From Guan Yin to Xuanzang - a road trip through Chinese myth and history by Maisie Chan

I’m Maisie Chan, the author of award-winning Danny Chung Does Not Do Maths. I’m going to chat with you today about a couple of books - Keep Dancing, Lizzie Chu and Bedtime Stories: Amazing Asian Tales from the Past and how they feature some famous Chinese mythical and historical figures.

I’m known for humorous family tales set in the UK that feature British Chinese characters. Keep Dancing, Lizzie Chu is about a girl who looks after her grandfather who is acting strange. He tells her stories about his favourite goddess Guan Yin (also spelt Kwan Yin, Kuan Yin and Gwan Yin). She is a Chinese deity that people in East and Southeast Asia still pray to.

She is the goddess of compassion and mercy. She features in many stories, sometimes they are fantastical and often they have a moral tale. In my novel, I retold four Chinese stories that feature Guan Yin. One of the stories that Guan Yin appears in is The Journey to The West – it is the most famous Chinese novel written by Wu Cheng’en; published in the 16th Century. It’s about a monk called Tripitaka (which is his Buddhist name) who is given a set of misfit companions by Guan Yin. They’re his protectors as the journey is full of demons and obstacles. His most famous companion is the mischievous Monkey King.

By coincidence, Scholastic asked me if I wanted to write a story for Bedtime Stories: Amazing Asian Tales from the Past. They had a list of historical figures - I chose Xuanzang. He travelled from China to India because he wanted to translate and return to China with updated Buddhist scriptures. This is the real life person that Wu Cheng’en was inspired by when he began writing The Journey to the West!

Xuanzang became a Buddhist monk before he was an adult. He followed in his brother’s footsteps. His life up to his teenage years were not easy. His parents had passed away, his country was experiencing civil war and he and his brother had to find refuge in a new city. When reading the Buddhist scriptures Xuanzang found they were incomplete or did not always make sense because of the poor translation. He decided that he wanted to go to India himself, learn Sanskrit and go on an adventure.

However, Emperor Taizong forbade him from leaving. Xuanzang made the decision to sneak out because he felt it was his destiny. It was a big risk for him to go without the proper travel passes. He travelled the Silk Road with merchants. But he encountered quite a few obstacles. He was abandoned by the merchants, had to cross tough terrain and in one town, a King wanted to keep him there FOREVER. But Xuanzang had a mission, he needed to make it to India. He persuaded the king to let him go. After more treacherous travel he finally made it.

He did what he set out to do, he learned Sanskrit. And in AD 645 decided to head back to China with newly translated Buddhist scriptures. His writings were the foundation of Buddhism in China where it is one of the most popular religions.

When I wrote Keep Dancing, Lizzie Chu I was thinking about her road trip as an inner journey as well as an external one of getting to Blackpool to have some fun. I wondered how she and her friends would be changed by that trip? And who or what might stand in her way. I think of road trips in stories as a great way for the main characters to learn something about themselves, other people, and the world around them.

Writing exercise:
Think of a historical figure. Write a contemporary story about a road trip with this person and you, or a character you make up. Where would you take them? Who would you meet on the way? What would happen once you got there?

Maisie Chan is a children's author whose debut novel DANNY CHUNG DOES NOT DO MATHS won the Jhalak Prize and the Branford Boase Award in 2022. It was also shortlisted for the Blue Peter Book Awards and Diverse Book Awards 2022.

Her latest novel KEEP DANCING, LIZZIE CHU is out now with Piccadilly Press. She also writes the series TIGER WARRIOR for younger readers. She has written early readers for Hachette and Big Cat Collins, and has a collection of myths and legends out with Scholastic. She runs the Bubble Tea Writers Network to support and encourage writers of East and Southeast Asian (ESEA) descent in the U.K. She has a dog called Miko who has big eyes. She lives in Glasgow with her family.

You can buy Maisie's books here.

