Interview with Elena Favilli and Francesca Cavallo - the authors

Interview with Elena Favilli and Francesca Cavallo - the authors

This is an interview I've taken from Waterstones with Elena Favilli and Francesca Cavallo:

How did you originally come up with the idea for this book?

Elena: "We originally came up with the idea of the title. We like the idea of having the word 'Rebel' with 'Good Night Stories'. Rebel is usually considered a negative word in many different cultures and languages especially when its associated with women or young girls, so we thought it was cool to put these words together."

Did you feel that there was a gap in the market for this kind of book?

Elena: "We felt that there was a gap in the market, because of course, working in children's media, we've witnessed how children's books and children’s media in general are so packed with gender stereotypes."

How did you go about creating the book, particularly, how did you find the less well known women that you include in the book?

Francesca: "We wanted to feature as many countries as possible in the book. And we wanted to feature as many fields as possible. So part of it was research made based on that balance, so for example we looked for women from countries that are not usually represented in children's media, because children's media don't just lack diversity in terms of gender. So we specifically looked at countries which are not usually represented in children's media and looked for notable women in those countries. And when we realised that we had too many writers for example, or too many ballerinas, looked for specific stories for women in a particular field. So by having very focused research we were able to find stories that are not mainstream – yet."

Are there some women you wanted to included that didn't make it into the book?

Elena: "Yes, we started from a list of more than two hundred women and then we kind of selected those whose stories were more interesting for children. So that was the main criteria."

Francesca: "But there were many more women that we want to include in the future."

How has creating the book affected you and your experience of writing it, and what impact do you hope it will have on the wider world?

Elena: "So we always say that the experience of writing this book about these incredible women was empowering in itself because spending time with them and then researching their stories and then finding their voice, it was an incredible experience and it was made in such a short amount of time that it really felt an inspiring and empowering. What we hope that this book will allow, especially for girls, is, we usually quote one of the women in the book which is the Chinese astronomer: Wang Zhenyi, who says in one of her poems – because she was also a poet – she says that “daughters can also be heroic” right, which is something that we love very much.

Francesca: It's a message that we want to be part of the life of as many families as possible.

Elena: Yeah exactly right, you don't have to be a boy to make extraordinary things or adventurous things. You can be adventurous enough on your own."

Who inspires you?

Elena: "Who inspires us? Wow. Oh there are so many people. In American politics Hillary Clinton was a big inspiration last year, so during the campaign we basically designed and launched the book together with the presidential campaign. So we really hoped that the book was going to come out at the same time as Hillary Clinton's victory."

Francesca: "Marina Abramovich was a big inspiration for me, coming from performance art and, Jill Soloway, the creator of Transparent was another big inspiration for us."

Waterstones.com. (2017). Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls: A Q&A with Authors Elena Favilli and Francesca Cavallo | Waterstones.com Blog. [online] Available at: https://www.waterstones.com/blog/a-waterstones-exclusive-qanda-with-the-authors-of-good-night-stories-for-rebel-girls-elena-favilli-and-francesca-cavallo [Accessed 22 April 2018].