The Song that Sings Us (paperback) by Nicola Davies ~ Blog Tour

To celebrate the publication of the paperback edition of the thrilling environmental adventure The Song that Sings Us, I’m honoured to welcome author Nicola Davies to Scope for Imagination with a fascinating interview about her inspirations for the story.

What inspired you to write The Song that Sings Us?

I’ve written more than 80 books about nature and human relationships with it. My aim has always been to inspire a love and respect for the natural world and an awareness that it is vital to human survival. But on current performance this message isn’t getting through fast enough or reaching far enough. So I thought I’d try a new tactic for a new audience, a fantasy novel that had strong allegorical stories about our real world and an adventurous fast moving plot to keep readers engaged. Overall inspiration: To Save the World!

In this story, Ash and Xeno have the power of listening to animals’ thoughts. Why was it so important for you to give animals a voice?

In our world we are very, very good at NOT listening to anyone who isn’t just like us. We don’t even listen to other humans let alone our fellow earthlings. I’ve always had a great interest in. Animal cognition and communication and knowing about the science lead me to imagine ‘what if we really could communicate with other species? How might it affect the way we think and the way we run our societies?

On their journey, the children come across some really special animal guides. Can you tell us a bit about them?

Early in the story Ash meets a wolverine… The Gula (Gula gula being their scientific name meaning glutton) she sees something special in Ash and adopts him. Wolverines are wonderful, they are sort of like a giant weasel on steroids and they have a reputation for ferocity and being able to take on animals much, much bigger than themselves. And they are very good at outsmarting humans – which I totally love. But they aren’t solitary as it was once believed, they maintain strong lifelong bonds between parents and children. So once The Gula has decided Ash is her adopted cub she sticks with him through thick and thin.

Elephants have huge, huge brains, but with a very different structure from our brains. Lots of investigations into their behaviour and intelligence have shown that they feel and think deeply – working out problems and grieving when one of their family members is lost… just like humans. I have a long held fantasy about making friends with an elephant so I was very happy when Enkalamba the forest elephant walked slowly and majestically into the story. Like the Gula she has lost all her family and like the Gula she sees that a connection with humans is essential to stopping the destruction that humans are causing. She has the ability to connect with all other species… including humans and she sees clearly that all life is connected, as one great family or as she says ‘one kin’.

The Gula and Enkalamba were sort of planned – although I don’t really plan anything in my stories… they just happen! But the third main animal character just leapt into the story and began to take over. He is a tiger called Skrimsli who is the captain on the ship which saves Ash and eventually helps bring about the final denouement in the story. He can walk into the mind of any human and communicate with them, and like Enkalamba he can also communicate with other animal species. He is fierce and powerful but also a complex layered character – no longer wholly a tiger as the words that he has learned from human minds have changed him. Lots of readers really loved Skrimsli and I found he created lots of questions in my own mind about how he had become the extraordinary mixed creature that he is in Song. That’s why Skrimsli now has a whole book about his back story – there are many adventures and perils in this book too – but its fundamentally about finding who you truly are and being happy with it.

What message do you hope your readers will take away with them after reading The Song that Sings Us?

So many things I want readers to take from Song! Have adventures and live bravely is one. Don’t despair, even when the problems look insurmountable keep struggling, keep fighting. But most of all the simplest and most profound of messages, one which, if we all took it truly to heart would transform our behaviour to each other and to the other 20 million or so other kinds of remarkable living things with whom we share our planet home, and that is ‘we are all one kin’. I wrote it into the libretto of the opera of my picture book The Promise;

Inside the seed a forest sings

In rustling leaves and beating wings

A wild green pulse that calls in rhyme

Linking life across all time

We are of one kin you and me,

The bird the beetle and the tree

What other children’s books with strong environmental messages would you recommend to your readers?

The Lost Words by Jackie Morris and Robert Macfalane – a wonderful conjuring of words and pictures that has captured the imagination of all ages and kinds of people in the UK and across the world.

Any of Gill Lewis’ novels all rooted in a love and respect for nature.

Julia Green’s The Children of Swallow Fell… an incredible story of survival and rediscovery through a new connection with a simple life in nature.

Dara McAnulty’s Diary of a Young Naturalist… a heart-breaking, heart-lifting, real-life account of nature as a friend and comfort in the storms of young life.

My review:

The Song That Sings Us is a powerful novel encouraging empathy for the Earth and challenging readers to take up the fight of protecting our world from the damage of greed and power.

When their rebel mother dies in an attack on their mountain home, Harlon and twins, Ash & Xeno, are left to pick up the torch of the cause their parents have fought for their entire lives. The evil Automators want to break the connection between humans and nature – to take control of the natural world for their own gain. But this family knows the truth – that this relationship, this bond, is the most important thing on Earth and the key to everyone’s survival.

Faced with a daunting journey, the children must learn to trust others who are “Listeners” – those who are able to hear what animals are saying – and the most incredible animal guides to help them find their way to safety. The message that we are all one kin resonates through this story as the children fight for survival and find their true kindred spirits.

The Song that Sings Us was originally published just ahead of the Climate Change Conference in Glasgow in November 2021. This gorogeous paperback edition will bring this unique and thought-provoking story to even more readers.

Thank you to Firefly Press for this important message to the world.

Go back and read the rest of the blog tour!