'I was desperate to read as widely as possible. "I read a lot of highly unsuitable books for an 11-year-old," she chuckles.
'By then I had worked my way through the children's library,' she says (she was 11),'so the librarian gave me Jane Eyre and Rebecca, then all of Agatha Christie.'Įventually Malorie bypassed the librarian and went into the adult section herself. Later on she dabbled in westerns and eventually found science fiction, through John Wyndham's book Chocky. 'I loved seeing the world through other cultures, other religions, other colours.' So what did she read that shaped her? 'How long have you got?' she laughs before listing the Narnia books, Heidi and Little Women as early favourites. So this is not about writing certain books for certain people, they should be read by everybody.' 'Reading is an exercise in empathy an exercise in walking in someone else's shoes for a while. 'Books allows you to see the world through the eyes of others,' she says.
This isn't some hashed together speech as Malorie puts it, she 'has been going on about this for 24 years'. We're chatting on the eve of her talk about human rights and identity in fiction at the Edinburgh international books festival, a discussion (with the Guardian's Book Doctor, Julia Eccleshare) sponsored by Amnesty International. And fiction is an incredibly important force in shaping children and that's why fiction needs to be diverse.' 'There is a saying: 'the child is parent to the adult', which means whatever happens to you as a child or teenager affects the adult you become. So how do you become Malorie Blackman? She thinks. They're people you'd quite like to become. How wrong can a bookseller be? Malorie gets it: her books are scary, funny, disgusting and romantic and the teenagers in them match that they are courageous, self-doubting, funny, stupid people, as real and complex as anyone you meet in real life. And that isn't just for books, that's films and TV, too.' 'I haven't had this said to me in quite some time,' she says,'but we still have a way to go in this country to diversify books. 'I once had a bookseller tell me, 'Your books are just for black children and we don't have that many black children in this area,'' Malorie Blackman says. Here Malorie reveals the books that shaped her and why YA fiction has a lot to improve. Once told to 'go back to where she came from' (she was born in Clapham), children's laureate Malorie Blackman is now famous for her books on race and identity.
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