Tashi: 25 years on and more than 1 million copies sold but still an 'enchanted' delight
Author Anna Fienberg tells the stories behind her bestselling childrens books, from her mothers working-class childhood to the characters origin story P eople roll their eyes when Anna Fienberg starts a story with: Well, it was like this. The phrase has become unmistakable to readers of her Tashi series for children a device preceding the telling of an adventure story and Fienberg cant help but use it when shes asked how she came to write, with her mother Barbara, about a magical boy who flees on a swan from his home country to Australia. Well, it was like this, Fienberg says, as she tells Guardian Australia of how only recently, 25 years after the stories were first published, she learned of Tashis true origins. The revelation came as she chatted with Barbara about her childhood. Barbara grew up in the 1930s in a housing commission flat in Woolloomooloo, Sydney. She lived there with her young parents, members of the then banned Communist party, surrounded by bookshelves of Marxist works as they debated politics and history and the rights and wrongs of the world with their friends and comrades at late-night meetings. Barbaras mother had instructed her as a young girl: If there are foreign children coming into your classroom, mind you make friends with them, because theyll be lonely. Barbara dutifully did. She met Mary Ronai, a Hungarian Jewish refugee, and the families bonded. Decades later, Barbara, by then a teacher-librarian, put an idea for a childrens book to her author daughter. Anna had written a few books and she had always given Barbara manuscripts to look over. But this time, it was the elder with a story about a boy escaping the old country and arriving in Australia, and befriending a local child. Anna was immediately taken by it. It was only now, after yet more decades and a million Tashi books sold, that it dawned on Anna that the character she had been writing stories about for 25 years was her mothers old friend, Mary, escaping Europe as it crumbled under Nazism and the second world war. I hadnt ever put it together, says Fienberg. The Tashi books feel both modern and from another time. Tashi is elfin, encounters dragons and wears magical shoes, but the concerns of the real world run beneath the fairytale surface. Villains have menace, whatever their motivation, and Tashi faces injustices that faintly but distinctly echo reality. Readers learn of Tashis adventures through his friend, Jack, who narrates the story to his curious and fallible parents. The stories are, at times, dark: Jack befriends Tashi after the latter evades a warlord to whom he has been sold by his parents. I really feel, as dark as the [real] world is, theres often this fear for children that we shouldnt talk about [that darkness], Fienberg says. We shouldnt mention it, and so on. I think its much healthier for children if things they see around them, which we cant protect them from with climate change, bushfires and everything thats happening that we talk with them about it in a way so that they can handle it. We can give a sense of possibility and hope, a voice that they can trust that will take them through it, these difficult issues. The Fienbergs didnt set out to write dark stories about injustice, but it is there. And regardless of their intentions, children are obsessed with fairness and elated by unfairness being righted. A very common state in my childhood was bewilderment and rage, says Fienberg. I think a childs sense of injustice and indignation is perennial. Youre always being contained and often not knowing why you shouldnt do something. I suppose I wanted to give voice to that, and that strong hope that if we see things clearly, we might be able to change them. Later this year, another Tashi book will be released. The books illustrator-collaborator, Kim Gamble, who first imagined Tashi as the elf-like figure he has remained, passed away in 2016. Barbara Fienberg, now 90, has been unwell. So Anna wrote it alone, and worked with Gambles daughter to illustrate it by mining Gambles archives. Decades ago, when teaching, Barbara would stay up late at night in the bath, memorising the first chapter of books to read to classes the next day but dispensing with any literary indulgences. No description. She would tell that first chapter, and get the kids in the palm of her hand. When writing together, Anna would recline into adjectives and atmosphere, but Barbara would pull out her red pen. As she wrote the latest book, Anna found herself clipping away at the drafts the way her mother would have. I had her red pen in my mind, she says. Barbara is frail now. Anna lives nearby, and is part of her care team. She finds it hard to think about what life the Tashi books might have once she is left alone to write them. From the beginning, the collaboration with her mother was more of a melding. The characters were held between them. We could sort of wander in and out of each others minds, in Tashi-land, Fienberg says. It was just a place of delight. ... Writing can be so solitary and full of angst, but I think we both felt it was this enchanted place that we could go. The Tashi books by Anna and Barbara Fienberg and Kim Gamble are published by Allen and Unwin