Patrice Lawrence knows what it’s like to feel as if the world has no place in it for you.
Event Context
“It’s like a Doctor Who Time Lord regeneration: a new face, a new mission, built upon everything that has gone before,” says Lawrence, 59. “This gives me a much larger platform on which to talk about the impact of children’s books and stories.”
Excerpts from an interview.
* In what you describe as “an increasingly divided” Britain, in an increasingly divided world, how do you write in ways that are realistic but help give hope to children?
Well, I believe the majority of humans do care about each other. I see it in everyday kindnesses, and it is very much in evidence among children and young people in schools.
I embed a sense of hope in my stories, but also ensure that there are consequences for damaging behaviour. Marlon, the protagonist of Orangeboy, is a prime example. When he grabs a bag of drugs from his girlfriend, one bad decision sends things spinning out of control.
This is primarily a story about why good people make bad decisions, and how social capital provides a safety net if we do make bad decisions. There are three young men in Orangeboy, all dealing with the legacy of a brother’s behaviour. Who pulls through and who doesn’t? And why?
It is about how violence has consequences — but so does abandoning vulnerable young people without support.
* When writing about grief, racism and violence in stories for children, are there lines you won’t cross or themes you won’t touch?
As a child, I always read a wide variety of books. The damaging books were the ones that contained racial slurs, and told me that Black people had no value in the world.
The original version of Hugh Lofting’s The Story of Doctor Dolittle (1920) contains numerous offensive caricatures of African people. I read that one and its sequels when I was six or seven years old.
I don’t believe in book censorship, but I do believe in critical thinking. Books can be the starting point for complex and difficult conversations. I think children understand this.
There have always been distractions to reading, long before tech! Books have always endured, as a way to build community, spend time with friends, escape.
At local events, I see children from all backgrounds cheering themselves hoarse when they meet their favourite writers. I meet fans in school libraries, creating murder mystery sessions or luring other young people in with games of Dungeons & Dragons. I meet them at conferences, giving up their weekends to meet each other and learn from each other.
As children’s laureate, one mission is to build an evidence base to prove that shared reading provides tangible benefits to vulnerable children. Then use this data at a policy level to persuade decision-makers to give long-term support to libraries and reading initiatives.
A book is a reassuring companion when the real world feels too overwhelming.
* What would be your message to a child who feels stories are everywhere — in game worlds, Instagram, the movies — and needn’t necessarily be sought out in books?
Books, including comic books, give you back control. You can pick and choose. You can decide when to pause, reflect, read on — or throw the book across the room in disgust. And, if you have a public library, books are free!
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A REAL PAGE-TURNER
* A children’s laureate is selected based on nominations by librarians, critics, writers, booksellers and advocacy groups, vetted by a panel appointed by the children’s reading charity BookTrust.
Match Outlook
As a child, she spent four years in foster care, raised by a White working-class family until her mother could reclaim her.
There were few people of colour in her school. Even the books she loved and escaped into offered little resonance. These were all stories about White people, with Black people mocked, derided and at the fringes, when they appeared at all.
“I always felt different… acknowledging that still hurts,” she says.
It was only decades later, as a 32-year-old NGO worker, that the full force of this alienation hit her.
Lawrence, a Trinidadian-origin Briton, was watching a BBC series called Pig-Heart Boy (1999; based on a novel of the same name), about a Black teen conflicted over having a pig’s heart transplanted into his chest, when she realised: Here was a good, loving British family, and they just happened to all be Black.
At this point, Lawrence had spent years working in the area of child rights. Now, she realised she had more than one way to reach out. She began to write.
Her first book, Orangeboy, was about a 16-year-old on a date who finds himself caught in a gang war. It won a Waterstones prize in 2017.
Among her 15 other titles are Our Story Starts in Africa (2022; a picture book about Black history and heritage), Is That Your Mama? (2023; about mixed-race families), and Needle (2022; a young-adult novel about a teen caught in the criminal justice system).
With each story, Lawrence says, she aims to send a message to troubled young people: I see you, and you matter.
Her tales have now earned her the title of UK’s Children’s Laureate. She is the second Black woman to hold it.
There have been many emotional moments during visits to schools when young people have told me why my stories are relatable to them. I’m grateful for every one of those moments. Each one is a reminder of why it’s important that young people who feel undervalued in our world see their experiences acknowledged in writing.
* Do you believe there’s a way to turn a child’s attention from screen to page?
* As UK’s children’s laureate for the next two years, Patrice Lawrence, 59, can now launch well-funded campaigns to promote books and reading. She is the second Black woman to hold the title.
* “Growing up, I read books that told me that Black people had no value in the world,” she says. “I don’t believe in book censorship, but I do believe in critical thinking. Books can be the starting point for that.”
