One of the nice things about the Bananas series is that, like picture books, they have full colour illustrations on every page. I showed this revised version to publishers and, while none wanted it as a picture book, Egmont took it as a first reader for their Bananas series.Īdapting the story into a first reader was relatively easy. Bearing in mind the Halloween comment, I replaced the family of ghosts with an army of alien invaders – the fearsome Bugulons. I still felt the story had potential so I did another draft. One editor commented that the haunted house setting made it seem like a Halloween story, which would limit its appeal for the rest of the year. I sent this draft to several picture book publishers, but none were interested. Thinking they’ve abandoned her, Daisy finally feels afraid, before her parents return home and allay her fears. The romantic Wagnerian ending wasn’t appropriate for such a young heroine, but I wanted an ending that felt similarly satisfying so, after banishing the ghosts from the castle, Daisy returns home to find her parents aren’t there.
My early drafts of the story were quite close to the Grimm original, with Daisy spending the night in a creepy castle, haunted by a trio of spiteful aristocratic spooks. I thought this plot could make a great picture book and set about adapting it to into a contemporary setting with the youth’s role being taken by a little girl, Daisy Dreadnought. And a similar ending was used by writer Anthony Minghella for Fearnot a 1988 TV adaptation of the Grimm’s tale for Jim Henson’s excellent Storyteller series. In Wagner’s opera, Siegfried finally learns what fear is when he mistakenly thinks that his sweetheart Brünnhilde is dead. Richard Wagner reinterpreted the story in Siegfried, his operatic retelling of the Norse myth of Sygurd, but gave it a far more satisfying ending. At the end of the story the princess finally makes the youth shudder by pouring a bucket of cold water, filled with fishes, over him. After various adventures the youth spends three nights in a haunted castle and drives out its evil occupants, earning himself great riches and a princess’s hand in marriage. In that story a fearless youth sets out to learn how to shudder. Danny Dreadnought was inspired by the German folktale The Story of the Youth Who Went Forth to Learn What Fear Was, which was included in the collections of the Brothers Grimm.
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