CULTURE
KONNIE HUQ
SMART COOKIE The record-breaking Blue Peter presenter is on a mission to spark children’s love of science and inspire a new generation of enquiring minds
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fter a successful career in children’s TV, Konnie Huq is a firm favourite with the nation’s little ones. But now she’s calling on youngsters to look away from the small screen and pick up her book Cookie! and the Most Annoying Boy in the World. After introducing nine-year-old Cookie Haque to the world last year to great acclaim, the 44-year-old is releasing the misadventures of her lovable science-geek character in paperback. And it seems she didn’t have to look further for inspiration than her two boys Covey, seven, and Huxley, five, with her husband, TV writer Charlie Brooker. “Covey loves it and he’s always giving input. Lots of things he says and does give me nuggets of inspiration to put in the book,” she tells us. “My other one is still doing phonics, so it’s a bit over his head. But I do read it to him. They love the pictures.” Like Konnie, Cookie hails from a Bangladeshi family and enjoys drama and science. But – fittingly for a book from Blue Peter’s longest-serving female presenter – the story is more than a fun read, with experiments hidden in the pages for young readers to try. “It’s like when parents put ‘Parents hide vegetables hidden vegetables into a in pasta sauce and the pasta sauce and the kids kids don’t realise they’re don’t realise they’re eating That’s how I think eating carrots. That’s how carrots. of the educational side of I think of the educational this book.” wrote the majority side of this book’ of Konnie the book on the go, juggling her fiction efforts with her TV work and home life. “I wrote it mainly on my phone, literally in the notes,” she says. “I was writing bits wherever – in a doctor’s surgery, a waiting room, sitting on the bench at the park and around the house.” Embracing a modern approach to writing is perhaps
