Hayley Wells joins me in The Reading Realm today for a bookish chin-wag!

Before we settle down in The Reading Realm for a chat, what’s your drink and snack of choice?

Today I’ve got a soya iced coffee and a dried fruit and nut mix from my local refill shop.

Tell us about your book in three sentences and then three words!

Three sentences…When I illustrate for other people, my books tend to be sweet, emotional stories where children and their supportive families work through a problem together. Often there is an element of creativity or imagination that helps them figure things out. When I write for myself, I write about capitalist dystopias with monsters and robots in a way that five year olds can understand.

Three words…Emotive, playful, thoughtful.

If one of your characters could come to dinner, who would you invite and what would you cook them? What do you think you’d talk about?

I would invite Andy from Train of Thought and cook him spaghetti and tomato sauce like he eats at Dinner Time Station in the book. We would talk about our autistic special interests – trains for Andy, My Chemical Romance for me.

What’s the funniest word you know that always makes you laugh?

Poo. No explanation needed.

What’s the silliest or strangest thing you’ve ever drawn for a story?

I had to draw lots of silly things for Rosie Jones’s Moving On Up – including drawing Rosie projectile vomiting on a board game. 

Do your characters ever surprise you?

Rarely. I’m quite a meticulous planner when it comes to my own projects so I like to really, deeply understand my characters and their motivations quite early on to help direct my creative choices. 

Did you like reading when you were a child? If so, what?

I LOVED reading as a child! We didn’t have that many books in our house so I would often read the same ones over and over (hello undiagnosed autism 👋). My all-time favourite was, and still is, Watership Down.

What’s your favourite book that isn’t yours?

I love When Creature Met Creature by John Agard and Satoshi Kitamura.

What book do you wish you could read for the first time again?

I Want My Hat Back by Jon Klassen.

What’s the funniest or oddest thing a child has said to you?

My three year old niece was telling us about the ghost in her new bedroom so we asked where the ghost slept at night. She replied, “He doesn’t sleep, he watches”.

If you weren’t an author, what would you be?

Probably an ecologist or botanist.

What BAD advice would you give to someone who wants to be a writer?

Just get AI to do it!

SPEED ROUND:

Cake or biscuits? Cake

Dinosaurs or unicorns? Dinosaurs

Pirates or astronauts? Astronauts

Museums or theme parks? Museums

Cats or dogs? Cats

Summer or winter? Summer

Aliens or robots? Aliens (this was the hardest question!)

THANK YOU Hayley for joining us in The Reading Realm today!