Audio transcript

Between the bookshelves – 11. Lili Wilkinson

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You're listening to 'Between the bookshelves', the official podcast of the NSW Premier's Reading Challenge. I'm your host, Jade Arnold, the Premier's Program Officer, Reading and Spelling, at the Arts Unit. Join me as I chat with children's and young adult authors and other experts in education and children's fiction as we talk about the books and the strategies that may spark or reignite a love of reading. Let's dive in!

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Welcome to episode 11 of 'Between the bookshelves'. I'm joined today by Lili Wilkinson, a prolific voice in Australian young adult and junior fiction, with over 20 titles to her name.

Lili has captured the imaginations of teens and younger readers alike with stories that range from high-stakes thrillers, to spellbinding fantasies, to hilarious monster mayhem and picture books for little ones. Lili's most recent releases include her dark academia fantasy 'Unhallowed Halls' for young adult readers, and 'Bravepaw', a fantasy adventure for younger readers. Lili, thank you so much for joining me today. How are you?

LILI WILKINSON: I'm good. Thank you, Jade. How are you?

JADE ARNOLD: Very good. Super excited to be here talking to you about your books. Before we get started with the questions, though, I thought it would be nice to play a little game of this or that. Basically, I'm going to give you 2 different options, and you need to choose one of them. You can either defend your choices if you like, or you can just stand by them, totally up to you. Are you ready?

LILI WILKINSON: Yep.

JADE ARNOLD: Series or standalones?

LILI WILKINSON: Standalones. I don't always have the stamina for a series these days because I'm an old lady now.

JADE ARNOLD: Ebooks or audiobooks?

LILI WILKINSON: Oh, I'm going to say ebooks because I feel very guilty about saying this. I read almost exclusively on my phone, but I still want to have the physical book, so I buy a physical book.

JADE ARNOLD: Magic gone wrong or science gone rogue?

LILI WILKINSON: Magic gone wrong. I feel a little conflicted about science gone rogue. There's like a-- I just don't feel like this is the right time for anti-science sentiment. But also, I feel like there's a lot of science that is going wrong. And so, it feels a little bit too close to home.

JADE ARNOLD: Absolutely. Witches in the wild or monsters in the basement?

LILI WILKINSON: Oh, witches is in the wild, every day.

JADE ARNOLD: Daydreaming or planning your next book?

LILI WILKINSON: Planning. I love to plan. Plan books, plan holidays, plan everything.

JADE ARNOLD: Oh, a planner, I love that. So, let's get on to the real questions now. Thank you for that. That was a little bit of fun. So, Lili, one of the key aims of the NSW Premier's Reading Challenge, or the PRC as we like to call it, is being able to connect children and young adults with stories that they'll fall in love with. And then, with that in mind, we like to do a little 'between the bookshelves' pitch instead of an elevator pitch to help teach librarians or parents make recommendations for their students or children.

I want you to imagine that a student is standing between the bookshelves in their school library, or their local library, or maybe their local bookshop, and you've got to help them make the decision to take your book home. So, with that in mind, can you give us the 'between the bookshelves' pitch for your latest YA title, 'Unhallowed Halls'?

LILI WILKINSON: Sure. So, it is a YA dark academia fantasy. It is for readers who love their books full of magic and gloomy, romantic, blasted Scottish landscapes.

It is also for readers who love a squad of adorable queer weirdos. It has a lot of ancient Celtic magic and a little bit of cosmic horror, but I think, fundamentally, it is a book about that kind of really deep need to be seen, and to be understood and to find your people.

JADE ARNOLD: Yeah, absolutely. I love that so much. For our listeners, 'Unhallowed Halls' is currently being reviewed. It may be on the PRC book list by the time that this episode goes to air, so we'll pop that in the show notes at the end so that you can check.

So, 'Unhallowed Halls' is awash with Greek and Roman philosophy and takes place in this mysterious, isolated school where technology is prohibited. What drew you to this dangerous world of dark academia, and how did you go about weaving in that magical, dangerous atmosphere?

LILI WILKINSON: The very first spark for the book came, actually, from another author, Ellie Marney, who we often send each other interviews and articles that we feel like the other one would be interested in. And she sent me this article about a boarding school in the US that was a boarding school that looked like a castle, had a literal moat, and it was specifically a school for rich, intelligent, but damaged kids.

So, it was super, super smart nepo babies who have gotten kicked out of other boarding schools. And I'm like, well, there is some great stories in that. There's got to be some great stories, but what if also they were demons, because you have to make it more interesting.

And so, I moved the school to Scotland because I did a hike once across Rannoch Moor in Scotland in the Scottish Highlands, and it was just so beautiful, and atmospheric and gloomy, but in such a beautiful, magical way that I knew that I wanted to write a story set there. And so, this felt like the perfect place to write this kind of gloomy boarding school narrative. And I think that there's something about dark academia that's really connecting with young readers at the moment.

And I do wonder if it is, as you say, that kind of lack of technology, that there is no space for social media in these crumbling, ancient buildings and dusty libraries. And it's more about playing chess with your friends over cups of black coffee.