Catching the Post by Catherine Randall

One of the things I used to associate with those quiet days after Christmas was having to write thank you letters. Before computers and smart phones, it was the only way to thank all the relatives and friends that I didn’t actually see at Christmas for the presents they’d kindly given me. Making a quick phone call to thank them was not an acceptable option in my family! Anyway, I quite enjoyed writing letters, which I suppose is not surprising given that I am now a writer. 

Of course, nowadays, most people will have expressed their thanks in an email or a text message. I wonder how many actual physical thank you letters are written and put in the post these days? 

One of the fun things about writing historical fiction is getting to discover how people did ordinary things in the past. In both my novel, The White Phoenix, and the novel I am currently working on, set in Victorian London, I’ve had to work out how my characters would communicate with each other without being able to pick up a phone, or send a text message or email. It got me thinking about how communicating has changed over the past 500 years.

To find out more, I visited the Postal Museum in London (on a rather windy day!)

From my research for The White Phoenix, I knew that the Royal Mail already existed in 1666, and that the General Letter Office in central London had burned down during the Great Fire with the loss of a huge number of letters. It was called the Royal Mail because it used the distribution system already in place for royal and government documents. This system had been put in place originally by Henry VIII (who else? He always gets involved!) and then in 1635 King Charles I made it legal to use the royal post to send private letters. The General Post Office, the state postal system, was formally and legally established in 1660 with post offices throughout the country connected by regular routes.

But, as I learnt at the Postal Museum, post in those days did not necessarily remain private. Staff at the General Letter Office would open letters to check that no one was plotting against the King or the government, so if you wanted to make sure your letter was truly private, you needed to find another way to send it.

Luckily, people could also send letters by the carriers who plied between towns, taking people and goods, or by giving it to a friend travelling to the right town, or – if you had money – you could use a private messenger. In The White Phoenix, letters are often sent by carrier.

When the Post Office was first established, the mail was distributed by post boys travelling on foot. But post boys were slow and sometimes unreliable, and – unluckily for them – they were also vulnerable to highwaymen and pressgangs trying to forcibly recruit men for the army and navy. In 1784 smart new mail coaches replaced the post boys along many major routes which really speeded up mail delivery.

A mail coach on display in the Postal Museum in London

The next great innovation came in 1840 with the introduction of the Penny Black, the world’s first postage stamp. Until then, the cost of sending a letter depended on the number of sheets of paper included and the distance the letter had travelled and it was the recipient of the letter who paid for its delivery. You could choose not to pay, but then you didn’t receive the letter. I will never forget a story I once heard about two old and poverty-stricken friends who sent each other a blank sheet of paper every 6 months– they never accepted the ‘letter’ so they couldn’t pass on any news, but at least they knew that they were both still alive! 

 A Penny Black stamp, featuring the head of a young Queen Victoria

After the arrival of the Penny Black, it cost just one penny to send a letter weighing up to 14g (half an ounce) anywhere in the United Kingdom. This made the whole postal system cheaper to use and more efficient, and letter writing flourished. 

However, it wasn’t until 15 years later that post boxes were introduced - before that you had to take your letter to the nearest post office. The first post boxes were green, not the red we are used to today. 

An early post box at the Postal Museum

I was very happy to discover that post boxes began to appear on the streets of London at around the time my new novel is set – it made it so much easier for my main character to sneak out and post a letter! In a nice literary link, the famous Victorian novelist Anthony Trollope is credited with introducing the post box when he worked for the Post Office. The first post boxes in the UK were in the Channel Islands. 

Post boxes have changed in colour and size and design since the mid-nineteenth century, but they are still instantly recognisable, whatever their age. The post box where I live has been painted gold since 2012, in honour of Mo Farah’s gold medal at the 2012 Olympics. 

We might marvel at how much slower Victorian communications were than ours are today, but in Victorian London, you could expect to receive 12 deliveries of post a day – that’s one an hour! – and it was possible to send a letter by post and receive an answer the same day. Imagine that happening nowadays!

