Olga Podoprigora - An Interview

We recently read and reviewed The Banana From Space And Other Stories From Riverstone.

Open Shelf caught up with author Olga Podoprigora to find out more. 

Riverstone feels like a world where quiet magic is simply part of daily life. What first inspired you to create this town?

Riverstone didn’t appear all at once.

At first there were individual characters, images, and feelings. Over time, they began to connect and form a single world. The Pictureless Book and The Magic Garden were born back in 2020. Later came Sophie’s Beads of Memory, followed by other stories.

I wanted to create a place where wonder isn’t separated from everyday life. In Riverstone, magic lives inside ordinary things. It feels natural, almost routine. It doesn’t interfere with the familiar world; it helps us see it more deeply.

Perhaps the greatest inspiration came from my belief that even the most ordinary things can be remarkable if we look at them with curiosity and kindness.

I think Riverstone is a place where I would happily live myself.

Did the idea begin with one story, or did you always imagine a full collection of interconnected tales?

My stories often begin with a small detail or an ordinary moment. If I’m disciplined enough to write it down, it may eventually become a story.

At first, these were separate stories and separate characters. But quite quickly I realised that the stories all seemed to belong to the same world, as if they were happening right around the corner from one another.

That was when Riverstone appeared. The town became more than a setting. It became a shared home and a meeting place for different stories, creatures, and moods.

How did you decide on the tone - whimsical, calm, and gently surreal?

That part was surprisingly easy.

I have always loved stories where the characters are trying to understand the world rather than conquer it.

A major influence on my writing was the British author, Donald Bisset. When I was a child, someone gifted me one of his story collections. It quickly became one of my favourite books and it still is to this day.

I still remember my first impression of his stories. They were strange, funny, and yet completely serious within their own logic. I think that was the first time I realised that anything can happen in a fairy tale, as long as the author truly believes in it.

My own style probably grew out of two things: a love of stories like those and a habit of looking at the world as something alive and full of wonder.

That is my natural voice as a writer. Writing in a different way doesn’t come easily to me. At the same time, I enjoy experimenting with new forms and new kinds of stories. Sometimes I want more adventure, more movement, or more humour. Not because I dislike my usual style, but because I enjoy learning and discovering new possibilities.

Your stories avoid villains and conflict-heavy plots. What draws you to this softer style of children’s storytelling?

I don’t think children always need danger, fear, or large-scale conflicts for a story to be engaging.

In real life, children already encounter anxiety, loneliness, and misunderstanding. I wanted to create stories that offer a little warmth and a sense of inner comfort.

That doesn’t mean my stories are free of challenges. Donnie struggles with fear. Sophie misses her parents. Rory searches for his place in the world. Agatha is coping with the loss of a friendship. But these difficulties do not break the characters. They help them grow.

At this stage of my life, I’m more interested in writing about people and other creatures learning to understand themselves and each other than about fighting villains.

That’s why the problems in my stories usually grow out of fear, loneliness, or uncertainty rather than malice.

The old gardener in The Magic Garden isn’t a villain. He simply loves the garden so much that he tries to protect it in the wrong way. Basil in The Hedgehog and the Miracle is trying to help his friend feel better. Even Donnie's bad dreams aren’t defeated by force.

He learns to understand them.

I believe stories like these can still be exciting while also helping children see different sides of life.

How do you balance whimsy with emotional depth in a way that resonates with young readers?

Unfortunately, I am no longer a child.

I can’t be as completely sincere, curious, and open as I was when I was young. All I can do is ask my inner child: "Well? Did you like it? Was it fun or was it boring?" Sometimes my inner child yawns and replies: "Boring."

That’s a very unpleasant answer, and it usually means I need to rewrite something.

A banana from space or a talking book may sound like strange ideas, but the emotions behind them are familiar: the desire to belong, the fear of loneliness, curiosity, joy.

I think children have a remarkable ability to recognise sincerity.

You can send ants to the Moon inside a banana or fill a garden with fairies, but if the character's feelings are genuine, a child will believe the story.

What do you hope children feel when they enter the world of Riverstone?

I hope children feel that small and unusual things matter too: the wind in the trees, whitecaps on the waves, the smile of a friend. Children naturally see magic in the world. I think stories can help preserve that way of seeing.

I would like readers to want to linger in this world, to explore it and notice its details.

