PAM ROYDS 1924 - 2016

Pam Royds on Grasmere, 1971 with Sally Christie, children’s author and daughter of Philippa Pearce.

I was just twenty two when I first met Pam Royds, a year after this photo was taken. Pam was the children’s book editor at Andre Deutsch and she was working with me on my first picture book, The Emperor’s Singing Bird. Not having known any editor other than Pam, I took for granted the two decades that I enjoyed her kind and intelligent guidance, believing all editors to be like her – nurturing and patient; allowing an author/illustrator to make mistakes and develop. 

   I accepted as normal, back in 1972, the invitation to come to her house for a bath and breakfast when I stepped off the overnight bus from Edinburgh for our very first editorial meeting at the Deutsch office in Great Russell Street. I didn’t argue, when my first child was born and Pam wouldn’t allow me to take part in the wonderful Book Train event, saying I should be at home feeding the baby. And at the various awards ceremonies, over subsequent years, Pam was always by my side, giving advice on  how to lose gracefully and pointing out the authors behaving badly when they didn’t win.

    It was a sad day when Andre Deutsch sold their children’s list to Scholastic in the early 1990s but Pam made sure she was there helping her authors and illustrators make the transition. At my first meeting with my new Scholastic editor, Pam was hovering within earshot and when the meeting took a turn for the worse and the Scholastic editor said that, after all, he would not be taking me out for lunch, I remember Pam emerging forcefully from her office and saying, “Well if you won’t, I will,” and marching me off.

Oh dear, how naïve I’d been to believe all editors were like Pam; that all publishing houses were like Andre Deutsch.

And now she's gone: a beloved friend and much missed editor.

SCHOOL INSPECTORS

I recently had a school visit that clashed with an Ofsted school inspection; not something that often occurs. The day before my visit, at the close of school, the phone had rung and two Ofsted inspectors had announced they would be arriving the next morning and staying for two days. It was the school’s Book Week. Not many lessons had been planned because of the author visit. The week had been freed up for follow-up activities and everyone was looking forward to dressing up as favourite characters in books, and enjoying a week of stories and reading. But the Inspectors weren’t coming to see an author in action; they wanted phonics and maths lessons. So after the phone call, the teachers had all stayed in their classrooms late into the evening preparing 'serious' lessons. The next day they were stressed, Book Week was fast becoming irrelevant and I spent the day dodging the two inspectors as they went from classroom to classroom looking for phonics lessons.

    How different it all was from another inspection four decades earlier when I was a young teacher in an infant school. I too was trying to give an impressive phonics lesson in ITA (the Initial Teaching Alphabet) but the inspector seemed more interested in a home-made picture book of mine written in the Initial Teaching Alphabet,  and the little boy from the caravan park who was sitting in a big arm chair in the reading corner looking at the pictures.

The inspector took the book away with him and sent it off to a publisher. It was as a result of this school inspection that I changed careers and became an author/illustrator after The Emperor's Singing Bird was published by Andre Deutsch in the normal alphabet two years later. 

My contact with that schools’ inspector didn’t end there. He later asked me to illustrate a book of his own. The name of the inspector who came into my classroom was Alan Jamieson and here are some of the illustrations I did for his book The Carnferry Gang.

HOW IT ALL STARTED

I often get asked 'how did you become a children's writer and illustrator?' and I tell the story of  how I was a teacher at Loanhead Primary for three years and how, when I was teaching a Year 1 class to read in ITA (the Initial Teaching Alphabet), I made them a book called The Emperor's Singing Bird.  This book was spotted in my classroom by a School's Inspector who sent it off to a publisher.

And that was how it all started. In 1974 Andre Deutsch published The Emperor's Singing Bird - but not in the Initial Teaching Alphabet - and I gave up teaching.

The bit I don't always tell is that the School's Inspector, Alan Jamieson, was an author himself and I illustrated a book of his, The Carnferry Gang, set in Glasgow. I'm very grateful to the part Alan Jamieson played in getting me started.