And it's romantic but in a very organic, real-world way. And I think that there's so much pressure on young people at the moment to always be on a screen, to always be being perceived to always be creating content that I think that that offline world is very appealing.

JADE ARNOLD: Yeah, absolutely. And I'm picking up a lot of threads, obviously. I'm halfway through the book. I haven't finished it yet, but I can see a lot of those threads there, where the main character in this book, she's not one of those nepo babies, but she's surrounded by all the other students are from these insanely rich, or wealthy or well-known families, and that kind of makes her feel like this real outsider.

But the thing that creates a lot of the tension between them is their actual face-to-face interactions, as opposed to gossip that spreads online or being excluded online. And it's really nice to see that dynamic play out in a really different way. And it kind of hearkens back to, heh, oh, no, my childhood, where a lot of the tension comes from those face-to-face interactions or just in the classroom, but it's also set amongst this dark, moody, Scottish, cold landscape.

Yeah, I love that so much. It's a really different setting to place it in and is really on the money there with why dark academia is potentially so appealing to students at the moment. For readers who loved 'Unhallowed Halls' and want more stories with similar vibes, what would you recommend they read next?

LILI WILKINSON: I think that if you want those interactions, that kind of snappy banter, you can't go past either Emma Clancey's 'This Dream Will Devour Us', which has either just come out or is just about to, which I really enjoyed, which is this world where there's magical drugs. And you can have all of these powers, but they're only for rich people. But if rich people weren't partying on them, we could use them as medicine to help regular people.

Anyway, really kind of great, political intrigue kind of story. You also can't go past 'Lady's Knight' by Amy Kaufman and Meagan Spooner, which is coming out later this year. It's just so good, so good, such great banter. And that is also some really great queer rep. Other really great queer YA is Lisa Tirreno's 'Prince of Fortune', which came out in January, which is really great.

And then, one from last year and the year before, the 'Nightbirds' duology by Kate J. Armstrong is all about magic and beautiful, angsty relationships between people and smashing the patriarchy, which obviously is one of my favourite things to read about.

JADE ARNOLD: Yeah, absolutely. I love that so much. And there's so many fantastic new releases there that I haven't heard of yet, so I'm excited to get my hands on, but we'll include all of those in our show notes for our listeners.

The next books I'd like to talk about are your fantasy titles that are, I guess, spiritual sequels: 'A Hunger of Thorns', which won the Victorian Premier's Literary Award, and 'Deep Is the Fen', which is set in the same world as 'A Hunger of Thorns', but it follows different characters and can be read as a standalone. Both of these books are on the 9Plus book list. Can you give us your pitch for these stories?

LILI WILKINSON: Sure, so 'A Hunger of Thorns' is-- so, both of the books, first of all, are set in this world that is like a contemporary, modern-ish world but where magic exists. But magic has been absorbed into the fabric of capitalism, and so you can't really do magic. It's forbidden, sort of all wrapped up in laws, and restrictions and patents. But you can buy a magical tea bag, where the little paper tab never falls into the cup when you're pouring the hot water in.

And you can buy magical glamour patches, which look like a nicotine patch but act more like a TikTok filter, where you can look however you want. And so, magic is a little mundane, really, in this world, because it has been absorbed by capitalism in this way.

So, in 'A Hunger of Thorns', our protagonist is Maude, who is the daughter and the granddaughter of witches. And so, she has this great, magical legacy. And when she's a child, she can do magic. She has magical ability. And she has this best friend, Odette, who can't do magic and who comes from this incredibly rich, cold, unloving home. And she's really drawn to darkness, and she's drawn to Maude because of Maude's magic.

And so, they are childhood best friends, and they play together, and they have this beautiful, imaginative childhood relationship, but Odette is always pushing Maude to do more magic. And when Maude's magic dries up when she gets her period, Odette dumps her. And so, when the book begins, it's years later, and they haven't seen each other for a long time, but Odette has gone missing, and Maude decides that she's going to venture into this very dangerous, magic-soaked landscape to try and find her.

JADE ARNOLD: Such a dark and enchanting story, with lots of twists and turns. In 'A Hunger of Thorns', you draw on the histories of persecution and celebrate the power of women, subverting familiar fantasy tropes in these really interesting ways. And then layered into this world, as you hinted at there, is this really powerful critique of consumerism and industrialisation and environmental destruction. What inspired this world, and what conversations were you hoping to spark with Maude's journey?

LILI WILKINSON: I think it was really a culmination of all of the fantasy that I have read and loved. And the fantasy that I love the most has these really classic fantasy tropes in it, but then also responds to things that are happening in our world as well. And that's why fantasy is so great because we can really dig into some of those issues apart from the very complexities and contradictions that exist in the real world.

And so, it's a book that evolved over time. I have never written a book like that before, and it went through so many different draughts, and it ended up being about quite different things to what I initially intended it to be about. It was like getting lost in a forest, really. And so, I very much wanted to look at magic as part of capitalism and go through that thought experiment of what that would be like.

And I wanted to, as you say, draw on that history of persecution of witches and of women in general and that fear of female power. I also wanted to bring that a little bit more into modern day and remove that a little bit from gender binaries, which I continued a little bit more in 'Deep Is the Fen' and then more still, I guess, in 'Unhallowed Halls'. And so, I guess all of those things combined together into this kind of strange narrative about witches and freedom, I suppose.

