London author and journalist Anna James made her middle-grade fantasy debut with the six-book Pages & Co. series, which launched in 2019 in the U.S. with The Bookwanderers. James puts another spin on the concept of enchantment in Chronicles of Whetherwhy: The Age of Enchantment, first in a four-book series set on an island where everyone has magic inside them, rooted in one of the seasons, and a chosen few—known as Enchanters—are granted the ability to wield all four seasons of magic. PW spoke with James about the genesis of her interest in fantasy—and her most recent foray into that realm.
Can you trace your interest in fantasy to your own childhood?
Yes! I really can’t remember a time when I wasn’t fascinated by fantasy fiction. One of my earliest bookish memories is my mother reading The Hobbit to me, when I was way too young to understand what was happening in the story. And Eva Ibbottson’s books for young readers were real favorites of mine—I read them over and over again. Then I graduated on to classics like Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and the Earthsea books by Ursula K. Le Guin. There has really never been a time that fantasy hasn’t had my heart.
And that remained true when you fused your love of reading and writing?
Yes, fantasy was a natural place for me to go when I began writing. I would say that Pages & Co. was primarily rooted in my love of books and reading, and Chronicles of Whetherwhy is very much rooted in my love of fantasy as a genre specifically. As I began working on The Bookwanderers, I discovered that writing an entire book had its challenges, but the story idea came to me very organically—when I began wondering what it would be like to meet my favorite characters from the pages of books.
What was the allure of writing fantasy for a middle grade audience?
I was a school librarian before I began writing books, and that was a hugely formative experience. I spent a lot of time with young people between the ages of 11 and 18, and I came to be a big believer that if someone doesn’t think they are a reader, they just have not found the right book yet. It is such a huge privilege to help young readers discover what they respond to—and to help them find that book that makes them evolve as a reader. Having seen first-hand the impact that reading can have on the richness of children’s lives underscores everything in my life as a writer.
After wrapping up Pages & Co., was it quite a different challenge to invent an enchanted new world with Whetherwhy?
The books I really fell in love with as a child and teenager were novels set in unique worlds, and with Chronicles of Whetherwhy I wanted to have a go at world building. Creating a magical world from scratch is great fun, but it did bring a lot of new challenges. I had to create an infrastructure and think about so many facets of it, but I am not a very spatially aware person, and I have a terrible sense of direction!
So how did you surmount those obstacles?
I had help from David Wyatt, the illustrator of the series. When I first sent him my rough, hand-drawn map of Whetherwhy, it was a very humbling experience, since I am so horrible at working out where things are in relation to each other. But then David sent me his own map of the island, which I hung over my desk, and that made a huge difference. His art is wonderful—he is one of my very favorite illustrators—and I still can’t believe that he is illustrating my work.
When it comes to the Whetherwhy residents’ magical abilities, the premise is inherently inclusive, given that though not all are Enchanters, there is magic in everyone, but they must figure out where they fit it. What inspired this notion?
The more books I write the more I realize that there are certain things I come back to. In Pages & Co., not every character is a bookwanderer. But at the end of the series, I mention that if you are a reader, you are automatically a bookwanderer. No one is left out.
Given the logistics of writing books, you have to create tensions, but it was important to me to create a world that feels inclusive. In Whetherwhy, magic manifests itself in different ways, and seasonal magic doesn’t have hard lines or boundaries. I wanted the characters to be able to find their own magic and take various paths to evolve within that magical world.
You toured the U.S. for The Bookwanderers in 2019 and will return to promote The Age of Enchantment in early May. Do American and British fans react similarly to your books?
I think being a reader is quite a universal experience and that readers have something core in common wherever they are from. I’ve discovered that U.S. readers are interested in the Britishness of my novels and ask lots of questions about England, and that is very fun.
When I was on tour for Pages & Co, one of my very favorite things was hearing readers say that they had picked up some of the classics mentioned in the books, particularly Anne of Green Gables, which is one of my most favorite novels. That delights me and makes my librarian soul very happy! It’s lovely to think that young readers will take something from a book that I loved as a child and become part of that constant chain and conversation as a reader—and perhaps, if they go on to create their own stories one day, as a writer as well.
Chronicles of Whetherwhy: The Age of Enchantment by Anna James. Flamingo, $18.99 Apr. 29 ISBN 978-0-593-69190-8.
