Holly Webb reflects on her career and her latest illustrated title following the animals of Greenriver

"The Animals of Farthing Wood, Watership Down, Redwall, all of those were animal worlds that I absolutely adored growing up.” Holly Webb is speaking to me over video call from her home near Reading about her new book, The Story of Greenriver, which came out in hardback in autumn 2022 and will be published in paperback this April by Orion Children’s Books. Inspired by these childhood favourites, she had long wanted to write her own animal fantasy novel. Otters had always fascinated her and during lockdown walks in search of the local Thames otters, an idea began to form.

The book follows the creatures of Greenriver, who are in danger from rising water levels. A young otter, Sedge, is growing up in what Webb calls a “very established holt with firmly held ideas about how otters should behave”. The heir to the holt, Sedge knows something isn’t quite right, but he can’t remember what. Sedge believes he can save his holt from flooding and travels downstream in search of help.

Meanwhile, at the Greenriver beaver lodge, Silken is confronting her feeling of difference and the sense that something is calling to her from up-river. The two young animals unknowingly swim towards each other in their search for answers and discover a shared past. “The book is about them finding each other again,” explains Webb, “and trying to build a relationship, but it’s also about the river and the world they are part of.” Enhanced by Zanna Goldhawk’s beautiful cover and interior illustrations, The Story of Greenriver is a sweeping adventure with an epic feel and a wonderfully realised animal world, perfect for children with a love of the natural world, or those who have enjoyed Webb’s Animal Stories series when they were younger. Although not explicitly a climate change book, weaving ecological themes into the story was vital for the author. “I did want children to think about the way the river world was changing due to extremes of weather, and to make a direct parallel to our world.”

Returning themes

Most of Webb’s books focus on the relationship between an animal and a child. The Story of Greenriver is one of the first to exist in a fully realised animal world with no human characters, and Webb clearly relished the opportunity for world-building. The intricate descriptions of the animals’ food, daily lives and traditions recall Wind in the Willows or Jill Barklem’s Brambly Hedge books. “It was incredibly lovely creating a completely new society,” Webb admits.

Were there particular challenges? “It did feel very different not to have a human element, but that made it really exciting.” She felt that the animals should not have a human view of time, so days, months and years were all replaced by seasons. “It was so difficult!” she laughs. “So much of our language is framed by time constructs. I’m still waiting for someone to tell me I missed one.” Real information about otter behaviour became key to the plot, particularly their communication (through singing or vocalisation) and the fact that baby otters need to be taught how to swim. “If a river rises very suddenly and washes otter cubs out of a holt, they can drown,” Webb explains. “That was the beginning of the story: that they were vulnerable to the river while also seeming so incredibly at one with their environment.”

Sometimes it’s easier to identify your own fears, preoccupations and worries if they are not so obviously presented as a human concern

Webb has written dozens of books about animals. I ask her why, even in our modern times, animal stories have such enduring popularity? “Sometimes it’s easier to identify your own fears, preoccupations and worries if they are not so obviously presented as a human concern. You can identify with the animal characters and that feels less threatening, perhaps. Plus, there is a mystery about them. As a child I really wanted to be able to understand what the animals around me were saying. There’s a sense of wanting to be part of that secret world.”

Webb worked in the publishing industry and began her literary career in editorial, following regular work experience at Scholastic Children’s Books from the age of 16. “It was wonderful,” she recalls, with “so many brilliant people to work with.” The writing career started almost accidentally. In 2004, Scholastic was developing a new series called Triplets, and it was when Webb was pitching the idea to potential authors that her love of writing was ignited. “I fell in love with the characters—I named them all, I gave them pets. I couldn’t imagine giving this book to anyone else and I realised I wanted to try and write it myself.”

Her writing really took off with the launch of the Animal Stories series in 2006. Published by Stripes, the books follow a gentle eight-chapter formula of an animal in peril and their relationship with a child, perfectly captured in Sophy Williams’ sweet baby animal artwork. The first, Lost in the Snow, has been followed by more than 50 titles, with Webb still writing two a year. “It was entirely not intended to be a series,” she confesses, “or we would have come up with a much better series name.”  She wrote in tandem with editorial work for several years before becoming a full-time writer.

I would love it if the books made children want to find out more about the animal characters and to go away with a sense of how beautiful and fascinating those landscapes and animals are

Over her 19-year writing career, Webb has been astonishingly prolific: her published book count is currently 157 titles, with Nielsen Bookscan TCM sales of 1.63 million books sold in the UK, for a value of just over £7m. It’s worth noting too her significant success in the school clubs and fairs market, which isn’t tracked by BookScan. Other career highlights include the series of seasonal time-slip adventures which began in The Snow Bear, again for Stripes, recalling Webb’s childhood love of Alison Uttley’s A Traveller in Time, and for older readers the Rose and Lily magical fantasy series for Orchard Books. More recently, Webb has worked with Scholastic again on sequels to classics including A Little Princess and The Secret Garden.  

The Greenriver series will continue in September 2023 with The Swan’s Warning, which will feature the same characters but expands the world and environmental theme to include a clan of foxes displaced by a landslide. Further books are yet to be signed, but Webb envisages other stories, encompassing more animals, from the wider universe of Greenriver.