I nternational bestselling children’s author and illustrator and former Waterstones’ Children’s Laureate Lauren Child CBE has sold millions of books worldwide but says her career has been “totally accidental”.
“I started writing little story ideas because I couldn’t get any work as an illustrator and thought I’d have more chance if the illustrations had stories with them, but no one was interested in them either.
“I’d been trying to write books as you think books should be written, but I needed to find my own way of doing it.” The result was the much-loved character Clarice Bean, an eternally optimistic child who has been sharing her thoughts and outlook on life with young readers all over the world since the publication of Clarice Bean, That’s Me in 1999.
The following year, Lauren’s other famous characters, Charlie and Lola came to life in their first story I Will Not Ever, NEVER Eat A Tomato. Their stories went on to become a BAFTA winning animated CBeebies television series.
Now Lauren is looking forward to sharing her books - particularly her new Clarice Bean story Smile - with young readers in Dumfries & Galloway at the Big DoG festival in Dumfries.
“I love the Dumfries area. We used to holiday there as a family when I was a child. We never went abroad, my mother believed we should know our own country, and we always felt very attached to Scotland.”
In Smile, Clarice Bean is 11 years old and wrestling with concerns about climate change.
“It came out of my own climate anxiety,” says Lauren. “I’d been feeling very heavy of heart.
“We are so bombarded by the news at the moment, with so much going on. I don’t remember a time when it felt so difficult, and it can be really overwhelming.
“On top of that, we have climate change, this very, very big thing which feels so far beyond our control. “But Clarice is always optimistic, I wondered what she would do. I thought her curiosity would inspire her to see the extraordinary in the ordinary, how it’s the tiniest creatures that support all life on earth.
“I looked at how every single thing matters, no matter how small, and therefore how every child matters and how everyone can make a difference.”
Lauren says she was writing Smile as much for her own sake as others’, to find a way to feel hopeful and pass that on to children.
Always writing from a child’s point of view, Lauren, whose mother was a primary school teacher, says she has always been interested in the way children put together their thoughts and how they express them.
“I write in truths that children have expressed, picked up from conversations I’ve had with children. I try to write about things that they find funny or struggle with.”
And, she says: “All the pressures on children are extraordinary now. It’s way harder than when I was little. Even though many things have improved in the way we understand children, I worry that childhood is somehow being eroded. It’s really tough on them.”
Perhaps this is why Lauren is so determined to “bring joy” to children through her optimistic stories and beautiful, cheerful illustrations.
Charlie and Lola came from her desire to write about what’s nice about relationships between siblings, instead of the friction and arguments usually associated with them.
“It began with a tiny fragment of dialogue I had written in my notebook about two brothers. The younger one was a fussy eater, and the older brother was trying to encourage him to eat. Then, when I was travelling in Denmark on a train, I saw an amazing child, who was about three. She had incredible eyes and blonde hair, with a little pixie look about her. She was so busy and funny, asking questions all the time. I drew her when I got home and thought I needed a story for her. Those two elements just came together.”
Lauren’s father was an art teacher and, as a child, Lauren says was always happiest when she was drawing. She studied art at Manchester Polytechnic and City and Guilds of London Art School: “I never thought I’d be a writer, although I loved reading and stories.”
Lauren says she is “stunned” when something that has existed only in her head “catches fire and travels so far” like Clarice Bean and the Charlie and Lola stories.
But, she adds: “I don’t think I would have been doing it if I didn’t think there was a chance of it being of interest.”
It took five years before anyone would publish the first Clarice Bean story, but Lauren says: “She has always been my favourite. I think she’s quite relatable, like an ‘every-child’. With Charlie and Lola I really believed it could be a book series and then I really believed it could be a television series.
“Someone had to believe in it, and it had to be me.”
On the cover of Smile, the title is weighing down on Clarice Bean and Lauren explains that’s because, when you’re feeling anxious, there’s nothing worse than someone telling you to “smile!” She says the book is about finding ways of coping, of finding optimism and hope:
“We all need to stay curious. We have to take part. We can’t just wait for someone to invent something to rescue us. “This story is a reminder to myself that we can’t give up. We have to stay optimistic and engage as much as we can with what’s going on.”
• Clarice Bean: Smile is published by Harper Collins Children’s Books
