is likely to get.

3. Your new book is a picture book, When Tad Kicked Vlad. What happens in this story?

Well, it's Tad's birthday, and his best friend Vlad eats the last slice of cake before Ted has had any. So Tad gets mad, and kicks Vlad. Tad knows he's done something pretty bad, so he runs and hides in the garden. Vlad is so mad he kicks Tad's mum who kicks Tad's dad who kicks the postman, who kicks a policewoman who kicks a politician . . .

Basically, the kick travels around the whole world, until it turns up at Tad's next birthday party a year later, whereupon it kicks Tad's bum, hard. So Tad gets so mad, he sends something EVEN WORSE THAN A KICK IN THE BUM around the world. And now he has the problem of stopping this cycle he's started…

4. What inspired you to write about a kick that travels all around the world - and trying to find a way to stop it?

Well, I grew up during the euphemistically named “Troubles”, the tit-for-tat war in Northern Ireland, which went on for 30 years, sometimes spilling onto the UK mainland, and into the Republic of Ireland. I remember being evacuated from the British Museum when I was six because of an IRA bomb scare. When I moved to rural Tipperary in Ireland age 7, I was regularly beaten up by my fellow Irish for sounding English. By both the teachers and the kids. So I was intensely aware of how violence can lead to more violence in an endless and depressing cycle. Over the years, I thought a lot about tit-for-tat wars, tit-for-tat killings; you see that cycle play out endlessly, everywhere.

Why a book about a kick? I think the simplest, earliest violence a lot of kids encounter is a kick up the arse. It's also visually the funniest form of violence. And I wanted to write a book for children about how violence has a life of its own; once you release it, it often keeps going. A kick lets you see that; it's literally a leg moving through space. And passing on the kick is literally a knee-jerk reaction. I didn't want to vary it, to show lots of other forms of violence; it was funnier, and made the point better, to have the same thing happen again and again and again… Kids get it straight away.

Writing When Tad Kicked Vlad took maybe eight years in total, from first draft to publication day. I'm a slow writer, lots of drafts, I like to get it right. I think children's books are the most important books, because kids can potentially build their entire worldview out of them, especially if they aren't getting great guidance from home. For many kids, reading is a way out of a bad situation, a bad family worldview. So each book has to be accurate, and helpful.

5. The story explores how we sometimes get very angry, and lash out. What kind of things make you angry, and what do you do to stop feeling so cross?

I'm not special; the usual things make me angry. But I've got a bit better over the years at stepping back from that anger, and letting it go by like a dark cloud, like bad weather. It passes. I don't hang onto it, I don't identify with it. Meditation has been useful. A happy marriage has been useful. Helping my kids grow up has been useful.

I think the most useful tool is seeing the world from the other person's point of view. Almost everyone thinks they're the good guy in any given situation, and think they have an excellent reason for doing the infuriating thing they've just done (even if that thing was something terrible). Realising this takes a lot of the anger out of the situation.

6. We love the illustrations by Ross Collins. What was it like seeing your characters brought to life in his drawings?

A joy. Ross is a genius. I'm very lucky, in that I only work with geniuses; Jim Field (on the Rabbit & Bear books) and Ross Collins on When Tad Kicked Vlad.

One wonderful thing you can do, when working with a genius artist, is MAKE THEIR LIVES EXTREMELY DIFFICULT. Give them impossibly difficult visual problems to solve, and watch them creatively and brilliantly solve them. I think Ross actually signed up to do this book BECAUSE it was so difficult. Forcing Ross to draw hundreds of kicks meant he had to push himself to his creative limits, to find new ways of making that exciting, funny, fresh, again and again. And that's how you grow your talent, which is why he's a genius.

7. There are so many details in the spreads showing how the kick travels the world - any favourites?

The spread where the kick is trapped inside the aeroplane, and has to go up and down the plane 23 times as it crosses the Atlantic. Sheer comic delight, with so many funny details; all the expressions, all the objects sent flying, the cat in the luggage rack, the chicken.

And a much simpler two-character spread, in the farting section of the book: where Tad's mum thinks she come up with a brilliant plan to end the cycle by not farting in someone's face but instead farting out the letterbox… but doesn't realise that the postman has been staring in horror at the birthday party chaos through the letterbox from the other side. Their two expressions make me laugh every time. It's such a gleefully naughty, funny picture, and drawn with such energy and skill and wit.

8. And what do you enjoy doing when you're away from your notebook? What kinds of experiences bring peace and happiness into your life?

Sleeping. SLEEP. I haven't been getting enough lately, which makes me grumpy, can you tell? No, I basically love writing, I love thinking about writing - planning, researching, reading stuff that might be helpful - and I love spending time with my family.

That's it, that's my whole life. I don't own a TV, I don't own a car, I don't go out, I don't care about TikTok or Instagram, I don't know any celebrities. I write, I read, I think, I play with my kids and I have fun with my wife. A great life. I'm incredibly lucky.

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