Of course, the fascinating displays in the Postal Museum cover the story of the Post Office right up to the present day, including such things as the introduction of the postcode, and the role post boxes played in the Second World War. If my next historical novel is set in the twentieth century, I will certainly be paying another visit, so that I can add authentic historical detail to my story. After all, people will always need to communicate with one another, and there’s nothing like an unexpected letter or a mysterious parcel to move a plot along!

Watch Catherine's YouTube video on Catching the Post by clicking here

The White Phoenix by Catherine Randall is an historical novel for 9-12 year olds set in London, 1666. It was shortlisted for the Historical Association’s Young Quills Award 2021.

Published by the Book Guild, it is available from bookshops and online retailers.

For more information, go to Catherine’s website: www.catherinerandall.com

Christmas and Mary, Queen of Scots by Barbara Henderson

As I write this blog post, Christmas lights are everywhere. The shops are blaring out the same melodies, shoppers crowd the streets and there is a Christmas tree in every second window already.

It is hard to imagine that not so very long ago, Christmas celebrations were frowned upon in this country. I share a December birthday with the famous Mary, Queen of Scots. Both of us were born on the 8th of December, in the run up to Christmas. You may not be aware, but Mary’s father died days after her birth in 1542. He had recently sustained a humiliating defeat at the Battle of Solway Moss. Bruised and ailing, he visited his pregnant wife at Linlithgow Palace before travelling on to Falkland Palace where he took to his bed with a fever. When he heard that his wife, the French-born Mary of Guise had given birth to a girl rather than the hoped-for male heir, it is said that he turned his face to the wall and died of despair!

Mary Queen of Scots' parents: James V and Mary of Guise 

Poor Mary didn’t have the easiest start in life. England’s King Henry VIII was outraged that Mary was not promised to his own son in marriage and proceeded to ransack Scotland in a period called the Rough Wooing. Mary was sent to France for her own safety and married the Dauphin of France, the Crown Prince, briefly becoming France’s Queen – and still only a teenager. When her young husband died and she lost her position, she chose to return to Scotland and claim her throne. Her first Christmas in Scotland did not quite go to plan for the catholic Mary, used to the extravagant feasting and the celebrations of the French Court. No, both Scotland and England were now protestant, and Christmas feasting was frowned upon by strict reformers like the influential John Knox. No-one even got Christmas day off!

The statue of reformer John Knox in St Giles Cathedral, Edinburgh

It hadn’t always been like this. Mary’s catholic grandfather, James IV had celebrated Yuletide at the local Abbey and commissioned elaborate clothes to be made for the occasion which were to be left in front of his door on Christmas morning. There was a High Mass, nativity plays, poems and even aerial acrobatics. Courtiers would sing carols at their King’s door. 

By contrast, Mary - widowed already at 18 - had left a catholic country behind. Her designs for her first Christmas as monarch of Scotland were quickly frustrated. For a start, she was was told that she couldn’t have the music or the dancing she craved – in fact, the musicians refused to sing at all, afraid of repercussions in this newly protestant country. An envoy to the court declared that Mary was ‘upset’. However, Mary did manage to sneak some of her favourite celebrations in at the later date of 6th January, the end of the twelve days of Christmas.

Barbara outside the Palace of Holyroodhouse

We have good records of the Festival of the Bean, for example. A cake was made, and a bean baked into it. Whoever’s slice of cake contained the bean became the ‘Queen of the Bean’. Queen Mary’s friend and companion Mary Fleming won it one year and became the Queen of the Bean for the day. She was allowed to wear the Queen’s silver dress and her necklace of rubies, and to be treated like the Queen herself. What fun! Fancy a game of ‘Festival of the Bean’ yourself this year? What special treatment will the winner receive? Will they get the TV remote?

