Education Choices Magazine - Summer 2022

EDUCATION CORNER PODCAST

EDUCATION CORNER PODCASTINTERVIEW WITH AUTHOR

Elizabeth Laird

write the book until the late 80s, when I watched Kurdish people return to their villages after Saddam Hussein had taken them to concentration camps. It was very moving. Upon my return to London, I interviewed Iraq refugees to get their stories. I always feel that with books like that, I have witnessed some of the greatest stories of our time.

Elizabeth Laird talks to us about her longstanding career as an author and the personal experiences that have led to her writing about topical issues related to refugees, plastic pollution and the inspiration for her latest book…

You have written many books that are realistic and explore contemporary events, such as war, homelessness and the experience of refugees. You have lived and worked in many countries including Malaysia, Ethiopia, India, Iraq, Lebanon, and Austria. How do you feel this has impacted your writing? It has been completely seminal to my writing. The first novel I wrote set in a foreign country was Kiss The Dust, which was set in Iraq, just after we’d visited Iraq-Kurdistan in the 1970s, although I didn’t

During the 1990s you travelled round Ethiopia collecting folk stories from traditional storytellers, and the British Council produced them in a series of readers for Ethiopian schools. A selection for a wider audience was published as When The World Began: Stories Collected in Ethiopia (2000). Do you want to tell us a little more about this? I lived in Ethiopia. I taught there back in the 1960s; I’m terribly old. I loved the country, and travelled very widely. When I returned, I was entranced all over again. I met the chancellor of the British Council in Addis Ababa, and I suggested to him that it would be great to get stories and produce readers. He enthusiastically took me up on this and provided translators and transport. I went back there five times and took five month long journeys to the farthest corners of Ethiopia collecting stories from farmers, prisoners in a prison and even, in Gonda, herdsmen in the desert areas. They were incredible journeys and I collected these wonderful folk stories. I have written a book about those journeys, but it’s one for grown-ups. It’s called Lure of the Honeybird. What was so exciting for me, was that I might be sitting in a village (in the middle of nowhere) and somebody will be telling me a story, I could talk about this forever but I won’t, and it would start with people who had thrown leaves into a lake to stun the fish to catch them, and the water parted from the left and the right, and they walked in. I thought,

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Elizabeth Laird (author)

‘Where have I heard that before?’ Hold on a minute, Moses and the Red Sea. There are resonances all the time with the Bible, the Quran, Aesop’s Fables, and I realised that the stories I was collecting in Ethiopia were extremely ancient and fascinating.

You have written many books, and I know that they are very popular amongst the children we work with. Were these stories based on events that you experienced and witnessed? They are based on experiences. I think that that is true of all writers, no matter what they are writing, even if it is fantasy. Red Sky in the Morning was about my little brother, he had a very great disability, and the others came from experiences my children had. The ones I wrote abroad, such as The Garbage King, which was written in Ethiopia, I got to know a gang of street boys partly through the folk stories, because I was asked to go and work with a gang of street kids. They told me their own stories, it took days, they poured out their own stories and I put them together in The Garbage King. In Orange is a No-Man’s Land, my husband and I were living in Beirut during the Civil War. There were bullet holes all along the wardrobe and we were on the green line, which was along the border, and I wrote that book there, which really came out of my experience. I would stand on my balcony, look down, and watch what was happening and take cover when necessary. We’d go through checkpoints with a baby and a pushchair and the soldiers would take him out and play with him. Welcome to Nowhere is more recent, from when I went to Jordan to work in Syrian refugee camps to teach English and storytelling to teachers. I talked to many, many people and they all told me their stories. Whenever I write something that is not about a white person living in Britain, I have to do meticulous research because, you know, who do I think I am to be taking on the voice of a boy on a street in Ethiopia, or a Palestinian kid, or a child from Syria? I am walking on thin ice, and I know that, so I don’t take that job very lightly. I really do research, I talk to people, I read, I listen, I wait, and sometimes I talk with an author from that culture.

How do you think the books have impacted the children that have read them? Do they ever write to you? They do, a bit. I think that it is important what children read. Some people say it doesn’t matter what they read as long as they are reading. Well… up to a point. You don’t say: “It doesn’t matter what

“I do think that what children read does have an impact on them actually, and I think it’s quite important that they read books which stimulate their imaginations and encourage empathy.”

children eat as long as they are eating.” They can’t just eat chocolate. I think it’s great that children are reading funny books, that’s great. But, I think that when children get gripped by a story and they cry and they feel it. A child once wrote to me after reading Red Sky in the Morning, and she said: “I want to spend my life doing something good.” I think that what children read can really make a difference. When I was a kid in the 1940s and 50s, I’m going to be eighty next year, there was Little Women, Narnia, Heidi, there was almost nothing. I do think that what children read does have an impact on them actually, and I think it’s quite important that they read books which stimulate their imaginations and encourage empathy.

Crusade (2007) was shortlisted for the 2007 Costa Children’s Book Award and The Fastest Boy in the World (2014) was shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal in 2015 – how did this make you feel? These are great achievements. Absolutely fantastic. We don’t have a career structure when we are writers. You don’t get promoted. But, every now and then, if you are lucky, you get an award. It has this boosting effect. You don’t get any more money, but you do feel very boosted.

More recently, you have also written on environmental issues. Your novel Song of the Dolphin Boy (2018) concerns the impact on dolphins from plastic rubbish in the ocean off the coast of Scotland. This is a very timely and topical issue. How do you think it has helped address the issues related to pollution and the broader issues we now face regarding the planet and climate change? It’s the big thing. It’s the big, big elephant in the room. We have all got to talk about it. With children, I think that it is terribly important that you give them a chance to think: “Oh, I could do that! That

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Writing about war

is something I could do! I could object to balloon release, as the rubber can be eaten by whales and hurt the animals in the ocean.” Apparently, Greta Thunberg was a very difficult child, but once she found something that she could do, she became a very much more cheerful person. Children are very depressed about the climate, worryingly so actually. I think that it is important to give them something to do and a role model of children who take action in a nice way.

My final question. Many children love your books, I’m sure reading your books allows them to learn more about the world. What advice would you have for children who want to go on to write in the future? I have three pieces of advice that I always give children. Number one, is to read. Read everything you can possibly read. Second, write. I have written a diary since I was twelve, it’s important to keep your hand in. Write anything you can. The third one is to live. Do things. Don’t get on your phone all the time. Don’t waste time on social media.

This is not life experience. If you want to write, you have to experience life and explore your feelings in a good way. Do sports, have clubs, have hobbies. Experience real things. Sometimes you are in a field with a bull and you have to run away from it. Children will have an experience that they will have to write down. Read, Write and Live!

We would like to thank Elizabeth Laird for giving up her time to speak to us.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO THE PODCAST

To buy Elizabeth’s new book The Misunderstandings of Charity Brown (released on the 7th July 2022), click here: www.panmacmillan.com/authors/elizabeth-laird/themisunderstandings-of-charity-brown/9781529075632

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