Run

Host Mia Henderson and young reader Alex discuss Run with author Sarah Armstrong.

Run is Shortlisted for the 2026 CBCA Book of the Year Awards for Younger Readers.

–

Cas ran away to escape his problems. Now, he may have to run for his life.

For fans of Tristan Bancks and Katherine Rundell comes this electrifying middle-grade novel about a twelve-year-old called Cas, who runs away to avoid a reunion with his estranged father. Cas soon finds himself lost in the wilderness, completely alone and without help. Or is he?
 
Cas thought running away from home would solve all his problems. But he didn’t count on getting hopelessly lost in the tangled Australian bush. Alone and afraid, Cas has given up all hope of rescue when he stumbles upon a strange family hiding out in the wilderness. He won’t survive without their help. But when he discovers they’re also on the run – from something so big, they won’t even talk about it – he realises his problems are just beginning …

Transcript

Mia 0:14

Welcome to our very own Shadow Judging podcast where we will celebrate young voices who are responding to one of the 2026 shortlisted books in the Young Reader category. Hi, my name is Mia Henderson and I'm your Young Readers podcast host. Today we are chatting to Sarah Armstrong. Sarah's book Run is a fast-paced survival tale that explores themes of trust, resilience, and complicated families. Hello, Sarah Armstrong and Alex from New South Wales.

Sarah 0:44

Hello, so nice to be here. Thank you for having me.

Alex 0:47

Thanks, Mia. It's really nice to be here and be on this podcast with Sarah.

Mia 0:53

Thank you. Sarah, did you always plan on having the current book as a story, or was there a different plan at the start?

Sarah 1:00

Well, I always planned on writing a survival story because I have always loved reading survival stories. When I was a kid, any story that had a little bit of it that involved a character, like a kid being out in the wild, having to survive on their wits, like always, always grabbed me. So I kind of had an inkling that at some point I was going to write a story that was a survival story. So I definitely knew that going in. And that was sort of as much as I knew. I wanted someone to be lost in the wilderness and having to survive. And the rest of the story came to me as I was writing it. Like I'm someone who doesn't do a lot of planning ahead. I had a have a kind of situation in my mind. And then the story reveals itself to me as I write, and the characters reveal themselves to me as I write. So that was that was kind of the process with this book.

Alex 1:57

Where do you get the inspiration for your stories? More specifically, the inspiration from run.

Sarah 2:02

Yeah, I would say for run. Well, part of it was that my love of survival stories, but also my love of nature, my love of being in nature, and my curiosity about nature. And so I would say the inspiration came from those sort of curiosities and interests of mine. But as for inspiration generally, I feel like it's just all around us all the time. That in my own life there are just little things that happen that just find their way into the story. It's it's amazing how that happens. It's just I'll notice something when I'm walking down the street. Like I'll just notice, I don't know, a pothole on the road that someone's painted around and written filmy. Uh, you might remember that, is actually in run in in the sort of first chapter. And I just sort of notice it and I file it away, and then it pops up while I'm writing a book. So I would say that generally the inspiration comes from my life and the world around me. I also think imagination is just sort of a magical, magical thing that does its own work.

Alex 3:11

Yeah, I I definitely agree with you on that.

Mia 3:14

I do have another question, one of which I was thinking throughout the entire novel. Were Pearl and Viv based on real people?

Sarah 3:20

Are Pearl and Viv based on based on real people? No, not at all, actually. Uh I think when I started writing, my characters were a little bit more based on real people, but these days, maybe tiny, weeny, tiny snippets, but not much at all. They just seem to kind of spring to life fully formed. And that said, all those secondary characters with Pearl and Viv are secondary characters, just like you know, Mac is and Mel and Dad, and they're all secondary characters because Cas is our main character. I need them to be a certain way to interact with him. So who they are depends on what I want them to do, what role I want them to play in relation to Cas. So that does sort of dictate a bit who they end up being. And that is a kind of interesting process as I go to figure out how do I need this character to behave and what do I need them to want and to be afraid of and believe in in order for them to show up aspects of Cas or make life difficult for Cas. Because stories get really interesting when you put your characters under pressure, you know. Writers are very nice people in real life, but when they're writing, they they're often sort of putting their characters under a bit of pressure and making life very difficult for their characters. So I was having to figure out ways those secondary characters could do that for Cas, my main character. So that shapes them a bit as well. But also, again, it's the magical thing of these characters just seem to land on the page. They feel real to me now, like they're real, even though I invented them. It's yeah, can't explain that.