JADE ARNOLD: It's very strange, but very dark and enthralling, and it's a very unique book. And I'm going to ask you later for recommendations for what to read next, and it's going to be an interesting one for you to answer. [laughs] I'm sure you've got something amazing up your sleeve, though.

As I mentioned before, the spiritual sequel to this book is 'Deep Is the Fen'. You don't need to have read 'A Hunger of Thorns' to understand 'Deep Is the Fen', but there is one side character that pops up that readers of the first one will recognise. Would you be able to give us your 'between the bookshelves' pitch for this title?

LILI WILKINSON: Sure. So, if 'Hunger of Thorns' is my angsty friendship book, then 'Deep Is the Fen' is more of my enemies-to-lovers romance book, or at least rivals to lovers. So, this tells the story of Merry, who is very different to Maude. She is confident. She is like a country girl who knows exactly what she wants, and what she wants is her best friend Teddy, who is a hot blacksmith. And who among us has not occasionally wanted a hot blacksmith?

The problem is that she has made her best friends, Teddy and Sol, promise not to fall in love with her. And then, she has accidentally fallen in love with Teddy. And Teddy has joined the Toadmen, which is this organisation, sort of gentleman's club, that is a little bit like Freemasons or a little bit like Morris dancers and sort of seems a bit sort of quirky and weird and fusty. They wear funny outfits, and they do funny little rituals, but it seems quite harmless.

But Maude has this ability to sense magic, and she suspects that something very dark is going on with the Toadmen. And so, when Teddy joins, she has to infiltrate the Toadmen in order to extract him. And in order to do that, she has to team up with her arch rival, Caraway.

And Caraway is a boarder at the school she goes to, so, he comes from a very wealthy, privileged family. And he looks and acts like an Ice Prince. He has no friends. He is very aloof. He wears a glamour patch all the time. So, nobody knows, really, what he really looks like.

And Merry just hates him. They are academic rivals, but he has an in with the Toadmen, so she is going to have to team up with him. And ultimately, it's a book about resistance, witches and evil Toadmen, and again, smashing the patriarchy.

JADE ARNOLD: Yeah, amazing. I love it so much. As you mentioned, you've got the Toadmen, which are this mysterious, all-male secret society, which, as you said, are loosely based around, say, Morris dancers and Freemason society. Was this a way of helping you explore or challenge existing power structures that you see in the world around you?

LILI WILKINSON: Yeah, absolutely. The Toadmen, actually, was based on a-- there was a real secret society called the Toadmen in Scotland in the 18th century, and they were a horseman's fraternity. And there's a ritual at the beginning of the book that Teddy does with a toad, where you bury a toad and extract its skeleton from an ant hill, and then put it in a stream, and that one of its bones will float upstream and that that bone will give you powers. And that's a real ritual that the Toadmen used to do. And they believe that that toad bone would give them power to control both horses and women.

But you know when I read that kind of thing, I'm like, 'Well, obviously, I have to write a book about that and then make it worse.' So, that was a really big part of it. And then, the resistance witches that we encounter in the book, the term 'resistance witch' was actually something that I read around the time of Donald Trump's first inauguration in 20-- whenever that was, 2017?

And there were these American witches who were doing rituals and putting hexes on Donald Trump, and they were using the term 'resistance witch'. And I was like, 'That is a great term'. Also, 'I would like to put that in a book.' So, yeah, very much responding to things that were happening in the real world.

JADE ARNOLD: Yeah, amazing. I love how you've pulled that real, historical, grounded in our history and intertwined that into your narrative in a way that reflects and criticises what's happening in the world around us.

LILI WILKINSON: Thank you.

JADE ARNOLD: What would you recommend for readers who are craving more rich feminist fantasy after devouring 'Deep Is the Fen' and 'A Hunger of Thorns'?

LILI WILKINSON: So, I will go back to one of my previous recommendations, 'Nightbirds', which is one of the best feminist fantasies I've read in a long time by Kate Armstrong. I would also recommend literally anything by Margo Lanagan, who writes the most beautifully complex and fascinating fantasy. When I grow up, I want to be Margo Lanagan. Holly Black's 'Cruel Prince' series has a lot of that same kind of Celtic magic, inspired world building.

And then, I suspect I'll get in trouble for this one because it is a grown-up fantasy book, but anything by T. Kingfisher, but particularly 'Nettle & Bone', just one of my favourite fantasy reads of recent times.

JADE ARNOLD: Look, our listeners are mostly PRC coordinators, and sometimes they need to have a recommendation for themselves. So, I think that's totally fine. The next book I'd like to talk about with you is 'The Erasure Initiative', which also features on the 9Plus book list. How would you pitch this book for a teen reader?

LILI WILKINSON: So, 'The Erasure Initiative' is about a girl called Cecily who-- but she doesn't know that at the beginning of the book-- who wakes up on a self-driving bus that is going around and around a deserted tropical island, and there are 7 people on the bus, and nobody has any memory of who they are or how they got there.

