Category Archives: Essays

“Time down here is a diffrent thing see. Lyke on the other side you sees seesons change, leeves grow bold an grene an fayde to gold an red, then drop off and kirl up and disappear into snoe. But Bearmouth is black. Black an warm an dark an wet an full o coal. All days all weeks all year. Forever and ever. Amen. “

Newt has been living and working in Bearmouth from a tender age. Daily life in the mine is full of strict routine and a quiet acceptance of how things are – until, that is, Devlin arrives and starts to ask questions. Newt fears any unrest will bring heightened oppression from the Master and his overseers. Life is hard enough and there is no choice about that. Or is there? Newt is soon looking at Bearmouth with a fresh perspective – one that does more than whisper about change: one that is looking for a way out. 

Liz Hyder’s extraordinary debut novel draws on her research into the working conditions of children in Victorian mines and shows a young person daring to challenge the status quo. In Bearmouth, she has created an imagined world with its own dialect, riven with social injustice and populated by characters who don’t simply accept things because they are told they must.

Pushkin Press

Bearmouth is Liz Hyder‘s debut novel, told through the voice of a young child trapped working in a mine, barely remembering life outside. It is both literally and figuratively dark, really dark, with some quite harrowing scenes, but also gripping, hopeful, and thought provoking. I read it in one sitting, taking a while to get used to the voice (Newt is writing it, with letters lessons slowly improving the spelling throughout) but then racing through to see what lies ahead for these wonderful (and wonderfully awful) characters. The conditions are terrible but also not unrealistic, the writing really does create the oppressive atmosphere of the tunnels and relentlessness of the workers’ lives, and the doubt sparked by the appearance of a new boy spirals quickly. Newt begins to question the way things are, whether it is actually blasphemous to want conditions to improve, whether it isn’t really the wishes of The Mayker that keep them underground…

Liz has written this piece for Teen Librarian, about the importance of rebellion and asking questions

My nan, my mum’s mum, who died when I was little, was famous for asking ‘who says?’ A tall, formidable woman with a mischievous grin and a fondness for doing impressions, she looks back at me like a mirror image from old photos. I strongly resemble her on the outside but I also think I’m like her on the inside too. Asking questions is always important and more so than ever in our era of fake news and auto-generated bots. ‘Who says?’ encourages us to ask why someone is saying something, what they might hope to get out of it and what vested interest they might have.

Newt, in my debut novel Bearmouth, is an asker of questions. Set down a Victorian-esque working coal mine in which the workers not only toil away in the dark but also live down there, Bearmouth is a world of danger. As Newt learns to read and write, the curiosity within also rises and Newt starts asking more questions. Why are things this way? Why, even if it has always been this way, should things continue like this? ‘Who says?’

The act of asking a question can, in itself, be an act of rebellion and is scattered throughout fairy tales and fiction as such. From the child in the crowd who asks why the Emperor is wearing no clothes to Oliver Twist asking for more, questions are, in themselves, powerful things and no-one uses questions more keenly than children and young people. Their thirst for knowledge, their willingness and desire to push at the edges of what is and isn’t allowed, what is and isn’t acceptable, is something that we as adults should perhaps look to a little more often.

Books open up other worlds. Whether they be real or fantastical, they allow us to explore ideas and themes through their pages. They allow us to travel across time and space, encountering characters that live and breathe, lingering on in our memories long after we’ve turned that last page. Books can inspire and enlighten us, make us snort with laughter, move us to tears and even fill us with courage. The books I read as a child and as a teenager – from Hunter Davies’s Flossie Teacake series and Michael Rosen’s Quick, Let’s Get Out of Here, to pretty much all of Paula Danziger’s witty novels featuring awkward teens – made me feel that I wasn’t alone, whether that was in my clumsiness or my creativity, in my sense of humour or in the way I viewed the world. Books encouraged me to be braver in myself, to think that I might be a person who could camp out in the wilds like in the Lone Pine adventures or have the bravery to stand up to sinister forces like in The Dark is Rising series. Books shaped my world, made me look at things around me differently, when I looked up from the page, my own world had tilted on its axis. The impossible became just a little bit more possible.

I hope that Bearmouth will make readers look at the world a little differently, to remember the real children that worked away for long hours in the Victorian mines, to remember that there are children right now working in mines in other countries around the world. Just because something is not visible does not mean that it does not exist…

I hope readers will come to view Newt as someone who, with courage, has the ability to inspire and to change things. I hope it helps readers realise they can make a difference themselves, they too can push for and encourage change. When I first started writing the novel, I hadn’t heard of Greta Thunberg but there is a line in the novel, the line that ended up on the front cover, in Newt’s somewhat unconventional spelling, that reoccurs and resonates throughout the story – ‘it only taykes one person to start a revolushun.’ It is an empowering thought and one that I hope will inspire those who read the book.

