A rendezvous with Nick Arnold, the incredibly funny and talented writer and TV host of the famous children’s award-winning book series “Horrible Science”, who is also credited with rediscovering the ancient Battlefield of Cynuit that had been lost for 1000 years, while on a leisure trek trip.

How did you fall in love with science? Do you remember?

Yes I remember it very well. I was in school. I went into the science laboratory and I noticed there was a very strange smell. It must have been the chemicals. An explosion! It was absolutely terrifying. It was then that I decided I wanted nothing more to do with science the rest of my life.

But you went on to study history, yes?

Science seemed a very alien and strange world and there didn’t seem to be much in it. There wasn’t much I was interested in anyway. How little I knew. In fact looking back, if I had known science was full of exciting and amazing facts, the sort of thing that would have fascinated me as a child, I would have paid more attention to science.

Tell us your experience studying history…

I went on to study history because as everyone knows history is full of exciting events and drama. As a child I was interested in history and wanted to write history books. I still do in fact.

I loved history, but I love science as well now, and that's the reason why I’ve been writing science books for children for the past 15 years. Horrible Science. And I suddenly realized science is about horribly exciting things.

Tell us about how the Horrible Science journey began?

Most children leave school with a particular job in mind, well at least I hope they do. The job I had in mind was to become a writer. And that’s quite a difficult profession to get into. There’s two ways to become a writer. One is to spend years writing a book and get someone to publish it. This is a very difficult way to become a writer. Or, there is a slightly less difficult route by working in publishing.

Very often in children’s publishing the books are actually written by editors. So my plan was to become an editor and then get the opportunity to write the books I wanted. So I got into publishing books for children in science and I thought it was more interesting than I’d imagined. That interest has grown and grown and grown…and spread hopefully to millions of children all around the world.

Why did you choose to call your books Horrible Science?

Why call the books I write “Horrible Science”, you ask. Human psychology. If you say something is fairly nice then people will not pick up and take notice. But if you say something is horrible then of course they’re going to take notice. Children are no different from adults in this respect. And children like to be scared. But I never upset children. The horror is contained within a framework that is happy, positive, full of humor and laughter. But the most important part of the book series is its appeal for imagination.

How different is it writing for children?

My goodness, writing for children is like writing for adults. Children maybe small people but they are like adults. They like to be entertained. But perhaps they are less bound by the need to act in adult ways. They’re more relaxed and more informal about the way they read. And that makes them much more fun to write for. And a lot of children’s writers will tell you the same thing. Writing for children is fun. And if the author finds it fun then hopefully the child will find it fun to read.

Was there a particular reason why you wanted to write for children?

Now there’s something about me that communicates with children and always has since I was a child. I was the boy in your class who wasn’t particularly good at sports but was particularly good at making other children laugh. I was the naughty child. I still am. I’m still making them laugh in a way. It’s quite sad I haven’t moved on in my life. Some people might think what is this man doing making children laugh? Perhaps he should be out there doing grown-up things. But I think making children laugh is incredibly grown-up. Look, if children laugh while they are learning, then the world is going to be a more educated place in 20 or 30 years’ time.

You also played a huge role in saving your community library from getting closed down.Tell us why that was important for you.

Most people like to meet other people in a community where they can discuss, learn and gain more knowledge. For children we call these places schools, for adults they’re called libraries. That’s why I was involved in saving my community libraries from closing down because I realized that without them the community would have lost something of irredeemable, absolutely incalculable value. It was about the future and no one knows what the value of learning will be in the future.

But is there a need for libraries today when almost everybody has access to the Internet?

I think books are still a better way to access information at the moment, because you can sit on the Internet for days researching and most facts can be disputable and that can be frustrating. This doesn’t mean the Internet has no value, of course it does. And yes, the world is changing overtime and we are changing with it.

How is the experience of reading books going to change in the future?

I think in the world of books, whether fiction or nonfiction, it is going to become more interactive. So when you actually choose to read a book, you are going to choose to interact with it in a much more interesting way. And I think that’s where the future of books is headed. If you read a Nick Arnold book in the future, sure you will read the book, but maybe also watch a Horrible Science show with it.I think I will have to go with the new trends of the future, if I will be writing in 20 years’ time. And there’s nothing wrong with that. I mean if you look back at history, people would travel from city to city to teach or write books, and that’s how the learning tradition was passed. So there’s nothing new about what’s happening now. Maybe it’s going back to the way it always was.

Are children still interested in science?

I think children are vastly interested in science. Governments are and should encourage children to learn science because they realize that in the future they will need more scientists, engineers, technicians, doctors and so forth. Also, around the world there is an understanding among all sorts of people that the problems that we face must mainly be understood by science. So you have to have people with a scientific interest and background or what we call scientific literacy, which means understanding the basic language of science. I wouldn’t like to say that an interest in science is growing throughout the world but I would love to think that if this planet of ours has a future then there is such an interest and it is growing. Science is dramatic, it’s funny, it’s exciting, it’s horrible in the best sense of the word and that’s enough to take an interest in science for anybody.

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