And so, the book is a thriller, and the inhabitants of the bus have to figure out who they are. They are all dressed the same. They each have a name tag on, which they assume is their name but may not be. And so, all they really have to go on is how they look.

There's no mirror on the bus, so they have to describe each other. And they have to figure out who they are, while at the same time the bus is doing psychological experiments on them. The bus is re-enacting versions of the trolley problem thought experiment.

And so, they have to make these ethical choices. And everyone on the bus makes these assumptions about themselves and about each other based on how they look, because that's all they have. And so, they make these assumptions that Cecily, who's the main character, is this pretty blonde girl who seems wealthy looking at her skin and her teeth and her fingernails and her haircut.

And so, everyone's like, 'Well, you know, she's obviously just a nice person,' and they make similar assumptions about Paxton, who's sort of like a hot jock. They assume that the small, quiet Asian boy is a nerd. They assume that the weird guy with the weathered skin and DIY tattoos and not a lot of teeth is probably a criminal and that the woman with a sensible haircut who looks like she's in her 50s is a social worker or a primary school teacher or something. So, they make all of these assumptions, and of course, everybody is wrong.

JADE ARNOLD: I love that so much. And I love how-- one of the things I remember about it is the characters in different coloured shirts and how that also that ends up being a point of division between them, where something as simple as the colour of shirt that you're put in, even though you haven't made that choice yourself, is how-- when you've got no other knowledge of who you are, that's how you start identifying and start othering other people.

In amongst this narrative, it's this really compelling and thought-provoking read that tackles questions around identity and rehabilitation and the nature of criminality. It also encourages a lot of reflection on real-world injustices like corrupt governments and unethical organisations. What was it that inspired this concept, and what did you hope that young readers take away from it?'

LILI WILKINSON: So, I desperately did not want to write this book because I really wanted to write 'A Hunger of Thorns'. I was like, 'I'm ready to make the jump to fantasy now.' And I pitched it to my amazing publisher at Allen & Unwin, Jodie Webster, and she was like, 'Yes, great, love it. But could you write one more thriller first, because your other thrillers have done really well, and we'd just like another one?'

And so, I didn't want to do it. And so, I went home and was very mean to my family for a few days. I couldn't think of the right idea. I kept thinking about all these vague thoughts, but I just couldn't quite get it.

And then, 2 things happened. One was, I read this book about a true story-- a bio-- an autobiography about a guy who came to on a train platform in India with absolutely no memory of who he was or how he got there, and he assumed that he was a drug addict, or that something terrible had happened, or that he'd had some kind of psychotic break, and that, who knows, he could been there for years. He was white. He had an American accent, but he finally got in contact with his family at home, and they were like, 'Oh, no, we talked to you like 2 days ago. You're a scholar. You're working on a book in India.'

And it turned out that actually it was to do with his malaria medication, that had caused this kind of memory gap. And he had this memory gap for several years, where he could remember all of his general knowledge, but his autobiographical memory was gone.

Apparently, that is kept in a different part of the brain, and so everything to do with himself was completely gone. And so, he went back home to the States, and he was listening to a college radio show that he had done. And so, he had hours and hours of footage of himself talking. And he was like, 'I don't like this guy. I think he's kind of awful.'

And I thought, 'What a confronting thing to have to do, to step outside of yourself and look at yourself really objectively and realise that you're not a good person.' And so, that was the first thing.

And then, I think, probably because I'd read that book, I kind of woke up in the middle of the night and had this idea about the self-driving car and the people trapped on board with no memory of who they were, or how they got there, and how they would interact with each other and what kind of choices they might make.

And then also, I was watching 'The Good Place', the TV show, which has a lot of philosophy in it and a lot of psychology as well. And they have that episode on the trolley problem. And so, that felt like something really natural to incorporate in there as well.

And so, I did a lot of reading about those classic psychological experiments, which is why they had the blue shirts and the red shirts thing instead of the blue eyes, brown eyes experiment. And so, I tried to allude to as much of that stuff as possible. Because at the end of the day, I'm just a big nerd.

JADE ARNOLD: No, I loved it. It was such an interesting take on, as you said, the trolley problem, and a really interesting way of encouraging students, I guess, to look at, you know, 'what does it mean to be a criminal?' 'what does it mean to be rehabilitated?' and the ethics around all of that kind of stuff.

LILI WILKINSON: Yeah, I'd love to go into a school and ask them versions of the trolley problem. It's fascinating. And to see how many repeat and the classic trolley problem conundrum of, like, do you kill one person to save 5 people?

Usually, there's 10% to 20% of students who will choose to let the 5 people die because they don't want the personal responsibility of one person. But they are always, always boys every single time. It is just boys.

But then, I get everybody to put their hand up if they've chosen to pull the lever or press the button or whatever and kill that one person in order to save 5. And I'm like, 'Alright, that one person is your mum.' They all just erupt into chaos, and it's great. And then, we move on to some less traumatic ones. And we do like Beyoncé or Taylor Swift and cats versus dogs and--

JADE ARNOLD: Yeah, wow. It sounds like there's a PhD experiment under the surface here.

LILI WILKINSON: There really is. And it's a really great way to talk to kids about ethics and to get kids to really understand that idea of not having a fixed ethical centre but everything being really dependent on context.

