Author Profiles - Mal Peet

As a child
I grew up as a member of a functionally impaired family on a council estate in a one-horse market town in north Norfolk. The three things that kept me sane were: my bike; books; football. The bike took me great distances (Norfolk is, famously, flat, although there are hills that can sneak up on you). Books took me further away, often to islands - Treasure Island, Coral Island, and wherever it was that the Swiss Family Robinson found themselves. I also loved comics, and originally wanted Keeper to be a graphic novel. As for football, by the time I was sixteen, I was playing at least three full matches a week - for my school, for my county, and for the town.

As an adult
After university I had some lost years, like many of my peers. I tried teaching to start with. Then I quit and went on walkabout. I worked in a hospital mortuary. I lived with a bunch of gypsies who did dodgy tarmac. I came to Devon because I liked the sound of it and worked on building sites. I went to Canada and worked with a road crew consisting of mad Newfoundlanders, North American Indians, Black Americans and exiled Irishmen. I met a love-sick man in Ontario who wanted someone to share the drive across Vancouver where his girlfriend was. That week-long drive across Canada was one of the best and worst things I have ever done.

As an artist
Like many people (I suspect) I had no real interest in Children's Literature until I had children of my own. It'll sound a bit evangelical, I suppose, but I truly believe that there are few things more important, useful and protective than sharing stories with your children. After their bath, heaped into a big, deep chair, doing the voices, discussing the pictures, softening your voice as the rhythm of their breathing deepens... You start to understand why certain books work and others don't.

Congratulations to Mal for winning the 2005 CILIP Carnegie Medal with Tamar. Tamar is only Peet’s second novel for young people.  His first, Keeper, a magical story about football won the Branford Boase Award in 2004 and his third novel, The Penalty which follows on from Keeper is published in September this year.  

“Tamar was a story I particularly wanted to tell,” says Peet.  “I believe it’s so important for young people to grasp the connections between their own lives and the past.  Our understanding of history is in danger of becoming hopelessly partial and fragmented;  the sense of continuity, cause and effect, is in danger of getting lost.  If young people don’t make those connections, what hope is there for us to learn from our mistakes rather than repeat them!”   

Like so many writers, libraries have played a key part in Peet’s life.  He doesn’t think he would have survived his childhood if it hadn’t been for his local library and believes that “libraries offer the arsenal in the war of understanding”.  For him, winning the CILIP Carnegie Medal is the ultimate accolade.  “It’s that objective recognition from librarians who really know about books and young people.  I feel extraordinarily honoured.”

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