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Wchicken Patrice Lawrence received a call asking her to be the winner of the UK children’s award, her first reaction was disbelief. “I was very surprised,” he says, laughing. He’s just started making preparations which means he’ll be joining a line-up that includes Jacqueline Wilson, Quentin Blake, Michael Rosen, Julia Donaldson, Malorie Blackman and most recently, Frank Cottrell-Boyce.
He said: “Many people who have been there have made a big difference in my life. “Without Jacqueline Wilson, I wouldn’t be able to write the kind of books I do. He was very fond of children’s culture. And Malorie… well, Malorie only needs one name.”
Despite his modesty, the 59-year-old fits the bill. The best-known author of young-adult books including Orangeboy, Indigo Donut, Needle, and the picture book Is That Your Mama?, she has won some of the biggest honors in children’s books, including the Waterstones children’s book award and the children’s and adults’ first category. Jhalak award.
Cottrell-Boyce, outgoinghas spent two years in charge of evaluating the importance of reading for happiness in changing children’s outcomes, in line with The UK’s National Year of Reading. Lawrence plans to promote his work, focusing on the role of reading in what he sees as Britain’s increasingly divided society.
“We are a confused people right now,” he said. “Personally, for the first time in a long time, as a black person and a child of immigrants, I felt unsafe.” And if I think like that as an adult, how do other children feel in the world? For Lawrence, books can be a vehicle for promoting a sense of belonging. He compares shared reading to standing in a crowd when your favorite song comes on. “Everyone sings together and everyone has time to bond,” he says. “I want to create this through stories.”
Lawrence went years of working in organizations focused on children’s rights and social justice before becoming a children’s author, publishing his successful YA novel Orangeboy in 2016, aged 49. He has a practical vision for his success. “To change policy you need evidence,” he says. “We say news works, show us how it works.” They hope to collect research from children in their care, refugee families and children of prisoners to show how books can change lives.
His life provides convincing evidence for the literature. Lawrence was born in 1967 to Trinidadian parents who went to Britain to train as nurses. His parents separated before he was born, and he spent the first four years of his life supported by a white working-class family in Brighton while his mother completed her education – which was common at the time.
His adoptive mother enrolled him in the library as soon as he grew up and taught him to read before he started school. Later he went back to live with his mother, books were everywhere. His father also lived among the flooded shelves. He said: “Books were just a part of my life.”
What he couldn’t imagine, however, was becoming a children’s author. He read Enid Blyton, Arthur Ransome and Tolkien, and thought that children’s books couldn’t be written by people who looked like him.
“I thought children’s books were written by white people and the dead,” he says bluntly. “As I was, it was not possible in my knowledge.”
Lawrence said that until the 1930s, every story he wrote featured white people. He told me: “I was so obsessed with the fact that children like me were not fit to be in books and adults like me could not be writers so I didn’t even doubt it.”
It was when he saw the BBC’s 1999 adaptation of Malorie Blackman’s Pig-Heart Boy that his mind changed. He said: “It was life-changing. It was the first time I realized you could write about black British people – it really helped me find my voice.”
Blackman became a mentor and friend. She said: “She’s a role model for me and a writer. I always describe myself as a poor man’s Malorie!”
Lawrence published her first novel, Granny Ting Ting, in 2009, but it was Orangeboy, her YA novel about a teenage boy in Hackney whose life unravels after his first date leads him to gang violence, that made him famous: won the Waterstones children’s book award for older children and the Bookseller YA book award, and was shortlisted for the Costa Children’s book award. Its popular follow-up, Indigo Donut, cemented its reputation.
As a winner, she hopes that children from all backgrounds will recognize themselves in her role – not only black children, but also children from working families, foster children and anyone whose family does not conform to cultural issues.
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When she visits schools to discuss books like Needle and Indigo Donut, both of which have foster children, students wait until after to tell her their own stories. “There will always be children, black or white, who will come and tell me about their experiences,” he says.
Likewise, his 2023 graphic novel Is That Your Mama?, which grew out of the experience of aliens questioning whether his mixed-race son was really his own, he continues to fight. He said: “A lot of people come up to me and tell me about the book and say, ‘It happens to me too.'” I know that people feel validated and seen by the books I write, which is very important.”
This year, the government introduced it The Year of National Reading Dealing with learning disabilities in children: last year, only one in three eight- to 18-year-olds said they enjoyed reading in their spare time. – a 36% drop in two decades is the lowest on record, according to the National Literacy Trust.
It’s a multifaceted problem, and Lawrence is careful not to dwell on what she’s thinking. Blaming the parents alone, they warn, can undermine the system’s disparity: the fact that books are expensive, libraries are closing, and families are in dire financial straits. “We live in a very difficult world right now,” he said. “People are struggling with the cost of living, jobs, and everything else.”
He also says that, in school, reading has become closely related to assessment. He said: “Most of the time it’s about reading the book to know the title and writing the story. Reading is about work. The fun part is forgotten, that’s what we need most.
However, Lawrence seems less optimistic about children’s reading than other topics. In part, he says, it’s because he sees things most adults don’t. Almost every week he travels around the country visiting schools, libraries and awards children’s books run by libraries and volunteers. Whether in Hull, Penrith, Salford or London, he meets kids who treat writers “like rock stars”.
He said: “I go to these events after bad train journeys and feel tired. “Then I meet all these young people who love books.
He continued: “There are amazing things happening already. I spend my life around children who love books – I don’t think people always hear about them.”