JADE ARNOLD: Yeah, absolutely. And for readers who are hooked by that suspense and the moral complexity of 'The Eurasia Initiative', what would you recommend they try next?

LILI WILKINSON: So, I would recommend Ellie Marney's 'None Shall Sleep' trilogy, which is about serial killers. And there's a lot of those similar ethical conundrums in those books about making choices of who you work with and what are you prepared to sacrifice in order to solve the mystery or in order to save a life.

JADE ARNOLD: Yeah, absolutely, and a fantastic read. Those ones are also on the 9Plus book list and we'll include those in our show notes. Another title of yours that features on the 9Plus PRC book list is 'After the Lights Go Out'. Could you give us your 'between the bookshelves' pitch for this title?

LILI WILKINSON: Sure, so Pru is the daughter of a doomsday prepper. She lives out in the Australian Outback with her 2 younger sisters and her dad. And he has dragged these 3 girls out into the middle of nowhere in order to prepare for an oncoming disaster. He's not quite sure what it's going to be. It could be political. It could be environmental. He's going to be ready for it, no matter what it is.

So, they live on the outskirts of this extremely remote outback town. He's a fly-in, fly-out worker at a nearby mine. And one day, the girls are at home alone and the lights go out, and everything with a microchip in it doesn't work anymore. So, their car doesn't work anymore. Petrol pumps don't work anymore, all sorts of things.

There's no communications, and so they can ride their bikes into the little, tiny town. Most of the men are not there because they've gone to work at this mine, which is a long drive away or a shorter flight, but maybe they can find a car that's made before 1980 that doesn't have a microchip in it.

But basically, these girls have to make this choice without their father to influence them. Do they follow his teachings, the extremely paranoid, insular teachings of a deranged doomsday prepper and keep their skills because they have been trained in these sort of survival skills? Do they keep that a secret? Do they keep their enormous bunker full of medical supplies and food a secret and just look after themselves? Or do they share their knowledge and their resources with the people in the town and try and build a sustainable community?

And much like 'The Erasure Initiative'-- I mean, much like all of my books, I think, I'm not interested in black-and-white white morality. I'm really interested in shades of grey and difficult choices. And I think this is a really great example. Because I would like to say that, if I were in this situation, I would always share and build community.

But at the end of the day, if you've got a year's worth of food buried in your backyard and you share it with your neighbours, then maybe somehow, it's only a month's worth of food and then, how do you protect your family? But on the flip side, are you OK with watching your neighbours' kids starve to death? And so, I think it is a really difficult choice, and I genuinely don't think that any of us would know what we would do unless we were put in that situation.

JADE ARNOLD: Yeah, absolutely. And I think one of the things that I really liked about this book is that it flips that dystopian, post-apocalyptic survival genre on its head. Normally in those types of stories, you have the protagonist that is in this new world where things don't work the way that they used to, resources are in short supply, there's not a lot of food, there's not a lot of whatever it is that they need to survive. And the struggle and the tension is all about trying to find those supplies.

But in this one, it's the opposite. Pru has all of those resources, as you said, and that tension comes from if she keeps them to herself and her sisters or if she shares them with her community. So, what made you want to tell this story from that type of angle?

LILI WILKINSON: So, I read this book when I started the idea of writing a story about the daughter of a doomsday prepper. Whenever I was looking at, what are other books about doomsday preppers, there was this one particular book called 'One Second After', I've forgotten who it's by, which is like every prepper's favourite novel. It's an American book, and I read it, and I hated it so much.

And I listened to the audiobook, and it was like the most classically toxic masculine book I'd ever read. And it was extremely American as well. So, within 5 minutes of this disaster-- it's the same premise, really, an electromagnetic pulse wipes all of the microchips and electricity in North America.

And within like 3 days of this happening in this book, everybody has guns, there are public executions in the town squares, everybody is killing each other. It's just absolute chaos. And all of the main characters are men. Girls and women are only there to either die and for the men to feel sad about or to be rescued.

And nobody gets to have a feeling. Like, the only time the men get to have a feeling is they will sing the National Anthem and say things like, 'Damn it, Jim, I thought we were men. I thought we were Americans.' And I just hated it so much. [chuckles] And I just couldn't stop thinking like, 'OK, if this happened in Australia,' I mean, 'I can guarantee, firstly, that the one thing we're not doing is singing the National Anthem.'

Of all things, that would be a plus that now we no longer have to sing the National Anthem because it's not a banger. But I was like, 'What if this happened to a small community that was mostly women? What would happen?' And like, 'Maybe they would just get it done.' Like, 'What if women were just sensible about it and nobody was trying to kill anybody?'

And look, that doesn't make for, necessarily, a very interesting book. So, of course, there are people making some mistakes, and there are also some guns. And so not everything goes smoothly. But I kind of like the idea that most of the people in the narrative were kind of-- had good intentions and were not entirely self-interested in everything.

JADE ARNOLD: Yeah, it wasn't this foregone conclusion that every single character that you came across was going to try and attack you or kill you for your food and resources. There was a number of characters who genuinely wanted to try and make things work despite how difficult everything was.

