0 Elephants... by Megan Rix

As soon as I heard about Lizzie the Sheffield elephant I knew I wanted to write a story about an elephant in World War One. I decided to have my elephant helping on the Home Front and on a farm after reading in the newspaper archives about an elephant that went to live and work on a farm in 1901. The man bought the elephant at a circus auction and initially thought he would start his own circus with her. But when he found out how good she was at working on the farm he changed his mind. He never did start a circus but he did keep the elephant, who he described as gentle and docile.

            I like to use local newspapers from the time to aid my research and another snippet I found was an advert by a farmer in Yorkshire wanting to buy an elephant to work on his farm, having seen the work Lizzie was doing. I thought maybe the ringmaster of my fictional circus could sell an elephant without the true owners knowledge. Two hundred pounds was being offered which would have been a phenomenal amount for a struggling circus.

This is a picture of Lizzie’s commemorative statue close to Steelhenge in Sheffield’s Centenary Riverwalk. There’s also a community bus named after her.

Lizzie was an Asian elephant who in WWI was conscripted from Sedgwick’s menagerie and went to work carting munitions, machines and scrap metal around Sheffield.

She was by all accounts a bit of a character. There’s stories of her eating other carter’s lunches, putting her trunk into somebody's window and stealing their dinner, stealing a schoolboy’s cap, and being in goal during a football match against a rival team.

She was made a special pair of leather boots to protect her feet from the metal rubbish, which littered the ground at the scrap metal yard. They were probably a lot like these elephant boots on display in Northampton museum.

When I started my research for the book I didn't know what a journey it would take me on as I discovered more and more about these amazing animals. I was horrified and appalled when I learnt about some of the cruel ways they’ve been treated and are being treated today. (Did you know that an elephant’s skin is so sensitive it can feel a fly land on it?) But also uplifted and given hope by the many stories of human kindness and elephant awesomeness. All the things the elephants do in the book are based on only a very few of the discoveries I made during my research. I loved seeing Peter the elephant bashing on the piano and this elephant playing with a ribbon. Just playing for the fun and with no one forcing them to.

I spent lots of time reading about elephant sanctuaries like the elephant one in Tennessee for retired circus and zoo elephants. Have you seen this video of two very old elephants being reunited after 22 years? 

Hopefully the Born Free Foundation is going to be able to raise enough funds for a European sanctuary although of course the best thing is for elephants, who are able to do so, is to be free and live in the wild. (The oldest elephant at the Tennessee sanctuary was born in 1948!) Only a little older than Anne the circus elephant that was rescued in Britain and taken to Longleat Safari Park where she now has a purpose built new home.

Of course helping healthy elephants to remain in the wild is even better and I’m now the adopter of two elephants who I hope will continue to live long healthy lives there. Carol Buckley’s Chain free means Pain free work has helped lots of working elephants to be set free from a life in chains.

I was very lucky and got to meet some elephants at Woburn and spent the day with them. This little elephant is called Tarli and I got to hand-feed her some strawberries.

The Runaways is the story of an old circus dog called Harvey and a baby elephant called Tara who runaway from the circus and embark on a perilous journey in a desperate race against time to reunite Tara with her mum, Shanti, who’s been sent to work on a farm, before it’s too late…

There is still time to enter the PDSA writing competition if you know of a child who likes to write animal stories.

Detail: Elephants... by Megan Rix

0 Tracking Down Unicorns - Lari Don

I’ve spent the last month trying to track down a unicorn. You probably won’t be surprised to discover that unicorns are hard to find!

I’m currently pulling together the background research and references for a collection of horse stories (a companion to Girls, Goddesses and Giants, and Winter’s Tales.) And I want to include a unicorn, just like I want to include a centaur, a kelpie and a hippogriff. But the unicorn is proving the hardest to track down.

I keep glimpsing the perfect unicorn story, but never actually finding it. I keep finding hints of a Ukrainian story about the unicorn refusing to go on the ark with all those other smelly animals, which is apparently why unicorns aren’t exactly common these days. I like this little fable, and I want to include my retelling of it in Wild Horses, Wings and Warriors.

But in collections of myths, legends and traditional tales, I always put information at the back of the book about where I’ve found each story, with a genuine trackable source.

sources in my collection of Scottish tales Breaking The Spell

And though I keep glimpsing the unicorn story, though I keep seeing partial hoofprints, I can’t find a source that isn’t gossip, rumour or hearsay.

Google doesn’t help. The same few lines are repeated on lots of different sites, but all the sources seem to be copying each other, like a circle without a starting point. And even proper books - old dusty books, hardback books, books in the library - lots of them mention the same story but even they don’t give an actual source.

And in a slightly unlikely twist, when I mentioned my quest to my best friend, she pulled from the back of her amazing brain a SONG about the story I am hunting for, and sang it down the phone to me. Which was fun, but not really what I was looking for…

So, how much should I care about sources and provenance? All traditional tales have been made up, by someone, some time. Does it matter where I found them? Any book I use as a source, however old, will still just be one version of the story, captured at one moment. You can’t point at a particular version of an oral story and say – that’s the original story.

Even so, I think it does matter. I like to feel that anyone reading a collection of mine can go back to the sources I used and discover more about the story, perhaps find their own way of telling it and perhaps find out more about the culture the story came from. I’m retelling these old tales, not creating them myself, and I want to give credit to the sources that inspire me.

But this particular story seems to be, like the unicorn itself, very hard to find. Elusive. Frustrating. Perhaps non-existent.

I’ve never had this trouble in any other collection, with any other story. Perhaps it’s only unicorns that are impossible to track down…

a helpful child drew me a unicorn!

So should I just shrug and think, it’s only a story, and stop worrying about it? Or should I make a virtue of the fact that finding the unicorn is uniquely impossible? (It does feel quite appropriate!) Or should I keep looking? Should I keep hunting the unicorn, with my telescope, my seven league boots, my map saying ‘here be dragons’ and my compass with the needle pointing to Once Upon a Time…

I think, for now, with the deadline for Wild Horses still more than seven leagues away, I will keep hunting for that unicorn.

Lari Don is the award-winning author of 22 books for all ages, including a teen thriller, fantasy novels for 8 – 12s, picture books, retellings of traditional tales and novellas for reluctant readers.
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Detail: Tracking Down Unicorns - Lari Don

0 It's all in the research...Lynn Huggins-Cooper

In last month's post I talked about cheating on my current WIP with a new idea...well, it was one of those delious ideas that 'has legs' - so I have run with it. Despite being in the middle of a huge educational writing project, with proofs arriving every day and demanding my attention, my head has been swimming with ideas. I've been a bit naughty and rather encouraged it by collecting reasearch materials. I revel in this stage of writing.
When I was writing 'Walking With Witches,' I spent a lot of time in situ at The Lit and Phil library and at the castle keep in Newcastle, where part of the story was set. It helped me to soak in the atmosphere, but it also gave me access to all manner of resources such as old documents and artefacts that helped me to get into 'the zone.'
This current WIP (it has become that now; its legs are that strong) is a real departure for me - for a start, it is for the adult market. Up until now, I have only written non-fiction books for adults so that feels rather strange. My postman has realised that a new project is afoot, because we are getting more mail. Odd tomes ordered online; strangely shaped parcel of things I just have to test before I can write about them with any degree of authenticity...bliss.

Does the photo give you any clues about my new idea? It is drawing together so many things I know about, and have lived, that it feels 'right' somehow. I suppose I am finally 'writing what I know' - and on that note, I'd better get back to it!

Detail: It's all in the research...Lynn Huggins-Cooper