We measure out our lives in seasons. We use them to describe our moods. We anticipate and memorialize them, associate them with colours and feelings, write songs and poetry about them. I cannot help but wonder what will happen to all this beautiful culture as temperatures rise. What will it mean to describe someone as having a wintry heart, if winters are warm and wet?
This story draws on the works of Hans Christian Anderson’s The Snow Queen, Oscar Wilde’s The Selfish Giant and Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi, flipping traditional motifs of winter being forbidding, frightening and heartless. In The Ice Children I have used the tropes of a fairy tale to respond to children’s anxieties about climate change and global warming. Fairy tales were told to entertain but also warn young listeners about the dangers of the world. I want a world that has polar ice caps, glaciers and snow. I am one of the Ice Children. I wrote this story as a rallying cry for positive change.
This book is dedicated to my agent Kirsty McLachlan, whom I respect, admire and am enormously grateful to have on my side. The Ice Children production on Audible and this beautiful book wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for her. She fought for it, and me, and I will never forget that. Thank you, Kirsty. I will always be in your debt.
This is the story that almost broke me. It’s thanks to my husband and manager, Sam Harmsworth-Sparling, and my best friend, Claire Rakich, that it didn’t. It was written in extraordinary times. Their endless cheerleading and cups of tea kept me going. Thank you.
I am tremendously grateful to every member of the team at Macmillan for creating this book, in particular Rachel Vale for the incredible design, Sarah Plows and Jo Hardacre for telling the world about it, Samantha Smith for believing in my stories. This story is a true collaboration. It’s been through more editors than any other story I’ve written and they’ve all helped shape it. Thanks to: Imogen Papworth from Audible, Lucy Rogers, Venetia Gosling, Nick de Somogyi, but especially my legendary Macmillan editor and friend Sarah Hughes who has faced Herculean trials whilst shepherding this story and yet has guided it into bookshops like a flipping boss. Thank you, Sarah. I hope you know how much I love working with you.
I wanted this book to be beautiful and full of winter magic. And it’s as if the artist Penny Neville-Lee looked into my imagination, waved her wand and granted my wish. She is responsible for the extraordinary cover and all the wonderful internal illustrations you see. Thank you, Penny. Your pictures and my words are a perfect pairing.
Years ago, when I was writing my beetle books, I visited a good friend. I was sitting in the passenger seat of her car, telling her the beginning of this story as it had come to me, of Finn being found frozen in the park. Her three young children, who were sitting in the back, fell silent. She turned to me and said, ‘You have to write it – look.’ She nodded back at her children. ‘They’re listening. They want to know what happens next.’ She was right. Thank you, Karen Minto, Dylan, Seren and Evan. I hope you approve of the way this story has turned out.
And, in case you are wondering, my winter spirit animal is an Arctic Wolf. What’s yours?