From: Sherryl Clark <sherrylc>
Date: Thu, 14 Nov 2002 07:15:35 +1100

I have had the experience as an author of writing a book that featured a multi-racial family, although I didn't know it when I started! The book was
"Whose Birthday Is It?" published by Franklin Watts in the UK in September. At first my story was, I guess, about "any kid" who has a birthday coming up and no one to invite to the party. The editor pointed out that the series (Hopscotch) was to be aimed at reading programmes for 6-8 year olds in government-funded schools and many of those children are from Asian or Afro?ribbean (their terms) families. Therefore they wanted the books to reflect the lives of those children. After a lot of email discussion over who this fictional family might be, we decided on a white father and Afro?ribbean mother, hence a mixed-race child. I was very happy to be part of this process, even though some people might say I was compromising my original story, and was excited and pleased to see the book come out in hardcover with full color illustrations. (Yes, during the roughs process the illustrator tried several different colors for the child's skin and we had to choose). I'm sure that some would say that perhaps this was politically incorrect in some way but I want children to read and enjoy my stories - all children and any children. So some of the posts this month about "only providing books relevant to the child's experience" has made interesting reading for me. I would be interested to know if anyone else has had this experience of creating a book which changed in this way, and how you felt about the process. Sherryl Clark Australian author
Received on Wed 13 Nov 2002 02:15:35 PM CST