James Turner treats us to some Pixie Pandemonium!
About Author
Cartoonist, comic writer and illustrator James Turner introduces his hilarious, slapstick graphic novel series Toby and the Pixies to ReadingZone!
James's comic strips include The Super Animal Adventure Squad and Star Cat, which have been published in The David Fickling Comic and The Phoenix respectively, and he also created the webcomic The Unfeasible Adventures of Beaver and Steve.
Interview
September 2025
ReadingZone catches up with James Turner for some Pixie Pandemonium with Toby and the Pixies! (David Fickling Books)
Since he accidentally became King of the Pixies at the bottom of his garden, Toby's life has been turned upside-down. Pixies Mouldwarp, Gatherwool and Toadflax do their best to be helpful, but things always go wrong. In Pixie Pandemonium, the latest Toby and the Pixies graphic novel, we watch as school trips, visits to dentist and snowmen bring unexpected, hilarious results. Read an extract from Pixie Pandemonium
ReadingZone caught up with author James Turner to find out more about Toby and the Pixies, a series that first ran in The Phoenix Comic.
Worst King Ever Best Frenemies Pixie Pandemonium
Q&A with James Turner: Discover what inspired Toby and the Pixies - and how comics help children grow as readers!
"People are finally realising that comics can be just as good as other types of books, and,
most importantly, children love to read them!"
1. Thank you for joining us on ReadingZone to talk about your Toby and the Pixies series! What got you started as a comic creator? What were your favourite comics when you were a child?
Thank you for including me in the ReadingZone, it's lovely to be here! I've always loved drawing and telling stories, and comics are just using pictures to tell stories, so it was just natural for me to start making them - I've been making comics since before I could even write and never really stopped!
I used to always read so many comics as a child - my local library had a big collection of Tintin and Asterix books which I loved to read - but I think Calvin and Hobbes (a comic about a boy and his imaginary tiger friend) was one of the biggest influences on me. They're so funny, silly, clever and so wonderfully drawn!
2. Your comic strips for The Phoenix Comic include Star Cat and your Toby and the Pixies series. Why do you think graphic novels and comics are now so popular with young readers and why should we be encouraging them to read more?
It used to be that comics were thought of as 'not proper books' and were tucked away in some back corner of the book shops (or not in book shops at all!), but thanks to brilliant new comics like Dogman and Bunny vs Monkey, people are finally realising that comics can be just as good as other types of books, and, most importantly, children love to read them!
Comics are great for encouraging reluctant readers, but they also contain fantastic stories for readers of any level. Comics can instruct readers not just in the use of written language, but the use of visual language too, encouraging an exploration of how art and design can convey messages and tell a story. Plus, things explode sometimes too! KABOOM!
3. Taking a closer look at your new series, Toby and the Pixies, can you remind us how Toby becomes King of the Pixies?
This is a sad tale indeed. Toby is an ordinary school boy who accidentally squashes the king of the pixies with a garden gnome. And by pixie law, that makes him the new king!
Meet the characters, and pixies, in Toby and the Pixies
4. Being a king to pixies sounds like a great job - is it? If you could be king of the pixies for one day, what would you do with it?
Being king of the pixies isn't as fun as it sounds for Toby - the pixies might love him, but they never leave him alone, and whenever they try to help, they usually end up making things worse!
If I was king of the pixies for a day, I'd get them to clean my house and do all my chores. But knowing the pixies they'd probably end up making more mess than when they started, so perhaps it's good that I'm not the king of the pixies!
5. What kinds of adventures does Toby have with the pixies 'looking after' him in Pixie Pandemonium, the latest book about Toby's pixie adventures?
There are so many adventures that the Pixies take Toby on in this book (Time travel! A man-eating snowman! Talking potatoes!), but I think my favourite is the episode where Toby is nervous about going to the dentist - so to help him out, the pixies bring his teeth to life and wash them in the toilet!
6. Toby's adventures are also very funny - what kinds of things make you laugh, and how do these things find their way into your stories?
