Fairytales can come true

Writing books for children has become not only cool but, for the lucky few, very lucrative. From Madonna’s The English Roses to a certain JK Rowling’s stories about a young wizard, you couldn’t blame someone for entering the field with the aim of turning fairytales into a tidy profit. But despite her proven business acumen, it quickly becomes clear that Princess Poppy’s Party is Jones’s labour of love. This is a character that has been on her mind for a good 15 years, a fact backed up when Jones produces a Christmas card from her mother, dating back to 1990 and addressed to Poppy.

While Poppy has been evolving, Jones has been running one of the country’s most successful play centre concepts, the Jelly Club. When it opened in 1999 in Edinburgh, Jones and her husband Matthew gave up their jobs and sold their home to fund the project, perhaps best described as an adventure village for children complete with ball pools, climbing wall and an inflatable assault course. The risk paid off and approximately one million visitors have used the club since it opened. Earlier this year a new outlet was opened at Glasgow’s St Enoch’s Centre. At the same time, the couple have been bringing up three young sons.

"I definitely want to be a writer, not a businesswoman," says Jones. "There are elements of business life which I find forces me to step too much outside my own character. I do it, but I find it really taxing."

Having made the decision to forge ahead with the book, Jones began researching her market. She produces a large colourful folder brimming with cuttings, which she used to help build up a picture of the world Poppy might inhabit. Pictures of Flower Fairies, popular toys, children’s book covers and scraps from Laura Ashley catalogues helped define what appeals to the contemporary child.

"I’m a big believer that children don’t change down the generations," says Jones. "I tapped into what I used to like then I looked at my reader and thought all about the titles she would currently like."

We might think of books for young children as being simplistic but every tiny detail has been carefully planned in Poppy’s world. Evocative place-names such as Honeypot Hill and Lavender Garden create a backdrop to a cosy world where perfume is handmade from flower petals and cakes are freshly baked and decorated with ripe strawberries. Jones says the homeliness was intentional and just as the colours in Poppy’s sitting room are described as "rhubarb crumble and custard", she has the same creamy yellow and raspberry pinks in her own home.

"I very much see my home as something really crucial to expressing myself," she says. "I’d never follow a current trend, I’d go for coziness and I think that’s what children need."

Jones admits that some people might feel the book is a bit too nostalgic - there are no Playstations or Happy Meals in this environment, but says she didn’t want to tie the story down to a particular era. The rural setting is inspired by the landscape of East Lothian where her father often took her exploring as a child, but the book doesn’t have a clichd family set-up - Dad or brothers don’t feature, although there is a friendly grandpa and many family friends. "It’s certainly open for interpretation and yet everyone around her clearly loves her," says Jones.

As a mother of three boys, it’s tempting to wonder if it was a burst of girly escapism that led Jones to create such a feminine world. But she says the character of Poppy is less of a substitute daughter and more of an extension of her own self. "It’s nice for me to be able to live out my passions through Poppy," she says. "I do still have the interest in the little girl things - the perfume bottles and the dolls houses. I feel very lucky that I’ve got that kind of outlet, because the rest of my life is watching rugby matches, judo and that sort of thing."

While an author might normally surrender their work to a publisher then sit back and hope for the best, Jones has been involved in every stage of Poppy’s evolution. Unable to find an artist whose work she connected with, Jones decided to paint the watercolour illustrations herself. The next stage was to set up her own small press. "That came out of a strong sense of self-belief that I didn’t want this to be doctored," says Jones. "I worked out that you’ve got a text, you edit it, illustrate it, and have a design team make it into a book. Then you sell it and find distribution. I split it into six parts and I thought, I can do this." She describes the resulting process as "enormous fun" and admits that although she sees herself as quite a gentle person, she is "very self-opinionated and self-assured in how I want to do things".

However much fun the process was, it involved a certain amount of juggling of responsibilities.

"As I’ve got a very big kitchen table and my children paint, they were all working on their own little books. They would be working as I was working, so they became totally immersed in the idea of producing a book."

Jones says she has been influenced by the feedback from her own and other children who read early drafts of the book. With three further stories in the pipeline, Jones says: "It’s up to me to have complete faith in this project. If it’s not commercially viable that’s something I will fully accept but I couldn’t have had it out there in any other form."

She says the book is about the magic of childhood, the magic that exists every day of the week. And although Jones also seeks to address female empowerment, she’s not from the brashly modern school of "girl power".

"I think there are different ways of achieving your goals and for me, it’s something within my femininity."

As she packs the vibrant little Poppy dolls back into her case, you get the feeling that the children’s author and businesswoman have found a way to happily co-exist.

• Princess Poppy’s Party by Janey Jones is published by Peppermint Press in paperback original, priced 4.99. Janey Jones will be appearing at Borders, Fort Kinnaird on Sunday 30 November, 2pm-3pm.