Bearmouth by Liz Hyder is published in hardback by Pushkin Children’s Books on 19 September at £12.99

(thank you for sending Teen Librarian a copy for review!)

Lily’s only sixteen, but she already feels like she’s losing at life.  Victimised at school, she won’t lay her unhappiness at her parents’ door – they have problems of their own  – and  so Lily feels utterly trapped and alone.
When the kids at school finally go too far, Lily has to decide if she’s going to fight back. But is her new-found confidence simply about getting revenge on those who hurt her? Or about taking charge of her own life for once and for all?
Gloves Off is the stunning story of a girl taking on the world, about body-image and bullying, and above all, about making every moment worth fighting for.

Guppy Books

I was completely overwhelmed when I read Gloves Off, Louisa Reid’s debut #UKYA novel for the new independent publisher, Guppy Books. I sat down to start it and then just didn’t get up again until I’d finished. Part one is absolutely heartbreaking, and hearing the voices of both Lily and her mother gives you so much to think about. It talks of body image and self worth and bullying and family and love, all in faultless verse.

Louisa is an English teacher by day, and wrote us a piece about why she thinks teens (and adults) are embracing verse novels.

Why We’re Falling in Love with The Verse Novel

In the age of tl;dr, of Netflix marathons, of fast-paced snapchatting and Instagrammable moments, I think verse novels are the perfect way to bring stories to readers who might otherwise be switched off by denser works of fiction. They appeal also, of course, to the poets, and the actors, to the curious and the creative, to so-called readers and non-readers alike. Eminently bingeable, pacey, immersive, these books are an exciting way of experiencing intensely internal stories, whilst being a hybrid form that is perfect for our times.

When I sat down to write Gloves Off, I began in prose. But I have a really vivid memory of sitting at my laptop, reading back over what I’d written, fists clenched in frustration, and just knowing that these sentences and paragraphs were wrong. Nothing sang, nothing moved: the words felt dull and lifeless, the story too slow. It was clear that something was stopping me expressing the intensity of feeling that this story demanded, that I was cluttering the narrative with extraneous detail, and that’s when I decided to give writing in verse a go.

I had no idea if I could write a verse novel, so it was a total leap of faith to undertake the project. But as someone who had always loved poetry, who loves music and rhythm, I had nothing to lose. Appreciating the craft, its playfulness and immediacy, I knew writing my own novel in verse would be a challenge; it was not simply going to be a matter of chopping my paragraphs into short lines.

Before this, my own experience of reading verse novels had been very powerful, and was partly inspired by seeing my pupils’ appetite for this form (I work as an English teacher, and have done so for almost twenty years). Drawn into the intensely emotional experience that the verse novel offers its readers, I’d read the work of David Levithan, Sarah Crossan and Ellen Hopkins to mention just a few of the outstanding writers working in this field. It was easy to understand why so many of the girls I teach are big fans, especially of Sarah Crossan’s writing (although with the growing popularity of the genre, I’m sure they’ll be branching out to sample Kwame Alexander, Jason Reynolds and Elizabeth Acevedo, too – the school where I work is lucky to have an amazingly well-stocked library). When I’m teaching creative writing, we often look at moments pupils have found powerful in their own reading, and its always hugely enriching to explore extracts from verse novels – chosen by the students themselves – and to see them appreciate how the language sings, how it is so carefully condensed and crafted, and then to see this reflected in their own writing .

Another appealing aspect of this form, especially for the less confident, is the abundance of white space and that there are comparatively fewer words – the pages turn so quickly; I think the fact that these narratives move so fast is also very appealing for young adult readers who are used to a fast-moving culture and who can enjoy the sense of accomplishment as they finish a book in one big gulp: the experience becomes utterly immersive.

The form also incorporates and amalgamates aspects of drama, as well as poetry and the novel, to make a rich, but not an intimidating, reading experience. The polyphonic element of YA storytelling has always held a great appeal for me, and many verse novels use different voices to remarkable effect – Brian Conaghan and Sarah Crossan’s We Come Apart is a favourite – I love the distinctive contrast of voices in this book. Other verse novels may change speaker every poem, and this poses its own challenges for readers and makes big demands it terms of flexibility and comprehension. I also think that my students appreciate the form’s unflinching honesty; as we know, teenage readers are masterful at detecting anything insincere, and the verse novel tells a story in which there is no room to hide.

I’m so glad that this amazing, adaptable form is gaining popularity in the UK. Coincidentally I’ve observed a real appetite for the music of words in my classroom, as students give speeches on topics as diverse as school uniform, to racism, from LGBTQI rights to the environment in ways that make use of powerful poetic techniques, clearly influenced by the rhythms of the music they listen to, the books they’re reading, and showing their enjoyment of playing with language. It’s so exciting to see verse novels being read more widely and I’m trying to convert adult readers to this form, too. It’s definitely got something for everyone.

Thankyou so much to Louisa for the insight, and to Guppy Books for a proof copy to review. Gloves Off is out on 29th August.