Happy News in Sad Times: Misha Herwin

 

Right now, the world feels a very unsafe and frightening place. Every time I switch on the news there is more on the war in Ukraine and the suffering of the people fleeing for their lives. I do what little I can by signing petitions to allow more refugees into the country, writing to my member of parliament and donating money. Even so it doesn’t feel enough and it would be so easy to slide into a sense of helplessness.

At times like these it feels almost wrong to announce any happy news and yet there is no point, and it doesn’t help anyone, to allow myself to sink into despair. It may be a cliché but life must go on and after I’ve counted my blessings and made up my mind never to moan about the small stuff again, I am trying to keep things as normal as they can be.

And so I find that I am in the middle of a marketing campaign for “The Further Adventures of Poppy and Amelia.” This is the second book I’ve written with my granddaughter Maddy. The first, “The Awesome Adventures of Poppy and Amelia” was the by-product of home-schooling during the first lockdown, the second has a similar beginning as last spring yet again the schools were closed. As before, Maddy’s parents asked if I could help out with the English teaching and once again the reward for working hard during each session was story time, out of which came another tale of the apprentice witches and their vampire friend Mia.

Having been through the process of co-authoring once, I was aware of the pitfalls as well as the pleasures. This time I felt we needed to keep the story tighter and to have an overarching theme. This evolved naturally out of the narrative and became an exploration of friendship and responsibility. The young witches learn how to care for and interact with their familiars while their relationships with each other and Bayonica, the new girl at school, are challenged by the demands that Bayonica makes of them.   

Like Poppy and Amelia, Bayonica has magic powers that she uses to cause trouble, but as Poppy eventually realises, “It’s all so complicated,” …“What Bayonica did was evil, so why don’t I want her to be turned into a slug, or squashed or anything?”

“She doesn’t deserve that. She has been bad but that’s what she thought she was supposed to be,” Amelia said. “It’s what her parents brought her up to be and now they don’t want anything to do with her.”

Like the other two books all the profits from “The Further Adventures of Poppy and Amelia” will go to Leukaemia research in memory of my daughter and Maddy’s aunt, Posy Miller.