Inked

Host Mia and young reader Ainsley discuss Inked with author Karen Wasson and illustrator Jake A Minton.

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

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When 12-year-old Sid discovers a talking octopus in his family’s fish shop, he is shocked – and annoyed. Otto the octopus is cheeky, demanding, and won’t leave Sid alone until he helps Otto get to the ocean … roughly 300 kilometres away!

But Sid has bigger fish to fry. He has to figure out how to get into the art school of his dreams, or else high school next year will be a nightmare. 
 
Can these frenemies find a way to work together, or will it all end in disaster? Or even worse … will Sid and Otto realise they actually make a pretty great team?

Brimming with hilarity, hijinks and plenty of heart, the first graphic novel from author Karen Wasson and CBCA-acclaimed illustrator Jake A Minton sparkles with slapstick humour and fish-out-of-water misunderstandings. With extraordinary full-colour artwork and a bonus 'making of' section at the end, readers of all ages will be surprised and delighted with this stand-out suburban adventure for middle-grade readers. Prepare to get INKED!

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 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. Today we are talking to Karen Watson and Jake Minton, creators of the graphic novel Inc. Our reader today is Ainsley from South Australia. Welcome, Karen, Jake, and Ainsley. Would you like to share your thoughts about the book, Ainsley? Thank you.

SPEAKER_03 0:42

It's a book about two characters and author, but the author trying to get along, all the while trying to pay for Sid's private art school fees and having a few disputes along the line. My favourite part about the book was an honor pulls on a cutscene on sings in Sid's place. This was my favourite part because it shows confidence in high-pressure scenarios. I found Sid to be an interesting character because he showed up how even the most bullied kids can stand up and be proud. I really thought his character was well described, but his playfulness didn't show any strength, even remains confident with himself. I felt worried about at the start, warm inside of the strong board and cozy and at points and a little sad for the character in the end was pretty cozy for me, and it felt over relaxed. I felt like the book connected with my life a little bit, with having struggles throughout life. For me, life is like a rogue with and problems are potholes that you move on to the missus the message I take away from the book.

SPEAKER_01 1:36

That's really lovely, Ainsley.

SPEAKER_03 1:38

I'm so glad that you enjoyed it.

SPEAKER_00 1:40

Yeah, that was great. Great delivery as well. You're so good at this.

SPEAKER_03 1:43

I actually haven't had any practice with this, so that's pretty nice.

SPEAKER_00 1:46

No practice. Oh, you're natural.

SPEAKER_03 1:48

Yeah. You mind if I start the questions?

SPEAKER_00 1:50

Yeah, let's do it.

SPEAKER_03 1:51

Well, Karen, what was the inspiration for the book?

SPEAKER_01 1:54

That's a good question. And just like you, we're you connecting with it. It's actually it comes from my own life and my son's as well. My elder son was actually being bullied at school when I was writing inked. And he could have really used an opera singing octopus on his side, I think. I think we could all use an opera singing octopus on our side sometimes, don't you?

SPEAKER_03 2:17

Yes, we really could sometimes.

SPEAKER_01 2:19

Yeah, sometimes.

SPEAKER_00 2:20

Oh yeah, when I first read it as well, uh, sorry. Uh Karen, yeah, I complet I couldn't believe how much I I um connected with Sid, especially obviously the my love of drawing when I was his age and sort of being a lot quieter. And I even had hair like that, just a big buffy, massive hair. Which to be fair, I'm the one who drew his hair.

SPEAKER_01 2:41

You are the one who drew that.

SPEAKER_00 2:42

I might have based that off myself, but yeah, I definitely I definitely connected with Sid as well so much.

SPEAKER_03 2:48

Nice. Why did you choose to write a graphic novel, not a children's novel, Karen?

SPEAKER_01 2:52

That is a really good question. Because I could have just written a novel and then Jake wouldn't have had a job to do, would he? Um well actually before becoming a children's author, I used to work air. My job was to help make cartoons, which was good because I love cartoons and I I always loved cartoons. Um and when I was a kid, I used to make my own animations, stop motion animations and things like that. And then when I went to film school, I studied writing stories for films and TV and things like that. And I think that I've always just really loved telling stories visually. So when I found out that publishers were doing um graphic novels or they were looking for graphic novels, I thought, well, that's that's what I've got to do. And lucky for us, Jake really liked the story and he wanted to draw it as well.

