Coram Boy

"I picked this book because it’s so influential in historical children’s literature. It’s very good. It’s such a big book, and there are lots of kids who love a meaty book like that. Different books for different kids; some will like a little book of short stories like The Apprentices , whereas Coram Boy is an epic. It’s also set in the 18th century, and it’s important British history. There’s information about Thomas Coram and baby farming. What children love, I think, is that righteous indignation. A lot of the best children’s books are powered by that, by the feeling that it’s not fair , because children are never in positions of power. They can feel like the world is against them because they are children. The thought that babies would be killed willy-nilly! Coram Boy does so many things really, really well. It’s a classic already. “The thing about British history, especially in the 19th century, is that it was such a lot of the globe” It was the first children’s book that I can think of for this age group with a protagonist of colour. For years, we hadn’t featured in children’s books, even when it was a subject that might have logically included different sorts of people. All writers have a responsibility to tell a really involving, engaging story above all. Even if you’ve got an agenda, that’s not how you set out to write the book, you set out to write the book because you want people to think that this story is amazing. A lot of those books don’t get out there, whereas Coram Boy did. We tend to bowdlerise children’s fiction a lot. I wrote a book called Race to the Frozen North partly because I got into reading about Arctic exploration when I was a kid. And that was because my brother had a book with a picture of frostbite, which got me reading about Scott’s expedition to the Antarctic, where they all died and were frozen. Yes, children must be protected, but they do like a bit of ick. You’re not going to pick up that book unless you’re ready for it. It’s a big book. It’s probably for readers age 10 or 11 and up. Some kids will read anything. My youngest was reading Watership Down when she was five or six. I’d forgotten what was in it, and thought it was like The Animals of Farthing Wood . She liked it. What is for you will not pass you by."