And I hope that when they finish the book, they are left with the feeling that the real world around them is a little magical as well.

One young reader wrote to me:

"Riverstone sounds like a place I want to live in. The stories made me feel calm and happy."

Another said:

"This book made me feel warm inside. I liked the hedgehog story because it was sweet and hopeful. I hope there are more Riverstone books."

Messages like these make me incredibly happy. They remind me that I’m not the only person who would like to spend some time living in Riverstone and discovering new corners of it.

Let's look at some specific stories.

Princess Lynxe and the Sun has a folkloric, timeless quality. What inspired that particular tale?

I lived near the ocean for many years. The Pacific Ocean is one of the great loves of my life.

The ocean is always changing, yet somehow always supportive. If you’re angry, you can stand on the shore during a storm and shout along with it. You can share your thoughts with it, your worries, your joys. You can even dance with it quietly.

I think a part of me carries the ocean wherever I go. Strange? Probably. I know. Perhaps that’s why Ocean became such an important part of this story.

In Princess Lynxe and the Sun, I was less interested in the events themselves than in the feeling behind them: light, warmth, hope, and the sense of a journey. I have always loved folktales and legends where not everything is explained directly. They feel more like dreams than explanations.

The story itself grew out of a simple child-like question: "Where does the sun go in the evening?"

I think most children have asked a similar question at least once. When we are young, the world feels enormous and mysterious. For some people, it stays that way forever.

What interested me most in Princess Lynxe's story was the desire to understand something that seems mysterious. She doesn’t set out in search of glory or some reward. She begins her journey because she wants an answer to a question that has fascinated her since childhood.

I like that she never receives a scientific explanation. Instead, she discovers her own fairy-tale truth about the Sun and the Ocean. For me, that is a very important way of looking at the world.

The Magic Garden stands out as a potential reader favourite. What was the seed of that story for you?

This story grew out of thoughts about love and freedom.

I’ve always been interested in the question of why the best intentions sometimes lead to results very different from what we hoped for. The gardener genuinely loves his garden and wants to protect it. But little by little, that love turns into a desire to control everything.

I wanted to show how even the best feelings can become harmful when we start holding on too tightly to the things we love. The garden itself becomes a character in the story. It loves children, laughter, drawings, and the life around it. That is why it literally leaves in search of a place where it can remain alive and happy.

Perhaps that’s why this remains one of the most important stories in the collection for me personally.

The whole of The Banana From Space is delightfully odd. How do you approach writing stories that are strange but still emotionally grounded?

I like it when stories allow themselves to be strange.

Children's imaginations aren’t afraid of unusual ideas. To a child, a banana from space isn’t a problem to be solved. It’s an invitation to play and to wonder. In fact, that’s exactly how the story was born. My son said the phrase as a joke, and it got stuck in my head. One sleepless night, it grew into a story.

My brain works like that. It grabs onto a phrase or an image, and then a question appears: "What if...?" That’s how the stories are born.

It’s not that we now have a ban on strange phrases in our family, but unusual comments are often greeted with a growl these days. One innocent sentence can easily lead to three months of work on a new book.

After one such remark, I ended up writing a story about a retired trolleybus. It’s currently being prepared for publication. I suspect that most of my stories begin this way.

I think strange ideas work best when the characters treat them completely seriously.

For Lucia, travelling to the Moon inside a banana isn’t some joke. She genuinely wants to help a lonely Moon and find a new home for her people.

On the surface, the story is absurd. Underneath, it explores growing up, accepting responsibility, and finding one's own path. Even when it turns out that they never reached the Moon at all, Lucia does not see the journey as a failure. She simply finds meaning in the place where she ends up.

There are some themes that join the stories. Many of the stories explore kindness, curiosity, and connection. Were these themes intentional from the start?

Partly, yes. But many of those themes appeared naturally as I worked.

I never sit down to write a fairy tale thinking, "Now I'm going to teach children something." For me, a story always begins with a feeling, an atmosphere, or a character.

Over time, though, I noticed that my stories kept returning to the same ideas: kindness, an interest in the world, a sense of home, and the desire to be understood.

When I look back at the collection, I see that the characters aren’t trying to defeat anyone. Rather, they’re trying to understand something.

Lynxe wants to understand the Sun.

Alex wants to understand the Garden.

Donnie wants to understand his dreams.

Agatha wants to understand a new city.