Alex 5:08

May I ask? I've been wondering where is Cas's mum? Or more specifically, is she still alive?

Sarah 5:14

Yeah, it's a good question. And I had to have a think about whether I was going to ever explain that. And I did actually write a whole section of him, uh, go back to his mum, where his mum grew up and tracked down a relative. Like there was a whole bit I wrote that ended up just not being used with him going looking for his grandparents. And I guess I'm not completely sure where she is because I didn't really write it. But my guess is that, you know, life got really difficult for her. Perhaps there were mental health issues, and in my mind, she's alive, but she just had to get away. That's that's that's in my mind what got the story is with her. But because I don't write that, it it my readers can make their own version of that up. And it will be as true as mine because it's not on the page. What did you think happened to her?

Alex 6:07

I was thinking that maybe that when they got to Morton, Cas would find out that either the mum had a disease or was dead, or I either that or she was in like the Bahamas or something. I don't know.

Sarah 6:20

Yeah, let let's wish that she's in the Bahamas. That sounds better, huh? Yeah. So I decided not to go and write all that stuff. I could have. And you make all these decisions when you're writing a novel, you're going, all right, so at this point I could go down this whole path and explore all this sort of part of the story, but I felt like it was taking away from the main story, which was Cas and his relationship with nature and his relationship with Mac and Viv in particular, and then how things were gonna end up with his dad and Mel.

Mia 6:55

Thank you, Sarah. I must ask, I was very interested in this book, and I was just pondering ever since reading it. Will there be a sequel?

Sarah 7:03

Um, no plans for a sequel at this point. I am writing, I have written more to the point, uh, another survival book, which is coming out in August. Uh, and it's again, it's survival. It's about a kid, not Cas, this kid's name is Max, and it's about it's about a tsunami. He gets there's a tsunami warning on his island where he lives, and he's all home alone, and then he has to try and figure out what to do, and bands up with a couple of other kids who are also alone. So another survival story, but I feel like Cas's story ended with things like things are gonna work out for Cas. That's the feeling I wanted. I hope you had that feeling at the end. Did you have that feeling? Yeah. So it feels like things have been kind of resolved for Cas , and I don't feel the need for a sequel for Cas. Did would you want a sequel? What would you want to find out if there was a sequel?

Mia 7:58

I feel not necessarily there needs to be any more, but I always did wonder, could there be any more on the life before Mac?

Sarah 8:07

About their story.

Mia 8:09

Yeah.

Sarah 8:09

Yeah. I was always really curious about that, that idea of a family just be being told you've got half an hour to pack everything. You can only take what you can carry, and this is it. You know, you've got to get stuff from your house, and then we're on the run. Like that really always intrigued me. So, like a prequel kind of thing.

Alex 8:26

Your story about Max, that sort of answered one of my questions for me. But I would like to know which character in the book was the hardest one to write about?

Sarah 8:34

I think Dad, maybe, because Dad fails Cas. Dad really fails Cas. And so I wanted to show that, or at least wanted that to be known. But I also wanted Dad to be a sympathetic enough character that the reader would believe that he could come good and redeem himself. The reader could believe he was doing his very best to support Cas and that there's a good chance he was going to be there for Cas in the future. So trying to find that balance of showing that Cas had had a really, really hard time, but make Dad redeemable. So that that for me was a little bit of a balancing act. Writing someone like Rosa was easy because, you know, she's just, you know, a good, solid friend. You know, that was that was not hard. Uh, and even Viv wasn't hard because she just she just sort of kind of I'm like leapt off the page fully formed. I really had her immediately, who she was. Like in the first lines I wrote about Viv when they first met, and Pearl goes away, and then Viv is leading him through the forest. It's like she was just so herself immediately. She was really easy to write. So yeah, some characters definitely are easier than others to write. And I think it's the more complex characters that are tricky. Again, with Mac, I wanted him to be a little bit, I wanted the reader not to be sure at first if they could trust him or if Cas could trust him. So he had to have that sort of a little bit of an edge to him. But of course, ultimately he ends up being a reliable and caring person. But initially the reader needs to be not sure, so I just had to play that a little bit carefully to create that uncertainty.