Mary was famed for her stylish and extravagant dresses

Less than a hundred years later, by the year 1640, it was illegal in Scotland to celebrate Christmas at all. And it would take till 1928 for people to get Christmas Day off work!

Barbara Henderson is the author of six historical novels for children. You can find out more about her on her website. Her new book, Rivet Boy, will be published in February 2023.

Ferdinand Who? By Candy Gourlay. Illustrated by Tom Knight

Thanks to the Time Tunnellers for inviting me to be your guest this week!

I thought I’d use this opportunity to talk about Ferdinand.

Ferdinand who? You may ask. Ferdinand Magellan! I wrote a book about him, illustrated by Tom Knight who weirdly is in the same pose as me in these photos.

Funnily enough, my book is part of a book series called First Names, which tries, through comics and stories, to make readers get to know notable people on a first names basis.

When my publisher asked me who I would like to write about, I proposed Ferdinand – Ferdinand Magellan, the explorer!

Where I grew up – in the Philippines – Ferdinand was famous for DISCOVERING the islands that became my native country! Discovering us whether we liked it or not, I always say – how would you feel if someone turned up at your house and told you he now owned it because he’d discovered it?

But I am jumping ahead of myself.

Way back in 1519, Ferdinand set off with a fleet of ships from Spain, crossing the Atlantic Ocean to Brazil. He sailed down the coast of the continent we now know as Latin America, until he came to a gap.

Nobody had ever seen that gap before. He believed that he could make his way through the gap to the other side of the continent. Other explorers before Ferdinand had seen an ocean, on the far side of the continent. So he knew it was there.

And Ferdinand found the way through to it.

The passageway he found is now called the Strait of Magellan. And the ocean came to be called the Sea of Magellan. But today, we now know it as the Pacific Ocean.

Many terrible things happened to him on the way. In the 16th century, ships and navigation tools were primitive. They could only taste the water to figure out if they were on a fresh water river or on the right track on a salty ocean. They had no fridges to keep their food fresh, so they had to carry cattle and when that was gone, they had to hunt for food on the shore.

Worse still, his men hated him, probably because Ferdinand was a bit arrogant. He was also Portuguese while many of his men were Spanish – and the Spanish and Portuguese were deadly rivals. There were several nasty attempts by Spanish men to take control from Ferdinand. One of his ships even turned around and sailed back to Spain.

And by the time they reached the Pacific, they were all suffering from sickness and starvation.

And most shocking of all: Ferdinand didn’t have a map. He didn’t know where they were going.

Why would someone VOLUNTEER to go on such a terrible voyage?

Here’s why: Ketchup. French Fries. Pizza. Pasta. Curry. CHOCOLATE.

NONE OF THESE EXISTED IN EUROPE WHEN FERDINAND WAS A KID.

There were no tomatoes. No potatoes. No pasta. No coffee. No sugar. No Spices. No chocolate.

Can you even begin to imagine what life was like for without all these things?

Rich people could buy spices – which were used for everything from deodorant to improving the flavour of food. Remember, there were no fridges, so meat was always slightly off.

The spices came from far away lands, carried by Arab traders across the vast European and Asian continent.

But then the great Ottoman empire rose in the East. They blocked the trade with Europe and Europeans had to find another way to get their spices.

And then some ships began to improve. They could sail longer and longer distances.

Some men, who were a lot braver than they were clever, began to venture out to explore the world beyond Europe.

And when they came back, oh the stories they told! They brought gold and strange new food.

When young Ferdinand was growing up, explorers were like ROCK STARS. And he dreamed of becoming an explorer himself.

In my book I tell the story of how Ferdinand fought to become an explorer. His journey to the other side of the world was filled with adventure and peril. And he had some successes. He was the first European to sail the Pacific Ocean. There is a penguin named after him, the Magellanic Penguin. As well as two dwarf galaxies, now called the Magellanic Clouds.

