Joseph Coelho and Jason Reynolds have plenty in common. Both are award-winning authors who are currently national representatives for children’s literature: earlier this year, Coelho became the UK children’s laureate, while Reynolds holds the equivalent role in the US, the national ambassador for young people’s literature. They are around the same age (Coelho is 42 and Reynolds is 38), both found a love for words through poetry, and both are Black writers passionate about making the white-dominated world of children’s books more diverse. They also both never read books as young children.
Coelho grew up in a single parent family in Roehampton, south-west London, with “a teen mother who was doing her best, but had herself left school at a very young age”. He wasn’t read to at home, and couldn’t read properly until he was about seven or eight. At that point, he managed to catch up with his peers and found a love of books through his local library’s summer reading challenge. An inspirational school visit from “the late great” Jean “Binta” Breeze made him realise that he could be a writer too, and ultimately sparked his career as a poet and picture-book author.
