Unless you’re an avid reader of the Guardian, you’re probably blissfully unaware that Britain has a new Children’s Laureate. His name is Chris Riddell, he’s an illustrator and a cartoonist for the Observer, and according to one who has interviewed him he is a delightful man: ‘Giggly, childlike, doodled book illustrations on his napkin throughout.’
I’m glad about this. One of the roles of the Waterstones Children’s Laureate — in return for his £15,000 bursary and his ‘specially designed and inscribed silver medal’ — is to tour Britain’s schools and festivals acting as an ambassador for children’s literature. Clearly, it would be a disadvantage were the incumbent to prove, say, a filthy old perv, a cantankerous git, or a total illiterate. But for me, almost worse than any of those flaws, would be this: if Riddell — despite his evident drawing skills and general loveliness — turns out to be as infuriatingly, tediously, proselytisingly lefty as at least two of his predecessors.
The one just gone was bad enough. Never having got beyond page one of a Malorie Blackman novel — though my daughter speaks highly of Noughts and Crosses — I can offer no views on her authorial talent. What I do know is that, immensely tiresomely, she would insist on using the laureate’s platform to bore on about identity politics.
Here she is (in the Guardian, inevitably) on multiculturalism: ‘I don’t think we’ve gone far enough with it in terms of making sure children know about different cultures and ways of living.’ Really, Malorie? Really? Did you ever actually pay attention when you visited all those primary schools with their Mary Seacole posters and their projects celebrating Eid and Diwali? (Though, to be fair, probably not so much Easter or Yom Kippur….)
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