LILI WILKINSON: Yeah, and I hate the idea that, when a disaster comes, humans forget all notions of kindness. And I don't think that's true. I think it's a very ungenerous reading of the human spirit.

JADE ARNOLD: Yeah, absolutely. What should readers reach for next if they loved the survival and moral dilemma and emotional weight of 'After the Lights Go Out'?

LILI WILKINSON: So, I think, firstly, I would recommend Claire Zorn's 'The Sky So Heavy' and its sequel, a quite similar premise in terms of survival and disaster and living in Australia during a disaster in particular. The other one is a slightly unusual one, but it is 'Waking Romeo' by Kathryn Barker, which sort of has some of the moral choices and some of that sort of survivalness, I think, of 'After the Lights Go Out' but has the wackiest premise of any book ever, because it is basically Heathcliff from 'Wuthering Heights' and Juliet from 'Romeo and Juliet' but in the future, and there's time travel.

JADE ARNOLD: But only time travel forward.

LILI WILKINSON: Yeah, yeah, you can only go forward. And it is just the most wildly beautiful and complex book that just desperately needs to be studied in schools. So, if any teachers are listening, get it on a curriculum. Pair it with 'Romeo and Juliet'. It will blow your students' minds. It certainly blew mine.

JADE ARNOLD: It's fantastic. I remember just reading that, I borrowed an ebook from my school library at the time, being like, 'Oh, I've never heard of this before.' And I got to the end, and I'm like, 'Oh my God. What is this, and why is everyone not reading this?'

That book is also on the PRC book lists, very great look at-- and there's a lot of intertextuality there, too, as you said, 'Wuthering Heights' and 'Romeo and Juliet', and just gives Juliet's character a lot more depth. And I don't want to give too much away but definitely go and read it. It's amazing. Fantastic recommendations there. Thank you.

You've also written for younger readers with your 'Bravepaw' series, you've got 'The Heartstone of Alluria' and 'The Clawstone of Rotwood Mire' out so far, which are both on the 3 to 4 PRC book lists. Could you give us your 'between the bookshelves' pitch for this series?

LILI WILKINSON: So, 'Bravepaw' is every classic children's fantasy novel kind of rolled up into an adorable and extremely accessible package. So, it has the kind of bravery of things like the 'Alanna' books by Tamora Pierce or 'Lord of the Rings' or 'The Hobbit', but also the raw animal focus of something like 'Redwall'.

And I really just wanted to capture the joy that I had as a young reader reading that real classic children's fantasy. But my own kid is not as confident a reader as I was, so I really wanted to bring some of that fantasy energy into the junior fiction market, because we have so much great middle grade fantasy. But some of those books are really chunky. They're quite intimidating.

And a lot of our junior fiction is, for want of a better word, is silly. And I love all of those silly books. Like, I love me a 'Real Pigeons' or a 'Treehouse', but when it's all silly, that becomes a bit of a monolith. And when I was watching my own kid play, his imaginative play was high stakes. It was adventures, it was quests, it was saving the world.

And so, I wanted to bring in some of those bigger themes into a junior fiction space. So, the series is about Titch, who is the smallest mouse in her village, who discovers that she is in fact, the reincarnation of an ancient warrior called Bravepaw and that it is up to her to take this magical jewel, the heart stone of Alluria, and heal the crack in the world and stop these horrible monsters from coming out.

And she is doing it with the aid of her best friend, Huckleberry, who is the Samwise Gamgee to her Frodo. And there will be 4 books in this series, and it is just the most beautiful adventure. It is, I say, because I didn't do all of it because half of it is just stunningly illustrated by Lavanya Naidu, who has just absolutely captured the kind of whimsy and the fantasy that I just desperately wanted.

JADE ARNOLD: Yeah, absolutely. I absolutely adored Lavanya's illustrations as well. What was it like seeing Titch and her companions take this visual form? And did knowing that the books were going to be fully illustrated change the way that you wrote the story or structured the scenes?

LILI WILKINSON: Yeah, definitely. I mean, one of the great joys of working with an illustrator is that you get to share the storytelling load a little bit. You don't have to carry everything, and so you can be much lighter on description, which is great for young readers, obviously.

And I have been a big fan of Lavanya's for years and have wanted to work with her, and so, I was so happy when she agreed to come on board this project. And so, I just have felt like we have been completely in sync this whole time. She's just so beautifully captured the tone of the books. She just really, really understood what we were trying to do.

JADE ARNOLD: Yeah, I absolutely agree. And one of the other things that I noticed about this story is that, in a lot of junior fiction titles, you'll have certain words emphasised. But in this in particular, you've got sometimes entire sentences or huge phrases that have that emphasis, and there's a lot of text changes, fonts a lot of the time. What's the process behind that? And is that done at an editorial level, or is it done at your level to help readers grasp onto the real important points in your story?

LILI WILKINSON: Yeah, so it's a little bit of a blend of both of those things. And I think that one of the things we don't talk about a lot, particularly when it comes to junior fiction, is that I write the words. Lavanya does the pictures, and obviously, we have our brilliant editor, Sucheta, our wonderful publisher, Susannah.

