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| Get Into It! Spring - Summer 2008 |
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Kellie Magnus in her own words
Prior to writing my first children’s book, I was freelance writing for newspapers and magazines here in New York and in the Caribbean as well. I also have a media company that does consulting work for companies targeting the Caribbean-American market. Working in that space, I noticed that there were not a lot of children’s books for the Caribbean.
There seemed to be a big disconnect between what children were interested in, what parents wanted and what was actually available.
I have a niece that I’m very close to. She was about seven when we first had this conversation. She was really into Sponge Bob and all this American stuff. Some of which is great, don’t get me wrong. But I just kept asking her, What are you interested in that’s Caribbean? She said, Well, nothing but what is it that you want me to read? Show me the Caribbean things that you want me to read. And I really didn’t have anything.
I mean, there are some Caribbean books out there but they tend to be from a generation ago. My niece, she’s very clear about what she’s interested in. She wanted something more modern and that looked like the stuff she was accustomed to seeing. Something bright and colourful, interesting and relevant to her and people in her age group. She lives in Trinidad now; at the time she was living in Jamaica.
Sometime after this, a character just showed up one day. He came to live in my head and demanded to be written about. And that’s basically the way it happened.
This is how I write: an idea pops into my head and I don’t really know where it’s going. I just had a very clear picture of this character: this little red-headed dread who was living with his father in a fishing village in Jamaica. I don’t know why. He literally came to live in my head.
I saw this character and saw the relationship between him and his father. The first versions of the story were written in prose and it stayed that was for quite a few drafts. The one day I was working on it and it started to rhyme. That version of the story kind of wrote itself!
When I’m having a good writing day, the story writes itself. That’s what happened with this story. It went in its own direction and ended up being a story about him making this transition into school and really learning how to stand up for himself. To focus on who he really is on the inside and not to get caught up with the other kids and their material possessions. To not let them define him. Just to be proud of who he is, based on his character, not the things that he has.
I hooked up with an old friend of mine, Michael Robinson, who lives in Jamaica and is just a fantastic artist and illustrator. I rang him up one day and said, Hey, would you like to illustrate a kids book? He said, Sure. So we put this together and that was that.
“Little Lion Goes to School” came out in October 2003. My company, Media Magic New York, published it. Prior to the book we were just doing media work and hadn’t really planned on being a product company; we’re more a service company. But I had some conversations with people in publishing and I was discouraged by some of the feedback I was getting.
There was some Well, the Caribbean kids market is so small, it’s a niche within a niche. It might not be viable to publish books for that market. People had suggestions that I felt would have diluted what I wanted to do with the story. With a mainstream publisher, you have to subject your vision to their bottom line. I didn’t want that. I felt very attached to this character and I wanted him to come to life the way he had come to me.
Some said that maybe we shouldn’t make him a Rastafarian; it would be more universal if he were “something else.” They appreciated that he was supposed to be different than the other kids but couldn’t we make him “something else?” Some recommendations you take because you think they add to the work but there are some that you just have to walk away from. Even though it was a much bigger financial risk, I felt I had a better chance putting it out through my own company.
Of all the random things I’ve done in my life, this response has meant the most to me. People were just so positive about it. I’ve got emails from parents and teachers and from kids themselves. I really feel that we answered a need that was out there. Parents want their kids to open the pages of a book and see characters that look like them and stories that resonate with their own history and their own culture.
We launched it in Jamaica and New York. The community in Jamaica was very receptive. The Caribbean community in New York was even more so because I think parents in the Diaspora are so hungry for things that connect their children to their culture. It’s been fantastic.
I took a little bit of time off to work on a DVD series for children with autism, which I love and I’m very proud of. But in the year that’s passed, I get emails from people saying Where is the second Little Lion book? It’s encouraging to know that people love the story, they’re interested in the character and they want to continue along with this character.
I’ve had an array of suggestions for new story lines. The one I’m working on now is called “Little Lion Rocks the PTA.” In the first book, he’s trying to adjust to a new school. In the second book, he’s settled in a bit more and there’s some changes he feels are necessary at the school. So he takes on PTA to put some of those changes in place. And then, after that, I don’t know. I want to put him in situations that children find challenging without having it be a preachy series. Instead just use him as an example of how these situations can be handled positively.
One of the things that I think people really grab onto in the first book is that there’s such a strong father-son relationship in the story. That’s not something that you see in a lot of Caribbean literature or Caribbean media in general. It’s interesting for me to get notes from Caribbean fathers, saying Thank you, for having this book where the father is the primary parent and the father and the son have a real great relationship and the little boy is secure and has such a feeling of stability because of the relationship that he has with his father. And I love that. That’s something that I definitely want to continue to show in the series; to show the strength of that relationship and how positive a force that fathers and mothers can be in their children’s lives.
I’ve traveled the whole circuit in New York when the book came out and I’ve been up to Canada. I did a booksale organized by Burke’s Bookstore. Awesome people, they’re just the nicest people on the planet. I’ve been in Miami and Baltimore and Philadelphia too. And home in Jamaica and in Trinidad. Yeah, I’m taking it quite a few places.
We were looking to have it accepted by the New York City Board of Education and it’s now on the ancillary reading list, which was just a great accomplishment. There’s such a strong Caribbean population here. I really wanted to get something on the reading list that my kids, my Caribbean kids here could relate to.
I definitely want to continue doing readings and signings in school. Caribbean children get so much out of it when they see me! That is better than money. When I say, I’m from Jamaica and some six year old or seven year old puts up a hand and says, I’m from Jamaica too! And they ask you all these questions, Oh, you’re a writer, how did you get to be a writer? They get such a sense of possibility from seeing me. This is what it’s all about. I spend a lot of time in schools here, especially schools with Caribbean children, just trying to encourage them, in some way, to be passionate about the things that they’re really interested in.
I’m trying to create a body of work that Caribbean children can see themselves in, be inspired by and draw positive reinforcement from. I want to do it in print first because I think reading is a very powerful tool. Eventually I would like to expand to other media as well. I think that if we continue to work really hard and pray really hard as we have been, we’ll eventually get there!
I remember all the things that inspired me when I was a child. That’s where the motivation comes from. I had a great childhood. I think that children now are bombarded with so many negative images and images that threaten their sense of self!
You can’t influence children by censoring what they’re exposed to. Your best bet is to try to give them as many positive alternatives as possible. There might be a sea of negative imagery out there but one kid someday might remember something that he read in a Little Lion book. That message might be something that sticks with him for a long time and inspires him positively.
For children, the influence that words wield is so tremendous. You have the opportunity to plant something really deep inside their brains that will come back to them years after they read it. Just to be able to do that is a gift.
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