Welcome to the new Waterstones Children’s Laureate Patrice Lawrence
Patrice Lawrence was announced as the new Waterstones Children’s Laureate at the Barbican in London on 7 July, taking over from outgoing incumbent, Frank Cottrell-Boyce. Andrea Reece interviewed Patrice about her aims for the role.
Two years ago, when I interviewed Frank Cottrell-Boyce at the start of his tenure as Children’s Laureate, I asked what made him take on the role: ‘Anger,’ he replied. When I ask Patrice Lawrence the same question, her reply is just as quick: ‘Fury! Whenever I do events for children and young people and they ask what inspires me, it’s mostly fury.’
Prior to becoming a full-time author, she worked for 20 years in the charity sector for organisations that promote social justice, meeting lots of people, adults and children, facing all sorts of challenges, and on top of that a lack of understanding or representation. She is determined to use her time in the role to make a difference: ‘Some people just feel undervalued and this is a real opportunity for me to try to change that, through championing books and stories.’ First asked if she would be interested in the role in 2020, she felt that the time wasn’t right, now, with a lot more books written and a broader grounding in the world of children’s books generally, she feels it definitely is; that and ‘also knowing all the things that I want to change in the world.’
Top of her list is to champion the benefits of shared reading and sociable reading experiences, and she is putting the final touches of her strategy into place with BookTrust, using her former work experience and the links they have with the organisations she wants to target. ‘BookTrust do a lot of work with kinship care organisations, with families and children in need, and with children in the care system so that will be a starting point. In my previous life I’ve worked as an advocate for Black and Asian families that were going through child protection, I worked with family rights groups so that is a strong interest of mine.’
She was herself privately fostered and that is another area she will include: ‘I think we’ll be looking at all those groups that are left out of the conversation, those who might not go to book awards or sit in a classroom and read a book or even have access to a library; children who really do feel that nobody notices them.’
She’s worked previously with families of prisoners to give them a voice in policy – her book Rat partly grew out of that – and wants to apply that experience too. ‘I want to look at some of the work that’s been done in prisons, whether it’s through The Reading Agency, the Shannon Trust, or the National Literacy Trust also have a project where you work with adults who might not feel very confident about their reading skills, particularly parents. Working with them to build up their confidence in telling stories, reading books, can help them strengthen relationships with their children on the outside.’
Patrice is Laureate number 14, has there been advice from any of her predecessors? She’s friends with Malorie Blackman and Joseph Coelho and followed both their laureateships closely to see how it was for them. ‘I think there’s a clear message about creating boundaries, that it can be intense and all consuming. And I think because everybody I know that has gone into that role really wants to effect change, you have to be able to reel yourself back or have a network of people who say, “Just say no, Patrice.” It’s about being clear what I can do physically, mentally and emotionally in those two years. For me, returning to my voluntary sector background, that means building a very clear strategy with activities and making myself stick with that. The other advice is don’t even think about trying to write a new book!’
She will be building on the work of her predecessor, Frank Cottrell-Boyce too, the issue of poverty and its impact something that drives both. While he was campaigning at a national level of government, with the recent select committee for example, she sees her strength being at grassroots level. She’s aware too that this is a long game and wants to guard against any frustration that comes from the slow pace of change. ‘Thinking again about my voluntary sector experiences, when we look at strategy, it’s important to build in quick wins.’
She’s also keen to build an evidence base throughout the two years. ‘Often you hear reading is great, and it brings people together. How do we know? One thing I want to have by the end is a really clear evidence base that we can use, the science you can quote. I want to gather qualitative evidence from talking to people, but actually see what else we can ground it in as well. Maybe a literature review will be part of that, something that we can use to say this works.’
The weeks before the ceremony, she’d been on a typically hectic programme of school visits: ‘Last week I was mostly in Cumbria doing events in Barrow in Furness, then a school visit in Penrith and the Cumbria Book Awards. And then a week before that I was in Bedford, then Hull for the Hull Book Awards, and two weeks before that I was in Geneva at an international school.’ It sounds exhausting but meeting young people is where she gets her energy, and her optimism for the future. ‘The young people I meet, they’re just amazing. They have really sophisticated conversations about equality, the value of different people. I tell them about some of the horrible books I read, that were around when I was a child, and they gasp. The fact that they don’t see that as normalized, it just gives me such hope, that and their care for each other.’
She’s looking forward to going out and meeting people in her new role and She knows the effect learning of her own lived experiences can have. ‘Because I share certain experiences with some of the people that we meet, hopefully they can feel a little bit inspired by me by saying, actually, I know exactly how it feels because I’ve been there. There are so many times I talk about my books and the things that influence them, about being privately fostered for example, or Your Mama about growing up in families where you all look different. People come up and talk to me about parental bereavement, parental imprisonment, all of those things, and I think people feel they don’t have to do all the explaining because somebody already gets it. I think that is incredibly important.’
I check if there’s anything she wants to talk about that we haven’t covered. ‘I suppose the other thing to say about being Laureate is not only is it a privilege, but for me, it’s a testimony to all the people in my life from my foster mum, my mum, friends, teachers who plied me with books at a really young age and just gave me that gift of being able to escape in a story, to feel reassured by a story. And obviously all those reading experiences is what fuelled my ability to write as well. And what I hope is that somebody like me, coming from unmarried parents, Black working class as well, and into this position, that I can give that gift on to the children and young people that I meet.’
Andrea Reece is Managing Editor of Books for Keeps.
