Greg James and Chris Smith host a private meet-and-greet with partner schools for The Twits Next Door

It was so exciting to meet Greg James and Chris Smith in our virtual schools visit in collaboration with Puffin. They spoke to children in classrooms across the country about all things mischievous and gruesome as they celebrated the launch of their latest book The Twits Next Door. 

From Mr Twit’s wasp in underwear fiasco to introducing the friendly Lovelie family, it was brilliant to hear Greg and Chris enthusiastically sharing snippets of the book and see some of the wonderful illustrations that can be found within the pages. 

It was also fantastic to hear so many wonderful questions from schools nationwide, including many of our partner schools. 

Three of our partner schools, Holmleigh, Peel Park and Montrose, had the unique opportunity to participate in an exclusive meet and greet session with authors Greg and Chris after the event. 

We had the chance to visit Holmleigh Primary School, where the pupils were full of curiosity and excitement, asking some fantastic questions. 

The children were able to pick Greg and Chris” brains about the book – from finding out their favourite prank, to discovering their inspirations behind writing the book.

Watch the full video here.

Here’s a glimpse into the fun and insightful conversations they had: 

Favourite books and finding a love for writing

Q: What’s your favourite book that you’ve written?

Both: After three… 1, 2, 3… 

Greg: Kid Normal!
Chris: Oh, wait! I was going to say The Twits Next Door! Kid Normal holds a special place for us because that’s where it all started. But if you ask us what our best book is, we both agree it’s probably The Twits Next Door. It’s always hard to pick a favourite – like choosing between your children!

Greg: we’re so amazed that we get to write this. We thought, this is so fun, but to be this far in now, the idea that we’ve even got more than one book to pick from is great. So that’s my favourite thing about it. 

Q: what do you love about writing? 

Greg: I’ve been lucky to turn my hobby into a career, but writing allows us to create worlds, tell stories and make people laugh, which is something we genuinely enjoy. It’s always important to find joy in what you do, whether it’s schoolwork or a creative project.

Q: what’s it like writing as a partnership? 

Chris: it was great! It keeps you inspired. When one of us gets stuck, the other might suggest something crazy, like a prank where Mr Twit gets stung on the bottom by a wasp. Then we start upping the antics: what if it’s a thousand wasps? What if they’re in his toilet? And so on. In a partnership, you can really learn what makes somebody else laugh and we love to make each other laugh and push each other further with silliness. 

Inspirations

Q: what inspired you to write this book in the first place?

Chris: to write this book in the first place was hard. I think it’s probably one of our two favourite Roald Dahl stories, the other being Danny the Champion of the World. The characters are so memorable and we wanted to expand on that – they deserved more than just one adventure. The idea of expanding their world, especially with new characters like the neighbours, was too tempting to resist. 

There was so much fun to be had, lots more tricks for them to play. We just wanted to give them another chance to have a little gallop around. 

Greg: it’s very magical and fun. We grew up reading Roald Dahl’s stuff, so it was a big honour to write this. 

Q: what keeps you inspired to write?

Greg: talking to our young readers like you. Where it reminds us of how joyful it can be to be a kid and to have that perspective on the world and when the world gets dark, you can do a silly thing and that can lighten the mood a little bit. That’s quite a privileged position to be in that we can just go, you know what? We’re going to ignore the sad thing and cous on the fun thing that brings people together. So, reading brings people together. It always has done for us, whether it’s mum and dad reading to us, or us reading to kids in an assembly, or today in a webinar format. 

It’s a really lovely thing to be able to do. So that’s what keeps us inspired, that we get to do this and also we like learning about stuff like learning about people about stories and imagining characters in different worlds.

Chris: for the time travel book that we’ve written, which is coming out next year, we took a visit to the British Museum – they had a big exhibition of the Egyptian hieroglyphics. So we enjoy finding out lots of things about the stories that we’re going to write about. For the Twits we read lots of books about Roald Dahl and you can look for inspiration everywhere.

Exploring The Twits Next Door

Q: how long did it take you to write The Twits Next Door?

Greg: actually The Twits is our shortest book we’ve ever written. The Twits is a much shorter story than our previous book Kid Normal. The Twits is about 25,000 words less than our previous book. 

Chris: Writing it took about four to five months, including the editing process. Once we finished, we sent it off to the illustrator, who worked her magic on the drawings. 

Q: how many pranks are in The Twits Next Door?

Chris: there are ten pranks in total! We had fun brainstorming them. Some of our favourite include ​‘Mrs. Twit Fills the Toilet with Wasps,’ ​‘Hairy Cakes,’ ​‘The Tame Tiger,’ and ​‘The Great Food Fight.’ Coming up with pranks is one of the best parts of writing about the Twits.

Q: what was your favourite prank?

Both: Disco pants. 

Chris: there was also one where The Twits drink some beer and Mrs Lovely has put an invention that makes you do a big burp when you say something horrible. 

Greg: it was good fun recording that cause we did the audiobook as well and Chris does the narration and I do all the voices and I had to spend a whole afternoon burping. 

Chris: you had lots of fizzy drinks.

Q: what’s next for you? 

Chris: we’ve got a time-travel book coming out next year! We’re always looking for new ideas and inspirations and we can’t wait to see where our imaginations take us next.

Writing tips and key takeaways for young readers

Q: what’s your best writing tip? 

Greg: we’ve actually got a lot better [at writing] and this is a great tip for writing your own stories: you don’t need to meticulously plan every signle thing, but it’s good to have a rough ideas of where you’re starting, where it’s going and where it’s going to end. We tend to write a list of chapter headings, then we plan who all the characters are, then we said today, we’re going to come up with 10 pranks, today we’re going to imagine what the family next door would be. It’s nice to break it down in chunks.

Q: what do you hope children take away from this?

Greg: I hope that everyone feels excited to pick up a book and get into a story. Whatever you feel interests you, whether it’s sport, music, pop stars or actors. Pick up a book and just have a nice time with your friends and create some silly little stories, write some plays and do some silly voices. That’s just a fun thing to do.