Rory is trying to understand his purpose.

I think that’s why kindness, curiosity, and connection found their way into the book so naturally. I didn’t plan them. They simply turned out to be part of how I see the world.

The collection carries gentle moral lessons without ever feeling didactic. How do you achieve that balance?

I think children are very good at noticing when someone is trying to teach them a lesson.

That’s why I try not to write my stories as lessons.

I’m much more interested in showing a world where characters learn to understand themselves, each other, and the wonderful things happening around them. I usually begin with a character and a situation rather than a moral.

For example, the story of Donnie and May didn’t begin as a story about dealing with fears. It began with the image of a ladybug trying to eat a bad dream.

The story of Raccoonie didn’t begin as a lesson about finding a calling. It began with the idea of a raccoon who decided to become a streetcar. I like it when children discover the meaning of a story for themselves rather than receiving it ready-made.

What do you think children learn from stories where the world follows its own quiet, dreamlike logic?

I think stories like these remind us that not everything in the world needs a simple explanation.

Modern life often encourages children to understand and explain everything as quickly as possible. Dreamlike fairy tales remind us that some things do not need to be explained right away.

Sometimes it’s enough to feel the atmosphere, notice small details, ask unusual questions, and allow yourself to wonder. Every now and then, after reading a story a child asks a question that would never occur to an adult. I think fairy tales exist for moments like that.

Let's have a look now at some author decisions. How do you decide which animals or characters belong in each story?

The characters usually appear very intuitively.

It often starts with an image from real life, from my imagination, or from a casual conversation. Then, little by little, I begin to understand their personality and what kind of story it’ll tell.

I like characters who feel a little unusual while still being emotionally familiar. For example, one autumn we were clearing away piles of dry leaves and discovered dozens of ladybugs underneath. They were looking for a place to spend the winter.

That simple moment inspired two different stories: one about May, the ladybug who eats bad dreams, and another about Lucia and her friends searching for a place where they belong.

Do you begin with a message, an image, or a character when crafting a new tale?

It’s different every time. I don’t have some specific formula for writing stories.

Sometimes an emotion comes first, and I start looking for a way to express it.

Sometimes it begins with a sentence casually thrown into a conversation. A single phrase can become both a character and an entire story.

That’s exactly what happened with Street-Raccoonie.

At first, it was simply a funny idea. Then I started wondering why a raccoon would want to become a streetcar in the first place. Little by little, the entire story grew out of that question.

Other times, it begins with an image or a feeling that something magical is nearby. Then I start paying closer attention to the pictures, events, and words that appear around me.

Eventually, the story grows out of them.

Was there a story in the collection that changed the most during writing?

The biggest change happened in the story about Sophie and her grandma, Margo.

In the original version, Grandma Margo was the one telling Sophie a story about a fairy and a magical bracelet.

But as I worked on it, the story seemed to decide that it wanted to be more direct. Instead of hearing about someone else's miracle, Sophie was given her own adventure and her own encounter with wonder.

That sort of thing happens from time to time. Some stories begin changing while they’re being written, and I like leaving room for those surprises. That is usually the moment when a story starts to feel alive.

The drawings and closing poems add a soft, lyrical touch. How did you approach pairing visuals and verse with the stories?

The poems weren’t really necessary. I simply wanted to write them. They were a gift to myself. I hope young readers will forgive me.

Whenever a story was finished, it often felt as though something inside me was still trying to find its way out, still wanting to become visible. A friend of mine once read one of the poems and politely asked what age group I had written it for.

I didn’t really know how to answer.

The truth is that I write for children of any age who still find these things meaningful and interesting, even if those children grew up a long time ago. If a child isn’t interested in the poem, they can simply finish the story and move on. But if they do read it, I hope they will hear a quiet echo of the story continuing after the final page.

As for the illustrations, they aren’t decorations. They’re part of the book’s atmosphere. They continue the mood of each story. I wanted readers to be left with a small aftertaste when the story ended: something calm, thoughtful, and a little dreamlike. That’s why the final illustrations are presented almost like photographs from a journey.

What role do you think illustrations play in shaping a child’s emotional experience of a story?

For a child, an illustration is much more than a picture of a scene. It creates the emotional space of the story. A character's expression, the details of the world around them: these things influence how a child experiences a story. Illustrations are especially important for younger children.