But then, the extra person who I feel like never gets mentioned but needs to be mentioned is Kristy Lund-White, who is the designer of the books. And so, she is the one who decides how those books are going to be laid out. She is the ones who pulls out those sentences and those words. She is the one who blends text and image together so seamlessly. And it's such a skill, and she is so good at it and such an unsung hero of the process.

JADE ARNOLD: Yeah, as a teacher reading through it, you can really see how deliberate those choices have been to really emphasise either how a character's feeling or something that's really important for the reader to pay attention to so that it really helps developing readers manage that cognitive load of learning and processing what is actually happening on the pages in front of them and such an important tool.

And I guess what you were saying there about how there's so many people that work behind that process is that, obviously, there's a lot of importance to it, and there's a lot of thinking that happens to make sure that it is actually going to help rather than distract the reader.

LILI WILKINSON: Yeah, absolutely. And I think it also really helps kids read aloud as well because it helps them to learn where to emphasise or where to change tone, which I think can be a really hard thing for readers who are still struggling to decode text at the same time is put expression into it.

JADE ARNOLD: Yeah, absolutely. Decoding and comprehension are 2 very different things, but to be able to practise meshing them together with that kind of text is such a great stepping stone in their reading journey.

Another series of yours for younger readers is the 'How to Make a Pet Monster' series. How would you describe this series to a young reader who is standing between the bookshelves?

LILI WILKINSON: So, this is another junior fiction series that's wildly accessible, fully illustrated, a short chapter book for young readers. And it is about Artie and Willow, who are new to each other, step siblings who have just moved in together into this big, old spooky house for the first time.

And in the attic, because every big, old spooky house has to have a big, old spooky attic, they discover a book, and this book is a recipe book of how to make monsters. And Artie is, he is a very quiet, sciencey, shy child, and Willow is extremely loud. She's extremely bossy. And so, Willow was like, 'Let's make the biggest, weirdest monster we can.' And Artie is like, 'Well, firstly, you can't make a monster because science. But secondly, if you could, that sounds like a terrible idea.'

But Willow kind of bosses him into it. But they don't have the right magical ingredients. They don't have a Gryphon's feather or a witch's sock. So, instead, they just use one of mum's socks or a seagull feather that they find in the backyard. And so, because they have substituted with around-the-house ingredients, the monster that they end up making is an around-the-house monster.

And so, in book one, it's Hodgepodge, who is sort of a very adorable, little farty monster, who can fart any smell that he has tasted. And there are subsequent monsters for different books. And so, it is just about the shenanigans that they all get up to.

JADE ARNOLD: Now, 'Hodgepodge', which is the first book of your 'How to Make a Pet Monster' series, is such a delight. But beneath all of the flatulence and the monster madness, it explores this evolving family structure and really shines a light on non-traditional households and the power of imagination and friendship. What inspired this mix of really heartfelt themes and chaotic fun?

LILI WILKINSON: This is one of those things where I should have a made-up answer. But to be entirely honest with you, I've gotten quite a lot of feedback from, particularly from parents in blended families about how great it is to read this story. And I honestly didn't even think about it. I just wanted a reason why these 2 kids didn't know each other but were in a house together.

And so, that just felt like the most logical and convenient way to do it. But receiving all of that feedback from families, from blended families was so beautiful, and I hadn't really realised-- because of my own privilege, I guess-- how rare those stories are. And so, I really tried to lean into it in subsequent books and explore these dynamics. Because it is, obviously, very hard for complete-stranger children to become siblings, particularly when they have very different personalities and also to deal with parents.

Artie is not quite sure what to call Willow's dad, who is now the partner of his mum. You can't call him Dad, but you can't call him Mr-- I can't remember what his surname is. But so, he just kind of calls him David, but actually he just sort of avoids calling him anything at all.

And so, I did kind of want to explore some of those ideas because, I mean, I think all good literature does that is sort of even-- like, I think very serious literature should have funny bits, and I think very funny literature should have serious bits. I feel like if it's all one or all the other, I'm not really interested.

JADE ARNOLD: Yeah, absolutely. And for junior readers who've loved either 'Bravepaw' or the 'How to Make a Pet Monster' series, what other junior fiction titles would you recommend?

LILI WILKINSON: I really love the 'Wylah the Koorie Warrior' books by Jordan Gould and Richard Pritchard. They're just so beautiful and so engaging in such a great kind of way of introducing a lot of young readers to First Nations stories and First Nations characters. I also really love the 'Sherlock Bones' series of graphic novels, which are such a kind of delightful, humorous mystery solving as well, sort of the Sherlock Holmes-style mystery, except the protagonist is a taxidermied bird in a natural history museum. Brilliant.

And then, for slightly older readers who perhaps are interested in stepping into that middle grade fantasy space, I really love 'Washpool' by Lisa Fuller, beautiful middle grade book and also the 'Landovel' series by Emily Rodda was also just such a cracking great classic fantasy read.

JADE ARNOLD: Absolutely, some fantastic recommendations there. Are you currently working on anything new? And if so, are you allowed to share those details with us?

LILI WILKINSON: So, I'm currently working on books 3 and 4 of 'Bravepaw', both of which will be out next year. So, that's one thing. I'm working on a new young adult novel at the moment, which is currently called 'Oubliette' but will not remain being called 'Oubliette' because the Americans don't like it.

