Come the revolutionary – Lucy Ann Unwin's tale about family dynamics

We have a feisty hero to get behind in How To Be A Revolutionary, a story about family dynamics, finding your passion and rats – lots of rats

Panic not, How To Be A Revolutionary is not a book encouraging middle-grade readers to go on strike. But it was inspired by Lucy Ann Unwin’s election campaign experience back in 2019. She went into a home being used as a makeshift HQ, one of many volunteers “stomping in and out of the house” to refuel while on the campaign trail. There were hand-drawn signs on all the doors to direct volunteers. And in the downstairs cloakroom, she saw a child’s loo seat stowed neatly near the door. “I had no idea children were even there,” she says. “Their home was being taken over, so was it exciting or was it scary?”

This set her thinking about the child’s-eye view of adult politicking, but also what it feels like to have your home overrun with strangers. The day after the election, she had a book title and the seeds of an idea.

Home life is certainly baffling for How To Be A Revolutionary‘s central characters Nat and her little sister Lily. Their father is busy campaigning, while their mother is staying away from home. Getting parents off the scene is a recurring dilemma for children’s authors. “It is the classic challenge,” says Lucy Ann Unwin. “To write a story you need your main characters to have agency. You need them to make decisions and to direct their own course of action.” Here, parent removal is done deftly, and in a way that feels very real. These parents are not entirely absent, but they are preoccupied – indeed, you could say a bit flaky.

That leaves Nat,11, looking after Lily, aged just seven, for a lot of the time – with the only comfort and companionship coming from her beloved pet rat Captain Furry. “We really try hard as parents,” says Unwin. “But life throws curve balls and parenting can be really hard. I think a lot of kids out there have slightly rubbish parents sometimes. If children are constantly reading books about all these parents that are completely absent or totally perfect they might like to see a reflection of reality and know that it’s still OK – we can still find ways to muddle through together.”

“For a lot of child readers this is everyday life – to not see it within fiction would be a disservice”

Muddling through is Nat and Lily’s day-to-day routine. Not only is Mum at Grandma’s house without them, but there’s this this lady from the campaign group, Kali, who is at their house a lot. We see the complexities of adult relationships through a child’s eyes –and, while it’s not the full picture, it’s troubling. “The need for routine and certainty and reassurance is hardwired into a kid’s brain, and I think in a lot of children’s fiction we try to shore that up and give them reassurance. But life doesn’t play by those rules,” says Unwin. “For a lot of child readers this is their everyday life so to not see it within fiction would be a disservice.”

It’s against this backdrop of muddling along that Nat decides she wants to ‘change the world’. She enlists advice from one of the campaigners, the kind and wise Bernard (a character Unwin envisaged as a Gandalf-like figure). He responds to Nat’s request by drawing up The Revolutionary Code. His laudable set of guidelines on how to change the world range from wearing big boots whenever you can to standing up for what’s right and listening to others.

Point 9 on the code: Make mistakes: but take responsibility for them – is central to the plot. Inspired partly by a school project but also by her own passion for rats, Nat requires money to complete her delightfully dotty scheme to help people love rodents, one furry at a time. It’s a well-meaning plan to distribute pet rats to the people, but she gets carried away and ‘borrows’ her father’s credit card. She compounds this by implicating his friend Kali in the cash disappearance (thereby breaking Point 2: Always tell the truth). All ends well, after Nat confesses. And even the chaos that occurs when the rodents multiply unexpectedly – a very funny side story – is resolved.

Come the revolutionary – Lucy Ann Unwin's tale about family dynamics — Lucy Ann Unwin wanted the plot to reflect real children’s experiences – which meant not underplaying the impact of Nat and Lily’s family situation

While Nat’s actions over the credit card move her into the plot slot generally reserved for baddies, it’s impossible to do anything but warm to her efforts to hold family together. “One of the reasons Nat can get away with a lot is because she loves her sister so much,” says Unwin. “You already know that she’s good because of Lily.” Another reason we know she is sound is that she has rock-solid friends in Annalise and Kali’s son Avinash.

Without delivering too big a plot spoiler, there is no fairytale ‘back to normal’ ending. “I really don’t want to underplay the impact on Nat and Lily,” says Unwin. At the end, home is a calmer and happier place and Nat’s progress through The Revolutionary Code has helped her to recognise something important. “She wants to change the world, but she can’t face change at home. And she has to accept it – that was really central.”

Unwin says she had no idea of the huge attachment some children have to certain stories until she had two daughters and watched them read books they love again and again – that has definitely informed her approach to writing. “Books need to have lots of layers to them for rereading.”

While it’s too soon to know if How To Be A Revolutionary will pass that test and join the well-thumbed favourites on her wider readership’s shelves, it has passed the first (and, surely, harshest) test. Her nine-year-old daughter has devoured it three times so far.