A bomb-blast in 1972 gave Belfast-born author Martin Waddell writer's block, but he went on to write best-selling books for children and win a major award, writes Anna Carey
It's been called "the children's Nobel Prize". The Hans Christian Andersen Awards are presented every two years by the International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY) to an author and an illustrator whose complete works have made "an important and lasting contribution to children's literature". IBBY National Sections from all over the world each nominate an author worthy of the prize, the highest honour a children's writer can ever receive. And this year, for the first time ever, Ireland's selection has won: Martin Waddell, the Belfast-born author of more than 90 books for children and young adults.
But this honour would never have been bestowed on Ireland if Fulham Football Club hadn't decided to let go of one young Irish player 40 years ago.
"I didn't go to university, I just wanted to be a professional footballer," says Waddell. "So I played for Fulham's youth squad for a while before being chucked out, and by then I was 17 and living in a bedsit in London with no prospects or qualifications. So I started to write, out of a desire to be at home. I was just writing about being back on Newcastle beach with my girlfriend."
Despite repeated rejections, Waddell worked on the book for several years, before receiving literary inspiration from a very different source. "I was running a junk stall in Camden Passage market, and the agent I was working with at the time sat me down and said, 'when you tell me anecdotes about the market, you're funny and lively. But when I look at your words on the page, in these gloomy novels, they're dead. Give me something about the market.'"
The agent advised Waddell to use his market experiences and write a thriller. He did so, called it Otley and sold the film rights to Columbia for a sum which allowed him to move back to Ireland.
After his initial success, Waddell wrote four more thrillers - "They were no good, but they made me money" - before beginning his career as a children's writer. "I wrote [the thrillers
]to get home, and when I got home, I decided could write about what I wanted."
What he wanted to write was a lyrical, gentle children's book called In a Blue Velvet Dress. Along with all of his early books for children and young adults, it was originally published under the name Catherine Sefton to avoid any connection with his adult thrillers. "My previous book as Martin Waddell was called Come Back When I'm Sober!"
Assuming that he would have to go on writing thrillers to make a living, Waddell thought of Catherine Sefton as his "secret identity", and even when he switched to writing solely for young people, he kept the Sefton name, producing thought-provoking, subtle novels which looked at young people's lives in a serious and unpatronising way. "Some of my children's books are more adult than my adults books ever were." But Catherine Sefton's career - and Waddell's life - changed forever in 1972 when he was badly injured in a bomb blast. "I lost five or six years work because of that bomb. It had been planted in the vestry of a local church; I saw kids coming out of the church and went to see what was going on. And the church blew up with me in it."
Having been sucked into the vacuum caused by the bomb blast, Waddell was buried alive when the church collapsed. When he was rescued, he was covered in myriad severe cuts which left his skin raw but somehow managed to leave major arteries and organs uninjured. But although he was out of hospital after a week, the less visible effects of the bombing nearly destroyed his career.
"I couldn't write. It had just gone. And there I was with two small children, making a living from writing, and I just couldn't do it anymore."
Waddell and his wife moved back to his childhood home of Newcastle, Co Down, where his wife went out to work and he stayed at home looking after the kids. He kept trying to write more books, but "they didn't come together". And then, six years later, just before his compensation for the loss of his career came through, his spark came back. "It was like a firecracker going off! I sold about 14 books in a year."
But Waddell's career took another unexpected turn a few years later, when he started writing the books for small children which catapulted him to worldwide fame and made him one of the best-loved writers in the world. And it was his role as a full-time father which led to it.
"We had had another baby, and if you're looking after three small boys, you don't have much time to write. So I wrote at night, and it was okay - I was making a reasonable living and winning prizes. But it was still a bit frustrating."
So when his sons went to secondary school, Waddell started to write a very different sort of book: a picture book which drew on his own experiences looking after his children, telling the story of a small bear who won't go to sleep, and the kindly parent who reassures him that the dark is nothing to be scared of.
"The bear in Can't You Sleep Little Bear? is the perfect daddy," says Waddell. "He deals perfectly with everything Little Bear throws at him. And I'm not the perfect dad! I couldn't always cope with my kids - I had my irritated moments. And some of those moments came from not being able to write as much as I wanted to, because the children came first. But when they went to school, I started to write about looking after them, and that was the beginning of my books for very young children. And it turned out to be the richest vein of my writing."
Waddell believes the key to books for the very young is to speak directly to their worries and feelings. "Nearly all of my books have at its heart an emotion which a three- to four-year-old can comprehend without having it explained to them," he says. "In Can't You Sleep, it's 'I'm scared of the dark'. In Owl Babies it's 'I want my mummy!' And kids understand this, they know that feeling, and that's why they want the books again and again. What you really want to find is your book chewed on the floor, because it shows it's been well read! A good children's book has to resonate with the child directly."
As well as encapsulating infant fears and worries, Waddell's books reassure their small readers - the Little Bear learns that the dark is always there, but it isn't scary. The Owl Babies' mother goes away, but she comes back.
"Adults can deal with despair and hopelessness and unhappy endings," he says. "Children can't, and I don't want to give them that. You can't offer children a dishonest version of their problems and fears, but you must give them reassurance and hope. You can't offer an unformed brain despair."
For years, Ireland has tended to ignore children's literature. Waddell points out that Eilis O'Brien and Patricia Lynch could never have received the Hans Christian Andersen Award, which was first presented in 1956, because there wasn't a national body to nominate them. But thanks to some determined children's literature advocates, things are slowly changing. IBBY's Irish section, whose board includes teachers, librarians and publishers, was set up in 1998 by, among others, its current president, Michael O'Brien of the O'Brien Press. "We had excellent organisations here already, like Children's Books Ireland," says O'Brien, "but IBBY Ireland promotes Irish children's literature at an international level."
And it has now proved that Irish children's writers can proudly - and triumphantly - take their place on the world stage.
"When I was a footballer, it was my dream to represent Ireland in the World Cup," says Waddell. "And now, I feel like I've done it. I've represented Ireland in an international competition." He grins broadly. "And we won!"