And it is a high-fantasy romance about a girl who is stuck inside a house. She's a maid to an eccentric old woman, and she can't leave the house that she works in and has perhaps never left it, and then another girl who is an evil knight, basically, who is a knight for this army of a dark lord's army, essentially, who deserts from the army. And these 2 girls get thrown together and go on an adventure together.

JADE ARNOLD: I can't wait for all of those. They sound so exciting. A lot of our listeners are teacher librarians or teachers who are PRC coordinators, people who are, essentially, passionate about nurturing a love of reading in their students. What advice would you give them about reading in schools and encouraging young readers?

LILI WILKINSON: So, I think I've probably got 2 pieces of advice. One is, wherever possible, to keep set text lists updated. You know, I think the more-- and particularly, the more you can inject literature for young people into it, the better. I think we do move on to adult literature too early when teaching kids. There is so much amazing young adult literature that is specifically written for young people that has incredible depth of theme, just as much as adult literature, but it is more engaging for young readers.

And the more we can engage them, the better. I think giving young people more agency in which books they read, which books they choose, also makes a really big difference. And then, a practical thing that I just desperately want to happen is I would love to see schools do on a Friday afternoon after lunch or whenever, a 30-minute silent reading for the whole school.

And when I say the whole school, I do not mean just the students. I do not mean just the English teachers. I want the maths teachers reading. I want the PE teachers reading. I want the people in the office to be reading. I want the guy who mows the lawn to be reading. If you are on campus at that time, you must be reading a book.

And I just feel like that-- reading is not just for English. Reading is not just for school. Reading is for everybody. And it is fun and enjoyable for everybody, and I would love to see that kind of habit be developed.

JADE ARNOLD: Yeah, absolutely. I think that's such a powerful way to show to students as well, that reading is valuable and important and enjoyable is to see the adults in their lives who are constantly asking them, 'Hey, you should read more. Why aren't you reading more?' To actually be role modelling that reading themselves and to be, outside of those times, talking about the books that they're reading with their students as well.

So, fantastic advice there. Are there any junior fiction or YA books that you haven't mentioned today already that you think our listeners need to know about?

LILI WILKINSON: Yeah, so, one series that I would love to highlight that I think would be really great for reluctant readers, in particular, is by Skye Melki-Wegner, and it's 'The Deadlands' series, which is a trilogy of books about clans of dinosaurs going to war with each other. And they are so good, and they've got like so many things that will be appealing to reluctant readers, but they are also just genuinely great, engaging adventure stories with really beautiful characters and lots of exploration of themes of friendship and difference and how we have more things that bring us together than things that separate us.

JADE ARNOLD: Yeah, that's fantastic. And my final question for you today, what are you reading currently or what are you excited to dive into next?

LILI WILKINSON: So, a book that I just finished reading is a new Australian Torres Strait Islander author called Jasmin McGaughey, and she has written 'Moonlight and Dust', which will be out later this year with Allen & Unwin, and it is this beautiful kind of mix of friendship and family and secrets, and it's told in this really unique and beautiful way. So, I recommend everybody keeps their eye out for that.

And the other one that I really liked is, 'This Stays Between Us' by Margot McGovern, which is a horror novel. I know that a lot of young readers are really desperate for horror at the moment, and this one is about 4 girls in a cabin in an abandoned town, and there's a ghost. And it's, sort of-- again-- it's sort of about friendship but also a bit of a love letter to '90s horror that I just devoured.

JADE ARNOLD: Yeah, awesome. This is the second time Jasmin's books come up. We interviewed Lisa Fuller a few episodes ago, and we spoke at length about that one, too. So, clearly, all the signs are pointing to, I need to read that book ASAP.

LILI WILKINSON: Definitely.

JADE ARNOLD: Thank you so much for joining me today, Lili. It's been an absolute pleasure talking to you about your books, and I have no doubt that our listeners with teen readers in their lives will be eager to dive into your books and into your recommendations as they work to complete the NSW's Premier's Reading Challenge.

LILI WILKINSON: Thanks so much, Jade.

JADE ARNOLD: Thank you so much for spending time with me today. For our listeners, we've included a full list of Lili's featured titles as well as all the books that have been mentioned in this episode in the show notes on the 'Listen @ The Arts Unit' page. You can use it to help track titles down from your local bookshop or library and share them with young people in your life. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you on the next episode of 'Between the bookshelves'. Happy reading!

[theme music - Matt Ottley, 'Dance of the Jellyfish']

Thanks for tuning in to 'Between the bookshelves'. This podcast is produced by the Arts Unit of the NSW Department of Education, as part of the 'Listen @ The Arts Unit' series. For more information about our programs, to access our show notes or to listen to other podcasts, explore our website at [email protected].

For more information about the NSW Premier's Reading Challenge, including our book lists, visit PremiersReadingChallenge.nsw.edu.au.

Theme music, 'Dance of the Jellyfish', composed by Matt Ottley. Copyright, Matt Ottley, 2024. Reproduced and communicated with permission.

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Copyright, State of NSW (Department of Education), 2025.