SPEAKER_00 3:41

Well, also lucky for me that I was approached by by that publisher with that story. Like it was just there was a lot of luck involved.

SPEAKER_03 3:49

Well, how did you work alongside each other to develop the illustrations?

SPEAKER_01 3:53

Yeah, well, um, I wrote the story, obviously, and I sent it off to the publisher, and then the publisher sent it to Jake. So, and then once Jake got it, what what happened then, Jake?

SPEAKER_00 4:06

There was well, like initially it was just you start with all the character sketches and a lot of just sort of this is what I envisioned. Karen also in her descriptions has descriptions of the characters, like Sid is a shy, smaller boy, and so on and so forth for every character. So there was always like a jumping off point, but then when I decided, like because of the writing, to base Sid off of him, like an octopus, which is in the back of the book, uh, everything just kind of followed that way. But also a lot of like Karen's descriptions in the writing definitely helped. The only one that really changed was the dad. And initially, when Karen wrote him, he was really skinny and weedy, but I felt like everyone picked on him throughout the whole book. Uh, and I just felt a bit bad for him, so I made him huge.

SPEAKER_03 4:55

Yeah, that's bad.

SPEAKER_00 4:57

Yeah, that's what I thought. So it just doesn't really matter because he's just got that, he's got that size, so people can't dump on him and it doesn't seem as mean.

SPEAKER_01 5:05

But it works too. It works perfectly. It does work, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:08

And then the the collaboration is just a lot of um lots of sketching, blocking out the book, and then sitting down and having meetings. There was like a lot of meetings along the way with the with Karen and the editor and the publisher, a lot of emails, just a lot of collaboration back and forth, just making sure we're on the same page. But me and Karen very often were just on the exact same page, and it was the publisher that we had to sort of convince, like, oh, this is why we're doing this.

SPEAKER_03 5:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:33

So that was good.

SPEAKER_03 5:34

Why did he choose an octopus as one of the main characters and not another animal, Karen? I've I really like that question.

SPEAKER_00 5:40

That's a great question.

SPEAKER_01 5:42

What would what would you have chosen, Ainsley, instead of an octopus? I don't really know, but I think the octopus really fit. I think so too. I love I love sea creatures, I love the ocean and everything, and I just octopuses are amazing. They're such amazing creatures. So why not? Why not have an amazing opera singing octopus?

SPEAKER_03 6:01

Otto was a very loud and boisterous occurring octopus. How did you imagine his voice sounding, Karen?

SPEAKER_01 6:08

He talked to me a lot while I was writing this. He was always in my head saying all kinds of things. Um, so I definitely know what I think he sounds like. What do you think he sounds like, Ainsley? I think he sounds very posh.

SPEAKER_00 6:22

Yes, yeah, me so. Yeah. You know, um, you know Matt Berry from that Post of London show?

unknown 6:28

No.

SPEAKER_01 6:29

No, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:31

He's this like a posh British sort of comedian. That's exactly how I imagine him sounding.

SPEAKER_01 6:36

Yeah, could you give us a bit of an auto, Ainsley? No, no, too embarrassing.

SPEAKER_00 6:43

That's so fair.

SPEAKER_03 6:46

Sid seemed to be like sitting in the background and not being noticed. Why could you write these two characters as opposites?

SPEAKER_01 6:52

Yeah, well, again, that's very much from when I was younger. I would it just in myself, not two different people. I would be like, oh, I just I'm just gonna be quiet and I just wanna don't want to I want to blend in, I don't want to stand out. And then other times I'd be like, everybody, here I am, look at me, I'll be the class clown. Oh yeah. And that my son is very much like I have three kids, but one of them that I sort of based it off is very much like that too.

SPEAKER_03 7:21

Don't you all want to be the class clown at some point?

SPEAKER_01 7:24

Do you think? Yeah. Are you the class clown easily?

SPEAKER_03 7:27

No, no, quite the opposite. The book is set in Rome. Is this a location that you based on somewhere you have visited, or is it just a fictional location you have imagined, Karen?

SPEAKER_01 7:39

It's it's a lot, it's sort of a mashup of a lot of different places. Um, I went to a very little primary school, so the school is sort of based on where I went to school, but then I also um lived quite close to the ocean when I was growing up, so I wasn't far away. Um, and then country towns I visited. But I know that when Jake was drawing um Roan, he also took inspiration from a real place as well.