Mind you, poor Ferdinand died before he ever knew that these things were named after him.

But the most important thing that Ferdinand was known for was being the first man to sail all the way around the globe. But that’s another story.

On his early travels, reaching as far as what we now know as Malaysia by rounding the southernmost point of Africa, Ferdinand had acquired a boy as his slave whom he named Enrique. We know about Enrique because Ferdinand mentions him in his will and later, a man named Antonio Pigafetta, who went on the voyage with Ferdinand, wrote about him.

When at last Ferdinand crossed the Pacific Ocean and landed in a group of islands teeming with people – which we now know as the Philippines – he was astonished to find that Enrique could speak their language.

Pigafetta wrote down a list of words from the language and guess what, it’s the language that my parents speak, called Cebuano.

Because Enrique could talk so fluently, Ferdinand had no trouble being understood by the islanders – he even tried to convert them to his religion! After a long and terrible journey, Ferdinand felt successful at last.

Maybe that’s why he offered to attack the enemy of one of the island kings.

Which was a disaster.

Ferdinand was killed on the island of Mactan, in a battle that he didn’t even have to fight.

Today, people say he was the first man to sail all the way around the world.

But he never returned to Spain.

WRITING CHALLENGE

If you were Ferdinand and you were packing for your trip to an unknown destination, what would you pack? Make a comic or write a story about Ferdinand packing for his journey.

Ferdinand Magellan and the First Names series of books are published by David Fickling Books. All illustrations from the book by Tom Knight. Candy Gourlay’s website is here.

You can watch Candy's video Here.

Tickling Tastebuds! The Making of a Medieval Banquet by Ally Sherrick

The inspiration for this blog post came from watching the recent film adaptation of Catherine, Called Birdy, American author Karen Cushman’s brilliant coming-of-age novel for young people set in 13th century England. 

While I enjoyed the film, the book is even better. Through a series of short, and often laugh-out-loud diary entries, rebellious nobleman’s daughter, fourteen-year-old Catherine, nicknamed ‘Birdy’, recounts her determined efforts to stop her father from marrying her off to a series of unsuitable suitors while at the same time doing her best to resist the attempts of her mother and beloved nurse, Morwenna, to teach her how to be a lady.

Aside from Birdy’s voice and the cast of wonderful characters, from best friend and local goat-herd, Perkin, to the detestable ‘Shaggy Beard’, her future bridegroom, the other thing I love about the book is the brilliant recreation of the medieval world and in particular the banquets and entertainments which Birdy describes.

So, as Christmas is just around the corner, I thought it might be a good opportunity to get those tastebuds tingling by taking a closer look at what went into putting on a feast around the time Birdy’s story is set.

 A medieval banquet scene

If you are to negotiate your way around a medieval banquet, it’s important to understand that society back then was hierarchical and divided into three broad social classes: the commoners or working classes, the clergy (priests, monks, nuns etc) and the nobility with the King or Queen and their family at the top. Food, like a person’s dress, was an important marker of social status. It was believed that while those working in the fields needed more basic types of food to suit their ‘rougher’ lives and work, the nobility should dine on more refined fare, better suited to their more discriminating digestive systems.

Banquets were a symbol of the nobility’s power as displayed through both their table manners and the meals they ate. But there was much more that went into the staging of a grand feast than the food. For a start, there was the dressing of the hall to be considered. For this, trestle tables would be brought in and covered with tablecloths, while a dresser would be set with drinking vessels, bread boards and serving tools. If guests were expected, then there would also be displays of plate – dishes and other serving vessels made of gold and pewter – all polished to a sparkle to impress. 

Lords and ladies dining at the top table

Everyone attending the banquet had to wash their hands before taking their seats according to their status and position in the household. The lord, lady and their most important guests always sat at the top table, with the youngest, most junior members of the household sitting the furthest from them.