They help readers not only understand what’s happening but also feel the atmosphere of the story. A child may not fully understand Sophie's longing for her parents or Agatha's loneliness, but they can recognise those emotions on a character's face.

Illustrations also help make a fictional world feel real. They seem to say: "Yes, this place exists. This is what it looks like. Welcome."

Interestingly, after the book was published, I was asked a question about illustrations that I had never considered before. One adult reader pointed out what seemed like a contradiction: in one of my stories, a book learns to accept being without illustrations, yet the collection itself is illustrated.

To me, there is no contradiction. It depends on the age of the reader. For a child who already reads confidently and enjoys building worlds in their imagination, illustrations may not be necessary. Sometimes the absence of a ready-made image can help create a more personal one.

But for younger children, illustrations are often the first doorway into a book and part of the journey through the story itself.

With ten stories, how did you maintain variety while keeping a consistent tone and world?

At the moment, I am still deeply immersed in the world of Riverstone. The stories tend to come out in a way that makes you immediately think, "Yes, this definitely belongs in Riverstone." One day I’ll write something completely different, but for now, this is where I am.

I think the variety comes from the characters themselves and the stories they carry.

Each story has its own mood.

Princess Lynxe and the Sun feels like a legend.

The Banana From Space is stranger and more playful.

The Pictureless Book is closer to a fable.

The Hedgehog and the Miracle is a story about friendship.

Yet they all take place in a world where characters are trying to understand themselves, one another, and the wonderful things happening around them.

I think that’s what holds the collection together.

What connects these stories beyond their shared setting?

I think all of the stories are, in one way or another, about finding your place in the world.

The characters of Riverstone aren’t driven by victory or rewards. More often, they are searching for answers to the questions that matter to them.

They’re trying to understand something: the world around them, other people, or themselves.

Perhaps that’s why even the smallest and strangest things in this world matter.

If Riverstone had one guiding philosophy, what would it be?

Almost every Riverstone character is wondering about something, exploring something, or trying to understand something.

Lynxe sets out in search of the Sun.

Agatha discovers a new town.

Donnie learns to understand his dreams.

Rory searches for his purpose.

Sophie learns how to preserve precious memories.

Basil tries to make the world a little better for his friend.

All of them are looking for answers to different questions, yet they’re driven by the same desire: to understand the world a little better. Perhaps that’s the philosophy of Riverstone:

"Never stop wondering about the world, asking questions, and caring for the people around you."

Do you see yourself returning to Riverstone in future books?

Absolutely.

I’m certain that Riverstone is much bigger than a single collection of stories. There are still many places, characters, and stories in this world that I haven’t explored yet. And I like the idea that readers may one day return there as well.

I’m already working on a second Riverstone book. It will include the story of how the town itself came into being. And, of course, it will be strange and unusual. I’m also finishing another book, set in the same universe. This one isn’t really about Riverstone itself. Instead, it tells the story of one character and the events that took place long before they ever got anywhere near Riverstone.

So are there characters or creatures you didn’t include this time but hope to explore later?

Yes, quite a few.

Some of them already live in the stories of my next book. Others exist only as a few lines in a notebook or as a faint image waiting for its story.

Some characters arrive loudly and confidently, as though they already know exactly why they’re here. Others stand quietly in the background for a long time, waiting for me to finally notice them.

I don’t like to rush. I prefer to give characters time to reveal themselves gradually. I think there are still many untold stories left in Riverstone. Some of them have already started knocking on the door.

What kind of stories do you hope to tell next for young readers?

To be honest, new stories usually arrive without any warning.

A long time ago, I stopped making confident predictions about what I would write next. Experience has taught me that another strange idea may already be waiting just around the corner.

By now, I have accumulated a whole queue of future book series. They’re patiently waiting for me to finish the second Riverstone book and finally turn my attention toward them.

Sometimes I give up and tell a new book or series: "All right then. Tell me your story."

When that happens, I take a day off from Riverstone and relax by working on an entirely different series instead.

I’m drawn to stories where wonder exists alongside ordinary life: stories about finding your place in the world, friendship, hope, and the small discoveries that gradually change a person.

I also believe the world becomes a better place when we keep our ability to be amazed. Those are the kind of stories I hope to keep writing.

Thanks to Olga for joining us to discuss The Banana From Space and more!

You can read more about Olga and her work HERE.