When Kitty and I visited All She Wrote Books last week, it was the first time we were able to see "in person" some of our recent favorite new picture books. Some of them even came home with us — including When We Say Black Lives Matter by Maxine Beneba Clarke, winner of the 2019 Boston Globe–Horn Book Picture Book Award for The Patchwork Bike (both Candlewick).

1. So much has happened since you won the 2019 BGHB Award. First: how are you? 

Maxine Beneba Clarke: Yes, it seems like worlds ago that illustrator Van Thanh Rudd and I were recording our speeches to be played at the Boston Globe–Horn Book Award ceremony. A global pandemic unfolded, the Black Lives Matter movement galvanized across the world, extreme climate change events have ramped up on every continent. A war has commenced. It really seems like three years of reckoning! 2019 feels like worlds away. On a personal level, though, myself and my loved ones have been healthy and safe, and that’s been both a privilege and a blessing. And writing wise, it’s been the same old grind: trying hard to create something beautiful to place in the hands of little ones, set up against the bleakness the world often delivers. 

2. What was it like writing and illustrating When We Say Black Lives Matter compared to working with an illustrator collaborator?  

MBC: Illustrating When We Say Black Lives Matter was an absolute joy. The book was made during one of the extraordinarily long COVID-19 enforced lockdowns we had here in Melbourne, Australia. I’m told we had the second-longest lockdown in the world, or something like that. The kids were schooling from home, and my youngest (then 9) was doing her lessons on the kitchen table while I was illustrating next to her. As cramped and makeshift as it felt, it also turned out to be a very fitting way to make this book, which is grounded in Black family, Black community, and Black love.

There are pros and cons to illustrating your own book. With The Patchwork Bike, the book very much felt like it was enriched by Van’s artistic interpretations, and the additional layer of story he brought to the project. Van included details and illustration styles I’d never have thought of, but there was also a lot of “space” inside the text in The Patchwork Bike to allow this to happen. With When We Say Black Lives Matter, I very much had an immediate idea of the colors and feel and style I wanted to use. I was driven by this same urgent compulsion I had when writing the text — the images and the text were made with a kind of creative single-mindedness. Looking back, I don’t think I’d ever have been able to have this title illustrated by someone else — the possibility didn’t even cross my mind! Some picture book texts just feel like they’re supposed to be collaborations, and some feel more like a deeply personal vision. 

3. What does Black Lives Matter look like in Australia today? 

MBC: In Australia, Black Lives Matter is first and foremost grounded in the acknowledgement that “Australia” was illegally founded on Black Aboriginal land. It involves a commitment to righting the injustices of the past and the present, and upholding of the rights and dignities of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. As the child of Black migrants to Australia who are of Afro-Caribbean descent, the term, of course, also evokes for me a history that includes ancestors being trafficked from West Africa to Jamaica and Guyana as part of the transatlantic slave trade; and the lasting legacy and intergenerational trauma that act has had on my family, and millions of other affected African diaspora families around the world, including here in Australia. The term Black Lives Matter is one that intersects with so many Black communities in Australia, in different and similar ways. That, to me, is part of the power of the mantra. (Photo: © Nicholas Walton-Healey)

4. Has the Diverse Books movement had a positive impact on publishing there? 

MBC: In Australia, Indigenous children’s books are a really strong and striking part of the book market, which is really beautiful to see. I’ve been able to buy my kids, myself, and my friends’ kids exquisite books about the Black history of this place that weren’t available when I was a child. There’s definitely more of an acknowledgement in the industry of the whiteness of the picture-book space and the need for it to diversify, yet broad change is unfortunately proving to be difficult. I do wish that Australia tapped in more to global sentiment in terms of diversity in kids’ books. I know there’s a long way to go in a lot of places, but we still really need to sprint to catch up! 

5. Can you talk about your next project?  

MBC: In December in the U.S., my kids’ book Fashionista: Fashion Your Feelings (Candlewick) comes out. Fashionista is a fun celebration of the self, and an anthem for self-expression. It’s about how what we wear, and the way we wear it, can say so much to the world — about who we are and what we’re feeling. Whether it’s wearing all the stripes in our wardrobe together on a hectic day, donning yellow because we feel happy, or holding our afro head high because we’re proud of our heritage, fashion has the power to speak for us when we cannot. Choice of clothes is often one small thing that kids have at least some amount of control over, in a world where their meals, bedtimes, living situations, and so many other things are dictated by others. Fashionista is about empowering kids of all shapes, colors, and backgrounds to tell their stories through what they wear. It’s a book that really was an absolute delight to work on, and I hope readers get as much happiness from reading it as I did creating it.