Children’s publishing is awash with celebrity authors. So when Frank Cottrell-Boyce was named BookTrust’s Children’s Laureate, some fellow writers may not have been wholly delighted. After all, Cottrell-Boyce is better known by many for his screenwriting work. He has written successful screenplays for a roster of films, including Millions (2004), The Railway Man (2013) and Goodbye Christopher Robin (2017).
He even had a gig at the Olympics, co-creating the opening and closing ceremonies and famously scripting the interplay between Queen Elizabeth II and Daniel Craig’s Bond for the Queen’s entry to the opening ceremony.
But Frank Cottrell-Boyce is no celebrity author. When filmmaker Danny Boyle wrote the introduction for the re-release of Frank Cottrell-Boyce’s novel Millions, he began with a question: “How do you make the world a better place?” This question lies at the heart of Cottrell-Boyce’s writing for children. Here are four values of real children’s authors embodied by Cottrell-Boyce, that prove he is thoroughly deserving of the laureate.