Mia 10:11

Yes, of course. As I was reading about Pearl, I knew that she must have been a very rebellious young girl. But as her sudden appearance once Cas was out of the bush, it surprised me even more. The blue hair, lots of makeup. Were you surprised to find yourself in that sort of description?

Sarah 10:30

So this is when they're in town and and then she comes to visit. No, I felt like she'd be exploring all that stuff because she wouldn't have had the chance when they were on the run, you know, in the bush, and she just is someone who, you know, is a little bit quirky and likes to sort of dress up and enjoys colour in her hair and all that stuff. So it felt that felt true to who I imagined she was. Were you surprised that she had blue hair and stuff?

Mia 11:02

I was very surprised.

Sarah 11:04

You thought she was a bit more of a natural kind of person.

Mia 11:07

Indeed.

Sarah 11:07

Yeah. I think, you know, she just trying trying it out. And I think at the same age I was maybe even a bit a little bit younger, you know, I would I would go through phases of sort of wearing different types of clothes or you know, wearing makeup, or uh so I guess I just sort of see it as that. She's experimenting when she gets out of the bush and and taking advantage of everything that civilisation has to offer.

Alex 11:31

If you love survival stories, would you say you're more like Pearl, Viv or maybe Matt?

Sarah 11:36

Ah, good question. Am I a Pearl? Am I a viv? Am I a Mac? I don't think I've got as much skill as Mac. He really knows what he's doing, right? You know, I couldn't slaughter a goat. Even if I was emotionally able to slaughter a goat, which I don't think I'd be able to, I wouldn't then know what to do with it, right? I'm probably more of like a bit of a viv. Quite quite relaxed out in nature, and I know a bit. And I'm happy to be out there for a certain amount of time, but then I actually really love hot showers and soft beds as well. So yeah, I think I'm probably a Viv. I'm not a Cas. I I'm a bit more comfortable out there than Cas was, at least at the start.

Alex 12:17

Speaking of Mac and his children, um, on the cover, we see there's Cas, and then there's a reflection of Cas in the lake. But I see, but I notice it's it looks like there are three people there in the lake, right?

Sarah 12:30

Yeah, very well spotted, really well spotted. So that is obviously the reflection of Mac and Viv and Pearl. And the um cover artist, whose name is Guy Shield, he came up with that really early on when he came up with that sort of cover concept. So the way it works with covers is the artist sends through some sort of ideas, and that was one of the ideas. And as soon as he sent through that one, we're like, oh, we love that, and the reflection was there. And I love it when there's just a little thing in a um, just looking at it here now, when there's something in a cover that you don't notice for maybe a little while, and then you see it. Like, I don't know if you saw that straight away, but I'm imagining some people might not catch that immediately, but while they're reading it, they'll see it. And I really like that idea. There's a little sort of secret hidden in the cover.

Alex 13:19

I noticed that it looked like there were people, maybe. I thought like the main shadow was Kaz and the other two were just random bushes. But but it wasn't until I was like halfway through the story that I realised it was those three.

Sarah 13:33

Yeah. It's it's a really lovely thing because as a writer, I'm not an artist at all. And as a writer to create something, to create a story, and then have an artist and a designer, because it was also designed by someone in Hardy Grant, to have an artist and a designer, then create a cover that's sort of inspired by your words. It's a really, really magical thing. I love it. Um, it's uh one of my favourite parts of the whole process is seeing the cover come together. And covers really matter, don't they? You know, they say don't judge a book by its cover, but the cover tells us a lot about what to expect in the book, you know, what kind of style, what sort of genre it is. It gives us so much information and hopefully creates questions in our mind. And I think that cover does that so well. So I'm really I love that cover.

Mia 14:24

Thank you so much, Sarah and Alex. It's been wonderful chatting with the both of you.

Sarah 14:28

Thank you. Thank you, Mia. Thank you, Alex, for those fantastic questions. And thank you for reading Run and inviting me onto your podcast. I can't wait to listen to all the other people that you speak to for the podcast.