I think more than anything, the thing that makes me laugh is when something unexpected happens. So when I'm writing a story I'll often try to think of how I'd expect the story to go - and then do the opposite of that!
"Toadflax is my absolute favourite character to write - she is always doing the naughtiest things!"
7. Do you have any favourites among the band of pixies - Toadflax, Gatherwool and Mouldwarp? The pixies are very bug-like; did you head into nature to get inspiration for how they'd look?
I love Mouldwarp and Gatherwool, but Toadflax is my absolute favourite character to write - she is always doing the naughtiest things! The artist for the book, Andreas Schuster, tried lots of different looks for the pixies when we first began the comic, from pixies dressed like cavemen, to pixies wearing teacups on their head! There's definitely a lot of nature inspiration in the world of the pixies that we eventually came up with - they even make their palace out of pumpkins.
8. How do you and Andreas Schuster work on these books? What's the process in creating a Toby and Pixie adventure - and how long does it take?
A new pixie story first starts with me writing a script (which is just the words and descriptions of what's happening, with no pictures), which can take me about a week. Then the script gets sent to Andreas who will draw very rough art of what he thinks the comic should look like. That art gets sent back to me and my lovely editor, Will Fickling, and we'll have a look and see if we want Andreas to make any changes. Then Andreas will make those changes and do a neater version of the art, and Will and I will look at it again, and then the same will happen for the final black and white art and the coloured version - there's a lot of back and forth before we get to the final comic!
9. Are you planning more Toby and the Pixies adventures? What are you working on at the moment?
The next Toby and the Pixies book, all about Toby trying to be cool (and not always succeeding!), is coming out next year!
10. What do you enjoy doing when you're not creating new comics? And where do you go to inspire new ideas?
I love to play board games (I have over 100 in my collection!) and once a week I do Improv, which is like doing a play, except you have to make it up as you go along, which is a lot of fun and often very silly!
Ideas can come from anywhere - things I've read in a book, things I've seen on TV, but often I get my best ideas when I'm out for a walk, and I just let my mind wander. Daydreaming is a very important skill!
Creative Challenge: Create your own pixie for Toby's world!
Designing your own pixies is a lot of fun! A great way to do that is to think of a few thigs about your pixie character: What shape is your pixie? All pixies are small, but even then there are different sizes - are they tall and thin like Mouldwarp, or short and round like Gatherwool? And you can do the same with noses - do they have a big round nose, or a tiny little point? Try drawing a lot of different noses and see which one looks funniest!
What sort of job do they have in the pixie world? Pixies do all sorts of things, from pig herder to mushroom farmer or even something weird like acorn polisher, but thinking of what your pixie does can help you come up with ideas for what they look like and what things they might carry. What sort of personality does your pixie have? Are they happy, angry, naughty or lazy? And what sort of face does someone like that have? A happy pixie might smile a lot, while a lazy pixie might be asleep!
A very important feature to any pixie is what hat do they wear! Many pixies wear pointed hats, but they can wear hats made of anything: A leaf, a mushroom, or an old cardboard box! Or maybe they wear a hat related to their job: a pixie fireman might wear a fire helmet - although given how silly the pixies are the helmet would probably be on fire! And lastly what name does your pixie have? Pixie names include a lot of natural words like thistle, frog, cloud, or pond. Put that together any verb and you'll have a very pixie sounding name: Daisyrattle, Crabhop, Windsnatch, or Onionclimb would all make good names!
James Turner's School visits
I can do school visits - I usually do an interactive workshop, where I show how I go about coming up with new characters and how to make a short comic using those characters, taking suggestions from the audience. Please get in touch with Ruth Sanderson at David Fickling Books with any queries: [email protected]
Toby and the Pixies: Pixie Pandemonium (a Phoenix Comic Book)
Toby and the Pixies: Best Frenemies (a Phoenix Comic Book)
Toby and the Pixies: Worst King Ever! (a Phoenix Comic Book)
