Children's tale grew from going astray

Children's Book Awards finalist Bernard Beckett tells MARGIE THOMSON how a night in the bush became a teen horror story.

Bernard Beckett, schoolteacher and author of three novels for young adults, is tramping through the bush with some students. Darkness falls, and they are unable to find their way back to the carpark. There's nothing for it but a night out in the open - and they're lucky: nothing goes wrong, and the next morning they walk to safety. But it gets him thinking ...

How chilling would it be for some kids to be lost in the bush, being chased by dangerous men? The idea takes shape, and before you know it, he's written Jolt (Longacre, $16.95) and been shortlisted for this year's New Zealand Post Children's Book Awards, to be presented on March 27.

It's the creepy tale of Marko, a bit of an outsider, who reluctantly goes on a school tramp to the Tararuas. He's in a small group of students who don't like each other much, led by a teacher for whom they initially have little respect.

A huge earthquake is only the beginning of their trouble, and they soon realise they are sharing the bush with some brutal men who will stop at nothing to protect their own interests.

A terrifying chase through the bush brings Marko and his fellow students to the extreme edge of fear, but also to new strength of character and a sense of belonging none has ever experienced.

But that's not all: Beckett weaves into this an even more disturbing story of a psychiatric ward, and an evil doctor who means to kill Marko.

As a boy, Beckett cut his literary teeth on his father's collection of Alistair McLean and Robert Ludlum books - as good a place as any to learn about pace and sheer story-telling. But Beckett brings his own thoughtfulness to bear on his stories, the action contains many thematic strands: responsibility, fear and courage, respect.

"I wanted very specifically to get away from the idea of things having no implications, of there being just baddies and goodies," Beckett explains. So, when Marko becomes vengeful, he has to ask himself whether he is any better than his enemies.

Beckett has been welcomed as one of the most exciting new voices in young adults' fiction, and his books - Lester, Red Cliff and now Jolt - have had a big thumbs up from reviewers and readers alike, no mean feat in a genre which has to satisfy both the (usually) adult reviewers, as well as its target teenaged audience, known for its swift rebuttal of anything phoney.

Beckett's publisher Barbara Larsen, of the small, privately owned Dunedin publishing house Longacre, which has an astonishing five titles in the finalists for the Children's Book Awards (including three out of five of the senior fiction finalists), says young adult fiction is both exciting and challenging.

"If it hasn't grabbed us in the first few pages it won't grab the attention of a young reader," she says.

A powerful narrative drive, authentic characters, interesting style and language - it doesn't sound so different from the requirements for adult fiction, and in fact there is increasing crossover as adults recognise that some good writers are choosing to produce children's fiction.

Unusually, Beckett is determined not to be a fulltime writer. He teaches maths, drama and economics at Wellington's Onslow College and seems to be happily busy with school drama productions and all his hobbies such as film, cycling, tramping, running and generally being out among people. Now 34, he started writing in 1993, or, as he puts it, "started having a crack at the idea, almost just for the fun of it. It failed spectacularly, but I eventually realised that my teenage stories worked best."

All his main characters so far have been boys, but Beckett doesn't feel that he's writing boys' books. Girls like adventure, too, and certainly Jolt has some strong female characters as well. He's not sure about the "rumour" that boys don't read: his experience is that they do, but tend towards non-fiction.

"Boys like pace. You've got to be pretty fast for them. They like adventure, and characters who thumb their nose at authority, who take the world on."

Alone of his novels, Jolt has two characters, Johnny and Rebecca, who are quite strongly linked to two actual people, ex-students of Beckett's, who were among those he got lost in the bush with.

"They think it's cool," he says.