Oliver Jeffers doesn’t just hate conflict. He abhors it. And that is why the prize-winning children’s author and illustrator, who grew up in Belfast during the Troubles, thinks parents have a responsibility to teach their children about it. “Children are future adults. I think if we walk on eggshells or tiptoe around subjects – tell them ‘everything is perfect, life is rosy’ – people will walk into the same failures that humans have been making for time eternal,” he says.
Parents need to find a way to talk to their children about war and other types of political and social conflict, he says. “I think it’s their responsibility to do that. But from the perspective of: conflict doesn’t accomplish very much.”