Once seated, everyone said grace. They were then handed trenchers cut from stale bread, or sometimes wood or pewter. These acted as plates into which the food was spooned from sharing bowls and platters handed round by attendants. Before the meal could begin, everyone had to wait for the lord to take a pinch of salt from the ceremonial salt cellar. On the occasion of a grand feast, every dish the lord was served was examined and tasted by a servant to make sure it hadn’t been laced with poison by one of his enemies.

A replica wooden trencher, though many were made of stale bread

There were no forks at table – these didn’t start to come into use until the very end of the Middle Ages. And diners had to remember to bring their own knives. 

For a meal on an ordinary day, the lord might be presented with a choice of six dishes for the first course, though it could be many more at a grand banquet. If you were further down the pecking order, you would choose from just a couple. A second course and the sweetmeats and desserts that followed were offered only to those of the higher ranks.

Ale, perhaps mixed with herbs or else honey and spices, and watered-down wine were served to everyone at table. Though again, only those at the top table could choose how much water to take with their wine. 

A stand-out feature of any grand medieval feast table was a ‘subtlety’, a sort of impressive decoration made out of sculpted sugar or else pastry. This was paraded around the hall before being presented to the lord at the top table. The grandest were often several tiers high and might include plaster figures depicting scenes from well-known tales. 

A banquet table, with a bird-shaped subtlety at its centre

Another important feature were the entertainments. Sometimes short plays or ‘interludes’ were performed by players between courses. Or there might be a longer play staged at the end of the meal including performances by musicians, tumblers and a type of costumed actor called a ‘mummer’. A talking point was the inclusion of ‘disguisers’ – people from the lord’s household dressed in masked costumes who might join in the dancing or else act something on their own before disappearing to leave everyone to guess the character they were playing and their true identity.

 Medieval Mummers

And now, at last to the food! We’re lucky that some of the old medieval recipes have survived. Here’s a flavour of some of the dishes you might have enjoyed if you had attended a banquet at that time. 

Aside from baked goods like bread and rolls, there were vegetable dishes such as braised spring greens seasoned with nutmeg and cinnamon, leeks and onions cooked with saffron, and pottage, a sort of puree made of vegetables such as peas, carrots, leeks, beans and cabbage. Fish dishes included roast salmon in a wine sauce and Pike in Galentine – another type of spice-infused sauce. 

Pottage cooking in a cauldron

Meat dishes might include boiled venison with pepper sauce, spit-roasted pork with spiced wine and, at Christmas, something called a ‘grete pye’ – a pie stuffed with two or three different types of meat (chicken, pigeon or wild duck and saddle of hare or rabbit) plus minced beef mixed with eggs, spices and dried fruit. And for those with a sweet tooth – but only if you were high-ranking remember! –  rose-petal pudding, fig and raisin cream, or pine-nut candy. 

Anything you couldn’t quite finish would be put in baskets on the tables and taken out after by the lord’s servants to distribute to local workers and beggars at his gates – a feast indeed for those who were used to much humbler ingredients or, worse still, very little at all.

And if you were suffering from an upset stomach caused by too much ‘pye’ the day after, or perhaps a headache from a surfeit of ale, there was usually a Wise Woman or an apothecary on hand with a recipe of their own to set you straight. A bad case of the colic? Then stuff your tummy button with a mixture of rancid butter and chopped saffron covered with a poultice of ale mixed with roasted earth for a sure cure!(?) Though probably best not tried at home!

Happy feasting! Oh, and watch out for those poisoners ...

Watch Ally’s video on medieval banqueting here

Ally Sherrick is the award-winning author of stories full of history, mystery and adventure. Black Powder, her debut novel about a boy caught up in the Gunpowder Plot, won the Historical Association’s Young Quills Award. Other titles include The Buried Crown, a wartime tale with a whiff of Anglo-Saxon myth and magic, and The Queen’s Fool, a story of treachery and treason set at the court of King Henry VIII. Ally's latest book, publishing February 2023, is Vita and the Gladiator, the story of a young girl's fight for justice in the high-stakes world of London's gladiatorial arena. She is published by Chicken House Books and her books are widely available in bookshops and online. 

