Sarah Crossan's cover story

Former Irish Children’s Laureate Sarah Crossan brings reassurance – and humour – to managing anxieties that can take over our lives

Sarah Crossan is an old hand at writing, but A Totally Big Umbrella is her very first picture book. Read it and you will wonder what took her so long, for this touching and funny story deftly describes in reassuring language how small worries can mushroom into huge ones that stop us enjoying life.

It’s in the Young Adult (YA) market where Crossan made her literary name. Her first novel, The Weight of Water, has been adapted for the stage four times and she picked up multiple awards and award nominations for One, a novel about conjoined twins. She’s also a former Irish Children’s Laureate and has been translated into some 25 languages. Her novels in verse and her poetry made her a natural fit for this very young market, said the editorial team at Walker Books when they persuaded her to finally turn her talents to writing for a much younger audience.

Sarah Crossan's cover story — The story centres on a little girl who decides one umbrella is not enough to protect her. Illustration: Rebecca Cobb

To be fair, she’d had the idea of writing a picture book for many years, really since she was reading fantastic picture books to her own daughter (now a teenager). “I think it’s so hard to write a brilliant picture book,” she says. “Everyone thinks they’ve got a picture book in them because it’s only 500 words. But when I did decide to do this, it was because I had an image of an umbrella in my head, which I wanted repeated in the book. Also, I wanted to write about anxiety.”

Sarah Crossan has personal understanding of how acute anxiety can feel, via a family member, and she believed that umbrellas worked as a visual motif for this age group. “The thing about anxiety is that it can start small and just get bigger and bigger and bigger – and I loved this idea of an umbrella getting bigger. I think that’s how fear works, and not just for children.”

” I loved this idea of an umbrella getting bigger. I think that’s how fear works, and not just for children”

Our protagonist, Tallulah, decides she hates the rain for ruining her lovely dress and turning her favourite biscuits soggy. When Grandma gives her an umbrella to keep her dry she feels better, until she starts to think about how one umbrella will never be enough if the rain really comes down. Will she be swept away?

All the way through writing the book Sarah Crossan had imagined characters and settings drawn by Rebecca Cobb – the two had connected at some point on social media – so when she suggested her as illustrator to Walker and it was all confirmed, she was, she says, over the moon. “She just took over and finished the story so beautifully. She draws children so well,” adds Crossan. “She shows Tallulah as a very strong girl.” This felt important, because anxiety can affect anyone.

“I wanted the book to be a journey for the child, and also the character was afraid of something that other people might think was quite silly,” she says. “We always think other people’s fear is silly but ours is rational.” Tallulah’s Grandma plays a big part in this story – supporting and helping her navigate her fears. By the end of the story, Tallulah has managed to come out from under her umbrella and play in the rain, but she still sleeps with an umbrella tucked under her bed, just in case. It felt important, says Crossan, to show that anxiety doesn’t magically disappear overnight – very often it is about managing our fears to move forward.

She still has vivid memories the huge impact books had on her own childhood. “Books, when I found them, were a place where I was able to understand things.” Now, she comes at writing from multiple perspectives. “I have so many people in mind. It’s really a dangerous thing when you’re a writer to have so many audience members in mind.

“I’m thinking of the child, I’m thinking of the parent and I’m thinking of the teacher when I write any book. Like, would I teach it, would I give it to my child and, as a child, would I want to read it? And I’m always trying to find that balance.”

It was Crossan’s experience as a teacher that inspired her first steps as a writer. After she completed The Weight of Water she had a hunch that the advice she’d been given about verse novels being a really hard sell was wrong. “I was living in America when I wrote it,” she says. “I knew, because I was teaching a verse novel there called Out of the Dust by Karen Hesse, and the kids really loved it.”

She recalls how the UK teen response to poetry in those days tended to be a groan, whereas in US high schools it was “OK, cool”. She suspects this may be to do with the way poetry was perceived by children on either side of the Pond. “In the UK, it was either Michael Rosen or Shakespeare,” she says. “But in America there’s a huge tradition of slam poetry and rap.”

Now, 13 years on, there’s no doubt of the verse novel’s important place within children’s fiction in the UK and internationally. The good news for Sarah Crossan’s older fans is there are more novels in the pipeline. And now, very young readers can join them, enjoying this heartfelt tale about how we move through anxiety and learn to have fun again. As brave Tallulah says, while looking out on the world from the safety of her giant umbrella, fear is: “very, very boring and also a bit lonely”.