Northern Highlight - Jake Hope

NORTHERN HIGHLIGHT

JAKE HOPE

1. Why did you want to work in the book industry?

Books, stories and reading have always been incredibly important in my life. There is something hugely inspiring about the fact that we can read the same text and yet respond and react in wholly different ways. Books help us to unlock who and how we are and also who and how our lives could be; they show us different ways of thinking, feeling and seeing the world so that little by little, we begin to grow into bigger, more understanding people with a wider sense of our world. I always wanted to work with books, there is something beguiling about them.

2. Tell us about where you live.

Apart from one year studying in Reading, I've always lived in the North. I spent the first six years of my life living in Fleetwood, a slightly other-worldly old fishing-town, and have happy memories of attending weekly storytimes in the library there with my mum and on Saturdays being taken to the dockside where the most enormous container ferries berth - their horns would blare incredibly loudly, reverberating through every bone in my body! After that I lived in a house in the middle of fields between the villages of Great Eccleston and Elswick. Preston was one of the closest large towns (it hadn't been made a city at that point!), and during the holidays and on some weekends we'd travel in. I remember my mum and dad shopping and I'd go and visit the Harris Library, it's an amazing building. In the winter I'd pick out a book, hoick myself up on top of the big cast iron radiators and sit in the warmth, reading. It was perfection! I later did my work experience there and I felt very privileged to work for Lancashire Libraries and be able to give back to the libraries that I'd benefited from so much as a child. I live in Preston now, in the heart of the city, yet it takes less than ten minutes for me to cross the river and be in woodland. It's also incredibly well connected and is easy to travel to most parts of the country from. I still visit the library and love losing myself for a few hours among the book stacks and in stories.  

3. Where do you do most of your work? 

My work is really varied now - I do training and talks across the whole of the country. I still have good links with schools from my time working for Lancashire Libraries so love working with my friend Elaine Silverwood on author events in Lancashire, Cumbria, Cheshire, Manchester - all over the North - and it's excellent to be able to marry the right author up with the right school, lighting the blue-touchpaper that starts an early love affair with books and reading! Parts of my job also involve writing articles, reviews and professional books - I've just finished one about visual literacy, called 'Seeing Sense' - I love working on these on train journeys around the North, seeing the cities and countryside whizzing by in a blur as I type!

4. What for you is the 'spirit of the North'?

The spirit of the North for me is about diversity with its varied people and landscapes. From city to coast, farmlands to factories, meadows to mountain there is literally something for everyone and a rich sense of history underpinning this. I love the entrepreneurial spirit in the North where people from all walks of life are willing to try different and new things  It's no coincidence that exciting publishers like UCLan Publishing, which involves students in its decisions and processes, exist alongside smaller independents like Carcanet and Blue Moose, and are all based in the North.  

5. How has this spirit influenced your work?

One of the projects I'm most proud of was developing the Lancashire Reading Trail. I worked with illustrator Mei Matsuoka and we developed a fictional, fairytale landscape using the map of Lancashire as the base. The idea of this was to encourage children to read fifty books, and through so doing to explore the geography and heritage of the county. I've loved working on projects like Reading Detectives,  where we encouraged reading groups to explore the literary connections - past and present - of their area. The North West has some incredible connections. I always love the story about a gust of wind which blew Charles Dickens' hat off when he was travelling by rail between Preston and Lancashire!  Recently I worked with Rochdale Literature and Ideas Festival. It's an incredible festival that grew out of a bequest left by Annie and Frank Maskew, who met at the local library and connected over a shared love of literature and philosophy. It's such an inspiring story and one which it felt important to share with potential future speakers. I was keen to explore the possibility of illustrator Helen Bate creating a short graphic novel using this. Helen captured this incredibly special story so well.

6. Who for you are the great northern writers?

Such a difficult choice because we are quite literally spoilt for choice! I chair the working party for the CILIP Carnegie and Kate Greenaway medals and we have links with past winners like Alan Garner, Elfrida Vipont, Frank Cottrell-Boyce, Melvin Burgess, Robert Westall, Arthur Ransome...! It is a phenomenal list with some extraordinary and diverse talent. I love the spare style of Gareth Thompson who writes about life up in Cumbria and Livi Michael whose book 'The Whispering Road' is based around the North West. There is something particularly exciting about discovering new voices too and Danielle Jawando's 'And the Stars Were Burning Bright' is a tremendously assured book, firmly based in Manchester, and Chorley-based poet Dom Conlon's collection, 'This Rock, That Rock' has just been published by Troika is well worth looking out for!

Published by Simon & Schuster Children's

Published by Troika Books

Published by Puffin

7.  If you could be transported to anywhere in the North right now, where would it be? 

It's hard choosing just one place, but I love Little Langdale up in the lake district. It's a tiny hamlet nestled amidst the fells. My parents were members of a mountaineering club who had a hut there, so as a child we often visited and would set off for hikes up the mountains, idle away an hour or so reading by the picturesque 'Slater's Bridge', or on warmer days take a dip in nearby Rob's Hole. My sister and I went up for an evening walk during a very hot spell a couple of years ago and swam in the natural pool which the river forms, it was literally steaming in the twilight and bats flitted above us in the moonlight - it's a truly special place! We are so lucky to have many places like this in the North, places of solace and sanctuary that are little known.

8.  What would you like to see from children's publishing in the North?

Firstly, critical mass: people coming together to create immersive and imaginative reading opportunities for children and young people here in the North. Too often focus is entirely centred around London and the Home Counties - and we have such a lot to offer, so much talent, so many incredibly committed and dedicated people. The more we can come together and work together, the bigger the impact we can have and the more viable we can show the North to be. Next would be innovation: we have the opportunity to do things differently, to experiment, try new things and to connect with one another and our audience in exciting ways!

9. What's your favourite children's book set in the North?

As a librarian, choosing just one feels a Herculean task! There are so many moods and moments that suit reading particular books. At the moment, however, I've been re-reading Robert Swindells' 'Follow a Shadow'. It tells the story of a teenage boy, Tim South, who feels disillusioned by much of his life, but who begins to find and feel a connection with Branwell Bronte. It's a really powerful coming-of-age novel and one which definitely always comes to mind when visiting Haworth.

Published by Five Leaves Publications

Jake is a reading development and children's book consultant, critic, writer, blog editor of Youth Libraries Groups and Chair of the CILIP Carnegie & Kate Greenaway Medals Working Party. You can find him on Twitter at @Jake_Hope.