SPEAKER_00 8:04

Yeah, so when I was illustrating it, I was living in Bangalore up near Byron Bay the whole time, which once again is very close to the ocean. But I took just a lot of inspiration because it was like the same thing. It's like a really small town. So there's like some streets, especially that opening scene where the truck's driving through like the streets in the town. That whole little area is sort of based pretty closely around just like the streets of Bangalore. Just because it was like right there, so it's easy reference, but it also fit perfectly in with the story.

SPEAKER_03 8:34

Wow, that's very in-depth about the the setting. I thought the story was about two friend and he's trying to get along or trying to dump each other on the way. Was this the way you thought the story would turn out, or did you have Sid and Otto working along happily the whole time, Karen?

SPEAKER_01 8:51

They they were never gonna get along. They were far too different to start with. And poor Sid, when we meet Sid, he's really not is things aren't going well for him. And I think having this really, like you said, boisterous octopus turn up and just turn his life upside down. It's just one more thing that he has to deal with and he really doesn't want to deal with it. And I I mean, I would have, like you said, I would have loved to have seen more of his playful side too, but poor Sid was just not in a place to be playful because he no.

SPEAKER_03 9:25

What was the moral of the story that you think the readers should take away from reading?

SPEAKER_01 9:31

I don't I I don't think of a moral really, but I'd like to think that readers could sort of look at how we can celebrate each other's differences, like we're all different, but it doesn't mean that we can't get along or celebrate each other's strengths or come together, and just like with C Sid and Otto and Dee and even Lucas, and then the whole community of Ron that sort of comes together at the end as well. It's it's all sort of community and helping each other. And I hope that readers sort of get that from this from the book.

SPEAKER_00 10:05

Yeah, I agree completely. I feel like for me, I took away mostly was just community as like a great thing. But also I really liked this thread that that Karen put in where everyone secretly like we know that Sid's creative because he likes drawing, and that's sort of what he does to express himself. But then as the book goes on, we find out that D is also going to that art school, I imagine, for acting. And then later on, we find that Lucas is also secretly a musician. Like they all have this shared love of the arts that no one really talks about, and then they get to that point where they all become friends because of their shared love of the arts, and it's all just like just like under the surface, and they didn't really know that until they got to know each other. I thought that was like a really clever thread that Karen's put through there.

SPEAKER_03 10:51

Why did you envision the characters as sea animals and not with human personalities, Karen?

SPEAKER_01 10:56

Well, that wasn't me. That was Jake. I gave the story to Jake. That was all him.

SPEAKER_00 11:03

Yeah, so that was just a fun. Well, that was just I thought fun. Well, and you definitely wrote Sibs as like having an octopus. Yes, he did want to blend.

SPEAKER_03 11:13

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 11:14

And I thought that was like a very clever comparison that she did between the two main characters. And then yeah, I just sort of expanded on that. Just because, yeah, it was just interesting and a fun thing to do. And also, people do sort of have you can definitely connect people's personalities with sort of animal traits. So it was just like a fun, just another fun thing to keep me sort of engaged during the long process of drawing this. But then also I think it adds like an interesting and fun element having every character sort of based off of the sea creature and seeing it and being like, oh, okay, so that guy's that guy's obviously that, you know, a shark. And I just thought it was more interesting.

SPEAKER_03 11:55

And finally, Karen, how would it be able to win the Shadow Dungeon Prize this year?

SPEAKER_01 12:00

Well, that would be pretty amazing. That would be really amazing to think that you that everybody who'd read it, all the readers thought that it was so great that it deserved to win the shadow prize. I I don't think I'd get up off the floor for a week. What about you, Jake?

SPEAKER_00 12:22

Yeah, agreed. It'd be yeah, it'd be unbelievable. It'd be unreal. Yeah. I completely agree. Everything Karen just said.

SPEAKER_03 12:30

Well, I definitely enjoyed the book. You can add one more vote to your shadow judging prize.

unknown 12:35

Thank you, Ainsley.

SPEAKER_00 12:37

All right, amazing.

SPEAKER_02 12:38

That means a lot. Great questions, Ainsley, and some really great insights, Karen and Jake. My personal opinion on the book was I think it was definitely a comedy-based dream, but I think it was also quite a heartfelt adventure. And I think Jake really caught that in his illustrations as well as Karen did in her overall writing. Thank you for such a wonderful book, Karen and Jake, and your insightful questions, actually. Thank you guys for having me on this podcast.

SPEAKER_00 13:07

Oh, yeah, thank you.