The next page _{by Isabella Smith}

The first thing Ruth Paul shows me on our video call is a copy of her brand-new book Farmer’s Pyjamas, which had gotten completely soaked in the recent bout of bad weather in Wellington. “It’s ok”, she laughs, holding her now soft-cover-hard-covered book up to the camera, “I didn’t know that’s what happened, it’s so bendy!” Luckily there were only 10 in the box, and there are blue skies again.

We caught up to discuss Farmer’s Pyjamas, a delightful read-aloud book about a farmer who needs all the help she can get to find her pyjamas.

Ruth is an award-winning author and illustrator who has written and/or illustrated 28 children’s books, some of which have been sold worldwide and translated into five different languages. Her stories have been adapted for the screen, for the stage, and for the radio. Most recently, she worked alongside musician Charlotte Yates to bring characters from several of her stories to life in the stage production HELP! A Monster Ate My Story, which showed in April this year at Circa Theatre.

Ruth will be reading aloud from her book You Can’t Pat A Fish at the Featherston Booktown event Book-Book-Book! alongside other children’s book authors Giselle Clarkson and Juliet MacIver at Featherston School on Sunday the 10^th of May.

What inspired you to write Farmer’s Pyjamas?

It’s a really simple premise. I like picture books that set up a routine that is then broken. The child can tell when it’s gone wrong and love pointing that out to their parents. I was thinking about doing something that had that sort of setup. And a bedtime routine is a really good one to get wrong.

I was also thinking about my mother-in-law, who’s this amazing farmer. It occurred to me that in picture books, whenever people talk about farmers, they think of men. They only think of farming women as wives. I thought it’d be fantastic to have a farmer who just happens to be female, though it's not really mentioned. She also does it all on her own, and I’m sure that happens all over the country.

I thought it was a really strong idea, doing a bedtime routine setup that gets broken, then all the animals on the farm get upset and have to help find the farmer’s pyjamas to get things back in order.

Although, you have to be careful who you share it with, because some people go, ‘Oh, no, I really don’t like that, that doesn’t work.’ And other people will get it. I was told by an agent years ago that no one will write anything about farmers, because they can’t sell those books. I remember thinking ‘Well, there are a lot of farmers around and they might think otherwise.’

Plus, it’s a classic bedtime story. You always have that moment where you’re trying to get kids into their pyjamas, and parents can say, ‘You can go read the pyjama book if you get into your pyjamas’. Because it has a bedtime routine, there’s a place for it in your household when you’re trying to get the kids to bed.

It also invites all the farmyard animals to come into the story, which everyone will love.

In this story, the animals have to solve the problem, which I really like. It's a cooperative deal between the farmer and the animals. It took me a while to work out how to draw the farmer. There were conversations about her being a lot younger, but I wanted her to have grey hair and to be on her own, because I think a lot of people farm by themselves. They may have started out farming with a partner or someone else, and then end up on their own. I thought my farmer should have had life experience and be pretty good at what she does. You may not notice, but she has a knee brace. I gave her grey hair and a knee brace, because there’s no farmer who doesn’t have an injury of some kind.

Is there a message in your stories, or do you focus more on the creative aspects?

I don’t like heavy-handed messages, so I don’t like didactic picture books. But I do like there to be a good shape to a story. For it to have a thought-through progression and ending. Sometimes people write in rhyme, and the rhyme takes over and it goes wherever it goes, and there’s no sense of structure. I like it if there’s a structure, and the rhyme works within that structure, because then you get a double whammy. It’s more satisfying.

In this one I wouldn’t say there’s any kind of message, except that it’s a very warm story, and there is an element of cooperation in it. I think my farmer is quite caring, which, given that farming life is very hard, it’s nice to show the caretaking side.

How do you put yourself in the shoes of a child when you're writing your stories?

Children’s authors often get asked if they write for their own children, or if they’re trying to think like a child, but I think it’s always the inner child that I write for. I wouldn’t know what everybody else’s children are like. I think about what I would find funny if I was little, and the things that I used to like. Also, if you’ve done enough books, over time you recognise that there are things that work and things that don't work so well, depending on what kind of book you’re writing.

What first drew you towards writing children’s books?

I was an illustrator first. I did commercial illustration for a while then illustrated a couple of picture books for other people. I’d always wanted to write my own. It did coincide with me having my own kids, but that wasn't the reason I started writing them. It meant that I could work at home, which is great, because working on a book will take a big chunk of time, three to six months.

The main reason I think, is because I will always adore that moment when you’re trying to get your kids to bed. You’re cuddled up with them and reading them a story. Before lights out, it’s a really intimate moment as you share something together on the page, laughing or talking. And eventually their eyes start to shut.

People have very strong memories of being read to, and I still love being read to. If the child isn’t old enough to read, they’re reading their way through the images in the background and what’s going on in the pictures. I just love that, that shared interaction. And it is quite shared, because often you’ll say, ‘What noise does the animal make?’ and the child will make the noise. Or you go, ‘What happens?’ and they’ll start reading it, telling you what happens on the next page.

Generally, at that point in time, when you finally get them to bed to read, they actually smell quite nice, the day is over. It’s just that thing as a parent. There's a whole lot of magical feelings I have about that moment. I like working in that world.