You can find out more about Ally and her books at www.allysherrick.com and follow her on Twitter: @ally_sherrick

The First School in the Village by Jeannie Waudby

Inside this little old church in West London, there is a monument to someone who made a lasting difference to the children of Greenford.

Parts of the church date back to the 14th Century and some of the gravestones have been there so long that they are sinking into the ground. Inside, it has that spicy smell of ancient wood. When I went in to take my photos, a little robin flitted to and fro from one window sill to another. On the wall at the back there is a record of all the Rectors of this church from 1326 to the present.

The first three names - Radbert de Saleby, Richard de Norton and John de Corringham - are Norman names. I find it amazing to look at this list of real men (and they are all men) who mark out 700 years. The one I'd like to focus on is Edward Betham, who was Rector of this church from 1769 to 1783, and he has his own monument on the wall because of a gift he made in 1780 that still continues.

He gave £1600 (a lot of money then) to run the school that he built for poor children in Greenford, with a trust to continue into the future. In the 18th Century, poor children in England didn't have free schooling - or even any school at all, so this would have made a huge difference. This is what the monument says: '£30 to the Master for Instructing 30 Poor Boys & Girls, to Read, Write, Cast Accompts, & Know the Principles of the Xtian Religion; the Girls to be Taught also to Work, Sew & Knit; £30 in Coals for the School; Other part in Cloathing the Children, & the Remainder in Repairing the School & House, & in buying Spelling-Prayer-Books, Testaments, &C. Inroll'd in Chancery Nov. 16th. 1780.' This is the original building, not used as the school now.

There are a few things on the monument that seem surprising - for instance it's interesting to see how spelling and the use of capital letters has changed. Nowadays we don't divide what children learn in school in terms of gender - the girls had some extra things to learn: to 'Work, Sew & Knit'! In the late 19th Century the Edward Betham School built a new building, which is still part of the school today.

WRITING CHALLENGE Imagine that you are an 18th Century person who is giving a lot of money to start a new school - the first one in its village! We won't divide the children by gender, but as the founder of the school you get to choose what they will learn. They don't have to be things that schools teach now - you can choose anything at all! What are your top 5 things for children to learn in your school?

Jeannie Waudby is the author of YA thriller/love story One of Us. She is currently writing a YA novel set in Victorian times.

You can watch Jeannie's video here

The Chestnut Roaster: History and Make-Believe - the Perfect Recipe by Eve McDonnell

Hands up: who enjoys history class in school? Truth be told, I loved history lessons, but I found it all a little bit hard. I was focusing so hard on all those dates and names that I missed something special – something hidden between the pages and beyond the facts! With a bit of digging, I discovered wild adventures that were rarely told. I found little triumphs and forgotten struggles, coincidences, intriguing inventions and strange fashions. I also learned about the personal lives of the stars of our history books (how did 18-year-old Victoria spend that one lonesome hour she’d requested when she was first told she was Queen?). 

Over time, I found myself seeking out the stories behind the stories, and I found what I was looking for in several places: in a fiction book with a hint of history; in a fact-filled documentary on TV; in a brilliantly re-imagined moment of history at the movies; in dug-up treasures; in paintings. I soon realised that any mash-up of history and make-believe grabbed and held my fullest attention. The perfect recipe!

Cover design and illustration by Holly Ovenden

And this is why being an author is fun – we have the freedom to dig deep into our history books and pluck out tantalising facts before adding a splash of magic, a dash of peril, a big scoop of make-believe with a sprinkle of truth (or the other way around!) Stone-age girls might time-travel, Vikings might find a fascinating island covered in gold, and Charles Darwin might fly if he touches a toucan’s tail feather. In my first book, Elsetime, an 1800s mudlarker (someone who searches for treasure along the muddy shores of a river) would find himself saving people from a flood that really did happen sixty-four years into his future. So, what about my second book, The Chestnut Roaster? Is there a mash-up of history and make-believe in there too?

