Interview with Ann Bryant
Award winning author Ann Bryant has published over 100 books, of which about 80 are children's fiction, including illustrated books for young children, and books about emotions, families and friendships for older children.
Ann supports the work of the Centre for Separated Families by generously donating a proportion of the sales income from her Families in a Step Chain series towards our charitable work.
Ann was kind enough to give us an exclusive interview about the series.
Find out more about the series here
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Tell us what first inspired you to write the Families in a Step-Chain series.
Writers are always on the search for new ideas. I’d just finished writing a series so I was starting to think of ideas for a new one. All sorts of images and snippets of conversation were popping in and out of my head, but something a close friend said really made me stop and think.
Her son was very young at the time and so were my daughters. We were trying to fix up getting together at the weekend with her new partner and my husband and all the children, but my friend said her son was going to his dad’s (her ex-husband’s) for the weekend. She explained that while her son was away, her partner’s children were coming to stay for the weekend.
She went on to say that her ex-husband's new partner's children were also going to see their own dad for the weekend. It struck me that it was like a chain of children all moving on a step for the weekend. So I thought of the little phrase Step-Chain, and a seed was sown!
After this I found myself getting absorbed in the task of working out my fictional families and how they’d all be connected in a long chain. It’s just as fascinating as looking at an ordinary family tree that goes back through the generations, only this is a family tree that branches out sideways.
What issues do you think most concern children living in step families?
When I wrote the series I wrote as I always do, from the heart, trying to get under the skin of my protagonists, so I could feel their jealousies, insecurities, sense of injustice and betrayal. Why should you have to share your mum with someone else? Who wants a stepdad as well as a real dad? Who says I want to spend the weekend with that girl? She’s not even my friend!
So I guess the issues are chiefly those emotions. I know how torn children can feel, and guilty about split loyalties. But there are the logistics too, the practical things which might seem quite small but have a far reaching effect. For example you have to miss your friend’s party because you’re going over to your dad’s that weekend and he’s organised something special. You have to share your space with a stepbrother or sister or half brother or sister because there aren’t enough rooms to have one each.
Your characters speak very honestly. Do you think this allows children who are living in step families to explore their own feelings?
When I wrote the series I hoped it would prove enjoyable and thought provoking, but I’ve understood since that children all over the country are identifying with my characters and their situations. In each of the stories the protagonist is faced with a ‘step-family’ problem of one sort or another. Their journey in the book invariably tangles their emotions and forces them into a position where they look at things in another way.
This gives them the strength of character to break through the problem, face their demons and find a solution, which empowers them greatly and makes their world, their whole situation, better all round. So yes, I think that readers who feel that the books strike a chord with them, might well find themselves exploring their own feelings. But, I should add, that there is a lot of humour in the stories, and lightness and brightness. It’s not all doom and gloom!
Tell us about the kind of feedback you get from children about the series?
When I’m on school ‘author visits’ and I talk to years 4, 5, 6 and 7 about these stories, and read out loud from the books, there is always a complete silence in the room. Afterwards I often find that one or two children hang back as the rest of their class files out, because they want to tell me about their own situation.
Once I had to do some statistical research on step-families for a magazine article, and I was able to have a half hour session at a local school with a bunch of children who’d been gathered together for me. They didn’t know why they’d been particularly chosen to meet me, as they didn’t realise at that stage that I was the author of the books. They were aged 9 – 12, and a mixture of boys and girls. I explained about my books and my article, and several of them said they’d read all the books and started begging me to write more! I asked them if they’d like to start by simply telling me their own family circumstances in brief - who they lived with and a bit about any step family they had. They were nervous but as soon as the first child made utterance, others were chipping in, saying things like ‘Same!’, ‘Yes, that happened to me!’
I will never forget how the children began almost fighting for talking time, and how they smiled at each other and nodded hard as they came across common bonds. One of the questions I remember an older boy asking the group was where they were and what they were doing when they were first ‘told’. I didn’t click on to what he meant at first but all the rest of the group did. He was talking about the moment when they were first told that the parents were splitting up. The children showed such empathy at this time.
By this stage in my session the children had clearly forgotten I was even in the room because they just carried on talking and talking, exchanging stories and feelings, comparing notes, and seeming to gain comfort from finding they weren’t the only ones to be going through a difficult time. I never did get the statistics I wanted, but I didn’t care because I realised I’d inadvertently helped this small group of children. When the session ended they all rushed off to the library!