There is nothing new about stars trying their hand at children’s fiction (Julie Andrews published Mandy back in 1971). But the announcement in October that Keira Knightley has written and illustrated her first children’s novel, billed as “a modern classic”, was met with anger among children’s writers who took to social media to joke that they wanted to become film stars. The written word can be a tricky thing to navigate for the untutored. Jamie Oliver was forced to pull his new title Billy and the Epic Escape after it was criticised for perpetuating harmful stereotypes and “trivialising painful histories” of First Nations people.
There is understandable frustration from other authors, who feel they are being crowded out of press coverage and bookshops. Sometimes it is unclear who is actually writing the titles. It is no surprise that many memoirs are ghostwritten – no one really thought Prince Harry toiled for months to write Spare. A celebrity’s life story belongs to them, after all, so it doesn’t seem so problematic that a professional writer is hired to tell it. But who owns an idea or fictional narrative?
