Clarice Bean, That's Me

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As I went on the words started weaving around the figures and sort of became part of the pictures.I came up with lots of characters because I think of CB’s dad as American, this explains why they have family in New York. People often ask me why he has a moustache when moustaches aren’t really in fashion these days. The answer is because I was imagining the story as a film or TV series and I thought it would be an advantage to have a big cast. as a seven year old in the picture books but got progressively older in the novels. By the time I wrote Clarice Bean, Don’t Look Now, Years of failure had taught me a lot. Even though every single publisher was saying “no”, I recognised from all the previous years of “no’s” that there was a difference – they were saying “no” but they slightly wanted to say “yes!” I could also see that compared to anything I had done before this was not bad – nothing about it was making me actually squirm

Lauren Child - Literature - British Council Lauren Child - Literature - British Council

In 2008 Lauren launched UNESCO’s ‘My Life is a Story’ Campaign for UNESCO’s Programme for the Education of Children in Need, and was named a UNESCO Artist for Peace in 2008.I could see what she meant. I was not technically qualified to do any of the things I wanted to do and I had no money to just go ahead and set something up on my own. I needed to prove that I could come up with strong characters, create a world for them, draw and also design. Perhaps because this advice was given to me by someone successful, perhaps because I was hearing it when I was ready to listen, perhaps because it came from a total stranger, I took it on board.

Clarice Bean Series by Lauren Child - Goodreads

I was interested in (textile design, furniture design, children’s products, animation, film, scriptwriting, book illustration, ceramics etc) – I thought choosing one would mean missing out on all the others. Lauren is also a passionate advocate for visual literacy and the importance of quality picture books for children. Lauren Child is a multi-award-winning, bestselling writer and artist. She is the creator of many much-loved characters, including Clarice Bean, Ruby Redfort and Charlie and Lola. Her first two books were published in 1999 – I Want a Pet and Clarice Bean, That’s Me, and she won the prestigious Kate Greenaway Medal in 2000 for I Will Not Ever Never Eat a Tomato, the first of her Charlie and Lola picture books. Lauren published her first Clarice Bean novel in 2002 – Utterly Me, Clarice Bean. The Clarice Bean series has sold over 6 million copies worldwide.I didn’t know a single actual person called Clarice. I made her middle name Bean because I thought her parents were quite unconventional and might be the sort of people to give their child an unusual combination of names.

Lauren Child | SP Agency Lauren Child | SP Agency

I missed out on everything. I had always hoped that I might be discovered in a supermarket, or maybe at a bus stop – I had heard that this sometimes happened to people who then went on to lead hugely successful lives. Not so long ago – or maybe a lifetime ago, I can never tell – I couldn’t really work out what I should do with my life. I found myself paralysed with indecision. I looked around me and just about everybody else seemed to know exactly what they were up to. I had no idea. My problem was that I couldn’t seem to focus on just one thing. There were too many things

I had no idea what the story was about – it didn’t seem to matter – I just kept writing. All the words were spoken by a child, a girl of perhaps seven. She spoke out of the book as if she was telling the reader all about her family, uninterrupted, unedited. Everything we learn about her family is filtered through her – what she says isn’t necessarily completely accurate, it’s just her take on things.