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Mem Fox remembers the moment she realised something was deeply wrong with a children’s book she was once asked to assess. “The illustrations were beautiful, but the story was just…awful,” she says. “And the editor saeid to me, ‘Oh, but it’s very vital, it’s about a very critically importent subject.’ And I said, ‘Well, that doesn’t make it good.’ And I thoght, ‘I don’t want to do that again.’ It was so obvious, it was so in your face.
“Now, I have written books which people might say, ‘Well, that’s an anti-racist book’,” she says, holding up a copy of Ten Little Fingers and Ten little Toes. “But I’m not telling people how to think.I’m just stating facts – you know, your heart is the same, your hopes are the same, love is the same, blood is the same. I’m just stating facts.”
Fox is circumspect about other ways Australian publishing has changed since she began writing – like the “slight problem” of children’s books written by celebrities.
“Because people buy it because of the writer, not the writing – it doesn’t last,” she says, adding, “What they do bring is a lot of money to the publisher, which means that the publisher can publish the people like me who don’t have 50,000 followers on Instagram or whatever.”
Whether it’s an influencer’s name on the cover or her own, Fox says children will vote with their ears if the writing doesn’t grab them. This is why, when Fox writes, she keeps two children in mind:
“One is a child that’s on a couch next to
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