Of course there is! The history bit goes as follows: the story is set in Paris 1888, one year before they hosted a spectacular World Fair known as the Exposition Universelle. Great minds of the world marvelled at the fair’s mind-blowing exhibits, and visitors feasted their eyes on intriguing inventions. Even before arrival at the Exposition, visitors were greeted by something extraordinary – the newly built grand entrance to the exhibits: the Eiffel Tower. 

And that is where I added make-believe to history: when I found a series of photographs showing the growing Eiffel Tower, I tried to imagine how everyone felt on seeing such a giant rise slowly before their eyes. How would the people of Paris have reacted if they went to sleep one day in 1888 when the tower was only small, and woke up forgetting the whole of the last year? To them, the tower would have grown into a monster overnight, from the first image in the row of towers shown above, to the fifth! 

The Eiffel Tower was not the only historical Parisian marvel I included in the book. Paris is the location of possibly the best place in all the world for a game of hide and seek: its underground maze of tunnels, some barely big enough to wriggle through. These underground quarries were the birthplace of the stone used to build many of the great buildings of Paris. Though the existence of the underground city comes as some surprise to The Chestnut Roaster’s main character, Piaf, the estimated nearly 200 miles of tunnels made their presence known throughout Parisian history. 

In the 1770s, a deadly sinkhole known as the ‘Mouth of Hell’ swallowed houses at Rue d’Enfer. A few years on, the hidden chambers were used as burial sites during the French Revolution, and later, during World War II, the French Resistance fighters used the dark and deep tunnels as hideouts while other chambers were converted into bunkers by German soldiers. Secret parties and concerts were held underground, explorers explored, and artists left their mark with wild and wonderful murals. 

To add a dash of fiction, I added several wondrous underground spots for Piaf and her brother to explore: a Museum of Objects, Tagine Pot Hollow, and the Apothecary, to name a few. 

You can visit one small section known as the Catacombs today, and it has some very strange inhabitants indeed – the bones of six million people! At the end of the 18th century, Paris’s cemeteries were overflowing. The streets held the stench of corpses, bones collapsed into neighbouring buildings. By cover of night, the corpses were carried by horse and black cloth-covered wagons to the Catacombs where workers fashioned impressive displays out of the bones themselves. As odd as that may seem, you can see for yourself that the bones are not make-believe! They had to star in Piaf’s story! 

Illustration from The Chestnut Roaster, copyright Ewa Beniak-Haremska

But sometimes the mash-up of history and make-believe is not so clear: Piaf and her brother were never alone on their adventures, for the ghost of poor Philibert Aspairt, a man said to have disappeared underground, is said to roam the darkest routes (and also the pages of The Chestnut Roaster!) If that is history or make-believe, we have yet to tell!

So, as you can see, history provided so much inspiration for The Chestnut Roaster – it is indeed one big mash-up of history and make-believe! I wonder, if you picked a page from your history book today, what stories could you imagine when you read between the lines?

Perhaps you can create your own?

Cover designs and illustrations by Holly Ovenden

You can watch Eve's video on how she came to write The Chestnut Roaster here.

Author photo: copyright Brownes Photography

Eve McDonnell is a children’s author and artist who lives in Co Wexford with her husband, twins, a dog and three cats. Having recognised the similarities between a blank canvas and a blank page, her writing career kicked off following a visit to a fortune-teller who told her to Write! Write! Write! Eve provides creative writing and crafting workshops to libraries, schools, writing clubs and festivals. Find out more about Eve and her books on www.evemcdonnell.com, or say hello via Twitter @Eve_Mc_Donnell or Instagram @Eve_Mc_Donnell.

Buying link: uk.bookshop.org