David Roberts & Lynn Roberts-Maloney

Lynn: After ‘Little Red’ was published in 2006, David and I thought about doing another fairy tale, and ‘Sleeping Beauty’ was among a few ideas. We had some discussions, but various things stopped us from going further with it at the time. I was studying for an MA in Librarianship and David was busy on other projects.

In 2011, the publisher made enquiries about whether we would be interested in doing another book with them. And so David and I began to talk about it again, and ‘Sleeping Beauty’ was definitely the story we were interested in telling.

David usually isn't involved with authors at the beginning of the project, but as brother and sister we have always collaborated right from the start. With everything I've written, even if it's just a short rhyme, David is usually the first person I'll show it to, as I know he'll give me an honest review – plus give me tips on what changes to make. With the fairy tales, we come up with a few ideas together and then I go and write up the text and we take it from there.

With ‘Sleeping Beauty’, we sat in a little Portuguese cafe in Seven Dials, London, and talked through our ideas. The book was always going to start in the 1940s/1950s and then move into the future. The idea was to make the actual future look like the imagined future that was depicted in 1950s sci-fi films and TV shows, so David had a basis on which to develop the drawings. After that, he pretty much had free rein to design how the future would look.

We tried to avoid the idea of Sleeping Beauty having to be ‘rescued’ as such, but we did want another character to come into the story from the future. So we needed a reason for the character to be there. Initially this character was male, but after a few drafts we discussed the idea of having an all female cast of characters, and the publisher was happy to go with this idea. I always write lots of drafts as it helps me to define the characters and situations, plus it helps me to cut down the text to the required length as I always write too much!

With each draft, David would get new ideas for the illustrations and we would discuss what should stay in or go. Doing this helped me to refine the story and it gave David plenty of time and inspiration to develop the look of the book.

Once the story was agreed on, David talked me through his ideas for the illustrations and we met with the publisher last April to finalise the project. I had just found out I was pregnant, and although I couldn't tell anyone, it was extra exciting for me to know that when the book came out I would be a mum! Every few days last summer, I'd get an email from David containing the latest illustration he was working on, and it was wonderful to see the book coming together. At the time of writing, I actually haven't seen a copy of the book, but I know it will look stunning and hopefully people will enjoy the story too.

David: It's been a really interesting and fulfilling process working with Lynn. I never normally involve myself with the text when working on a book, but with Lynn I was able to make suggestions right from the start.

This is the fourth book in a series of fairy tale retellings where we have set the story in a different time period: the 1930s for ‘Cinderella’...

the 1970s for ‘Rapunzel’...

and the 18th century for ‘Little Red’.

After we had come up with the initial concept for ‘Sleeping Beauty’, Lynn did an initial draft and I made suggestions of the story I wanted to tell through the pictures. I think it is so important that the pictures tell the story just as much as the words, if not more so that the pictures tell an ‘extra’ story: the bit happening slightly ‘off-screen’ so to speak.

I talked to Lynn about some themes that I wanted to run through the book. It was clear right from the outset that we both wanted to start our tale in the 1950s (actually the story starts in the 1940s, as this is when our Sleeping Beauty is born).

I have always loved that 1950s imagery of how they saw the future; it seems so clean and hopeful and happy, and I wanted to use that style throughout the book. I thought to myself, imagine if the future does turn out to look just how they imagined it.

We needed something to replace the spinning wheel that Sleeping Beauty pricks her finger on, and we both agreed it had to be a record player needle. Both Lynn and I are big music fans, and we thought this would be so much fun and a great progression from the traditional story.

I then worked the theme of the circle through much of the design and pattern in the book. The spinning wheel from the traditional story is represented throughout our book in the design, from Sleeping Beauty's dress, the wallpaper, the spinning record, the spiralling background when she falls under the spell, and the window where the evil witch watches her spell unfold.

We thought about things a 1950s teenager might be into, hence the sci-fi aspect, the robots Sleeping Beauty collects, the film posters in her room, and the CND symbol on the rug on her bedroom floor.

As Lynn is a librarian and we both greatly value our libraries that are now sadly so much under threat, we loved the idea that the library of the future, 1000 years hence, was bigger and better and still going strong – and filled with shelves full of ACTUAL BOOKS, not computer screens!

I continued the circle motif within the library, making the building cylindrical in its design, with robots resembling those from Sleeping Beauty's past busily keeping the shelves tidy.

I also thought about how written language may develop in the future and, again working on my circle motif, thought it would be fun to have it come full circle back to the old Norse symbols of the past.

And outside the library, amongst the flying cars, we see St Catherine, the patron saint of librarians, holding a book against ‘her wheel’.

I settled on a pastel colour palette for this book, only bringing in a strong shade of green to represent the evil witch and her spell.

I liked how the pastel colours express a sort of dreamy, carefree feel that I thought worked nicely for the 1950s alongside the future of the 2950s!

Illustrations © David Roberts.

Buy this picturebook

Sleeping Beauty

Lynn Roberts-Maloney & David Roberts

Pavilion Children's Books, United Kingdom, 2016

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Young Annabel lives in the 1950s and dreams of a future with jetpacks, flying cars and robots. Little does she know that she's living under a witch's spell which means she could have no future at all. The evil spell comes true on Annabel's sixteenth birthday and she falls asleep for a thousand years...
A young explorer called Zoe discovers the story of Sleeping Beauty, but can she rescuse Annabel in time and show her what the future really looks like?