Caleb Krisp - Are you ready for Ivy Pocket? What do you mean, not again?

Are you ready for Ivy Pocket? The wickedly funny, completely unreliable maid of no importance returns—this time as a coffin maker’s daughter—in this action-packed sequel to Anyone but Ivy Pocket. Published by Bloomsbury 05/05/2016(UK) Greenwillow Books 05/31/2016(US)

Caleb Krisp: Miss Pocket, being a twelve-year-old lady's maid of no importance, it must have been a great shock when I chose to write a book about you.

Ivy Pocket: Not really, dear. You're hardly the first.

Caleb Krisp: You . . . you would have me believe that there have been other books written about you?

Ivy Pocket: I'm practically positive.

Caleb Krisp: Name them.

Ivy Pocket: It's shocking that you even have to ask, for they are awfully well known. Ivy Pocket and the Sorcerer's Whatsit was a great hit. Followed up most spectacularly with Ivy Pocket and the Chamber of Thingermajigs. And Ivy of Green Gables is a classic. Diary of a Whimsical Kidwas the best-selling book of 1889, based entirely on my journals. Second only to The Lion, The Witch and the Windmill, which chronicles my perilous journey across the badlands of Holland armed with just two hairpins and a honeypot.

Caleb Krisp: Forget I asked. Somebody call my agent!

Ivy Pocket: Mr. Krisp, you're scowling in a most unattractive fashion and your double chin is all atremble. What's the matter?

Caleb Krisp: What's the matter? I am a serious author, Miss Pocket, and yet when I sat down to write my great masterpiece, the very stuff of my soul, who was it that appeared? You, that's who!

Ivy Pocket: No need to thank me, dear. It warms my soul that of all the writers in the world who might stumble upon my wondrous adventure, it was a bald, friendless fatso in desperate need of a hit. Well done!

Caleb Krisp: Tell me, Miss Pocket, why are you such an infuriating, disobedient, troublesome girl?

Ivy Pocket: Practice, I should think.

Caleb Krisp: Is it any wonder that from the first chapter, people are either trying to get away from you, or kill you?

Ivy Pocket: Well that's hardly my fault, now is it? You decided to leave me alone and penniless in Paris with no way of getting home. I would have been bonkers to reject Countess Carbunkle's generous offer to deliver that cursed diamond to Matilda Butterfield for her twelfth birthday. How was I supposed to know that the necklace she entrusted me with has the power to—

Caleb Krisp: Button your lips, Miss Pocket. We do not want to spoil things for our readers.

Ivy Pocket: Do I look like some sort of dimwitted nincompoop? I was simply going to point out that the great secret shadowing me for the entire book is that—

Caleb Krisp: Another word from you, Miss Pocket, and I will write you into a locked box and bury you beneath the sea. Do you understand?

Ivy Pocket: Hardly ever.

Caleb Krisp: Besides, your story is not yet finished. If you thought you had trouble in this book, just wait for the sequel, Miss Pocket.
Ivy Pocket: No thank you. I'll wait for the movie if you don't mind.

Caleb Krisp: Ugh. Hideous child.

Ivy Pocket: Happy to help, dear.

Caleb Krisp - Anyone but Ivy Pocket Guest Blog Tour ( THE BIRTH OF AN ANTI-HEROINE )

Many thanks to Caleb Krisp for dropping by Mr Ripley's Enchanted Books to tell us about the THE BIRTH OF AN ANTI-HEROINE. What a character she is.....what do you think?


How I came to write IVY POCKET is actually a heartwarming tale - for years I had devoted myself to writing. I lived and breathed my work, crafting stories that were heartbreakingly moving, bone shatteringly brilliant and entirely in Latin. Naturally, it was a cruel shock when the publishing world rejected one book after another. At the very moment I was struggling with my latest literary failure - a nine hundred page masterpiece on the history of butter - my beloved housekeeper, Mrs Cuttlefish, took a creative writing course via correspondence. The deluded fossil was convinced she had a gift for writing and from time to time she would ask for my expert opinion. Her stories were terrible. Until last winter, when Mrs Cuttlefish presented me with the first five chapters of a new novel - the tale of a twelve year old maid by the name of Ivy Pocket. To my amazement, it wasn't completely awful. In fact, it was rather good. 

A few months later she showed me the finished manuscript. What she had written needed work, but it was fresh and funny and slightly wicked. Here was a character who was plucky and optimistic, but also incorrigible, delusional, loose with the truth, infuriating and utterly bonkers. I knew that with my help, my bone-headed housekeeper was destined to find great success with "Anyone But Ivy Pocket" Was I jealous? Not at all! I was delighted for the haggard old bat.

Mrs Cuttlefish confessed she hadn't showed her manuscript to a soul, apart from me. Which was frightfully interesting. One evening I decided to do a little gardening - digging and whatnot. It took several hours, but I managed to dig a rather impressive hole. By a remarkable coincidence, it matched the exact dimensions of Mrs Cuttlefish. 

Unfortunately, my watch must have fallen off as I was gardening. So I asked Mrs Cuttlefish to come outside and help me find it. She seemed to have misplaced her glasses, which was regrettable. She stumbled about in the dark for at least fifteen minutes, before plummeting into the hole. What are the odds?  

I shone the torch into the hole, fully prepared to rescue the kind-hearted nincompoop. Which was terribly selfish of me. For as I watched her lying there, I couldn't deny how remarkably contented she looked. And as she was old and had a vast collection of ceramic frogs, I felt the kindest thing to do was cover her over with some soil and plant a rose bush (which is flowering beautifully, by the way)

Being a magnificent sort of person, I quickly decided that the only way to honour Mrs Cuttlefish's memory was to make a few improvements to her book, remove her name from the manuscript and replace it with my own. Then send it out into the world. The rest is literary history. And I know for a fact that Mrs Cuttlefish is delighted by my success, for she haunts my cottage with great enthusiasm. In fact, I am hoping that once she stops shaking the walls and throwing pots at my head, she will help me write the next adventure of Ivy Pocket. A happy ending all around.

Other blog tour posts: Caleb Krisp - Author Interview - My Book Corner 
John Kelly, the illustrator for Anyone But Ivy Pocket - MinerrvaReads
You can read my review of Anyone But Ivy Pocket - HERE