Words matter. These are the best Malorie Blackman Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
I didn’t even enter a bookshop until I was 14 because I couldn’t afford books until I got my first Saturday job, but by the time I was six or seven, I spent practically every Saturday down my local library reading as much as I could and getting out as many books as I could.
A love of books has opened so many doors for me. Stories have inspired me and taught me to aspire.
I remember being in a history lesson and saying to my teacher, ‘How come you never talk about black scientists and inventors and pioneers?’ And she looked at me and said, ‘Because there aren’t any.’
What I wanted to do was use literature and different kinds of stories and poems as a springboard, tapping into the creativity of our teens – I wanted teenagers to come up with their own creative responses to literature – using books themselves as a starting point.
Books allow you to see the world through the eyes of others.
What I want is to try and get across the idea that reading for pleasure is so beneficial. And turn children on who have maybe been switched off reading or never found a love of it in the first place.
Children find prescriptive reading lists daunting, and they are a dangerous thing to have in schools.
Being the Children’s Laureate has been educational, sometimes hectic, but most of all, great fun.
Reading is an exercise in empathy; an exercise in walking in someone else’s shoes for a while.
If a child wants to read ‘Twilight’ over Middlemarch, they should be encouraged – the important thing is to get them reading in the first place.
I remember going into a bookshop, and the only book I saw with a black child on the cover was ‘A Thief in the Village’ by James Berry, and I thought, ‘Is this still the state of publishing?’ Then I thought, ‘Either I can whine about it or try to do something about it.’
You can have all the talent in the world, but without determination, you won’t get very far.
What I’m trying to do is to write a story. If you take something from it, that’s wonderful; if you don’t, that’s wonderful as well.
The worst thing about being the laureate has been the attitude of a tiny minority of adults who haven’t liked some of the things I’m supposed to have said and who have used it as an opportunity to be verbally abusive and nasty, but I haven’t let it rule my world!
Part of my job as Children’s Laureate is to visit schools and talk about my love of books and stories and encourage them all to do it as well – to read, to write, to never be afraid of their own voice. Because we all have something to say.
Books teach children to see the world through the eyes of others and empathise with others. It’s about the story.
I’m a voice for children’s books and children’s reading.
I try to widen the horizons of every child I meet, and part of that is promoting diverse forms, be it graphic novels, stories told in a narrative voice, or more translated books, as well as more diverse writers and more diverse characters.
A film of my life would never happen!
When I wrote ‘Noughts and Crosses’, I was halfway through it when I realised this was very like ‘Romeo and Juliet’… as long as you make it your own, and put your own spin on it, I think it’s brilliant to use other great work to find your own voice.
I wanted to have a body of work behind me before I wrote about racism.
I believe each individual can have a say and make a difference.
Children will go with any story as long as it’s good, but white adults sometimes think that if a black child’s on the cover, it is perhaps not for them.
When life knocks you down, keep getting up.
We had a few non-fiction books at home, but my dad was of the opinion that fiction was a complete and utter waste of time because it wasn’t real – so what was the point of reading it?
Teenagers are some of the most passionate, dynamic and creative people I know. Yet, too often, this creative spark is left to flicker precariously and sometimes fade entirely.
Shakespeare’s ‘Othello’ was inspired by Cinthio’s ‘A Moorish Captain’; his ‘Hamlet’ came from Saxo Grammaticus’s ‘Amleth.’
I work in my attic, and the view is next door’s chimney stack.
Book sales and teens reading is always a fantastic thing, but we should also be celebrating and consuming the huge wealth of U.K. and U.K.-based writing and illustrating talent. Authors such as Charlie Higson, Darren Shan, Holly Smale, Tanya Byrne, Catherine Johnson, Sophie Mckenzie, to name but a few.
What I would like to do is make sure every primary school child has a library card, so where parents don’t get their children library cards, we’ll see if we can get schools to step in and make sure that every child has one.
I suppose I’ve always lived in my own head. I didn’t discover boys till sixth form. Then suddenly it was, ‘Oh! Boys!’
I have encountered those who feel that libraries have served their purpose and are no longer needed. There are those who consider them a soft target when it comes to local authority budget cuts. In certain political quarters, there is a refusal to see that our public library service needs active protection.
I loved reading when I grew up but did feel totally invisible because I couldn’t see myself and my life reflected in the books I was reading.