slavery or even the enclosures have really been reckoned with in society. They are important things to think about and to talk about in our 21st Century London.’
A new era
Does SF feel that the legacy of Empire still impacts on the world that children are growing up in?
“We are in a process of moving from one kind of world to another,” says SF. “I feel, ultimately, that direction is positive but there are all kinds of things that might happen. Children’s books can address questions like these and open up a space for people to talk about them. “Children’s books and fiction more generally – movies, stage plays, comics, any ways we have to engage the imagination and empathy – can help to ask us about the kind of world we want, how we want to treat people and how we think about things like difference, identity and belonging. That’s one of the
10 PEN&INC.
highest things that fiction of any sort can do. If Tyger can help children and adults to look at the actual history of our world and the legacies of things like Empire and slavery, then that’s amazing.” Freedom is one of these key themes
in Tyger. “When I was a child, I was intensely conscious of freedom and particularly my lack of it. Children are not very free. They are constantly being told what to do, when to do it and how to do it. That might be even more true now than it was when I was a child. “There were stretches of my childhood where you could have afternoons where nothing happened, and you would make up a story or draw a comic. Freedom to think is probably the most important kind of freedom. An important book I read as a child was The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupery. It’s the first book I remember reading on my own. It’s all about the freedom to think and to think otherwise. You take nothing for
granted, you question everything.” SF feels in all of his books, characters have the freedom to question types of received wisdom, or prejudice and to find ways to move beyond and transcend these, describing books as ”intensely empowering, they help us to take a position where we can decide for ourselves what we think about things, how we feel about them and what we want to do.”
The freedom to be creative and find expression is particularly important in Tyger.
“I’ve found writing and drawing incredibly powerful things. When you take art seriously and say what you’ve created is worthwhile, that’s a wonderful gift to give a child. Art and writing have enormous power. They are communicative acts, and through them you can share a vision of the world. “There is something really old and essential to the business of being human
Spring-Summer 2023
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