Lydia Silver

My tastes lean towards the bold, the loud and the zeitgeisty – big, commercial storytelling that also says something about the world we live in. I’m a sucker for beautiful writing but for me, it needs to be combined with an ambitious, hooky concept or plot. Give me character! Give me drama! Give me end-of-the-world stakes! If you can make me laugh, cry, or see the world differently, I’m likely to fall for your book.

One of the reasons I am so happy to be a specialist children’s agent is because of the huge variety in storytelling opportunities that children’s books hold. As such, my tastes are wide-ranging across genre and form. One thing that almost all the books I love have in common is that they have something to say. Books are a brilliant way for children to discover, discuss and digest the big things happening in their lives, often for the first time. While I don’t tend to like books that are message-heavy, I think that all truly great children’s books have a subtle point to make.

In middle grade, my first love is fantasy. I remember vividly sitting half-way up my stairs at home reading Northern Lights by Phillip Pullman, and anything that combines that wild, remote magic with his human-daemon tenderness will speak to my heart. It’s a crowded space, so here I’m looking for scale and ambition – think Skandar and the Unicorn Thief, Greenwild or Fireborn, with a huge world to explore and save.

Mystery and adventure are inherent in most stories, but I do have a real soft spot for them as genres. I would love to find an adventure series that appeals to boy readers, particularly when they hit that tricky stage between MG and YA. I loved the Alex Rider series and I think there’s a space for something new to burst into that gap, with thrilling missions, dark secrets and genuine peril. I also love a more classic-feeling mystery, or a historical adventure, but told from a viewpoint that we’ve not seen before. My own client Laura Noakes does this brilliantly, telling classic heist stories with a disabled cast, and it would be great to see more in this vein.