Facing up to matters of life and death

A children’s story book about death may not sound like a bestseller, but for Yorkshire author and radio producer, Hilary Robinson, it is turning out to be a world-wide hit. Catherine Scott meets her.

Hilary Robinson is not afraid to tackle difficult subjects when it comes to her books for young children. In fact she sees it almost as her responsiblity. Adoption, divorce, homelessness, respect for the elderly and even death are all topics she plans to explore through her books for four to seven-year- olds.

“My current series of books do deal wth edgier issues, but there seems to be a demand for books which deal with issues that children, even young ones, come across in today’s world,” explains Hilary. Her latest book, The Copper Tree, deals with the thorny issue of death and bereavement, and was inspired by her own sister-in-law’s battle with breast cancer.

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“Caroline (Robinson) was headteacher at Crosshall Infants School in Morley, she was just 27 when she became acting head. Then, at the age of 32, she was diagnosed with breast cancer.

“She lived for seven years with the disease and during that time and throughout her treatment she continued to work and then when she couldn’t work any longer she would visit the school – sometimes in a wheelchair. My children were quite young and we never hid anything from them. It gave me the idea for the book, although I didn’t write it until she’d died.

“It was a way of me dealing with my own grief as well. The more I thought about the legacy she left, the impact she’d had on the children she taught and also my children, which lasted way beyond her death. I wanted some how to continue this legacy. At first I wrote it for my own personal use and for my chldren. I also gave a copy to Caroline’s husband and family at her funeral. That was seven years ago and I didn’t really think about it much after that.”

Then last September a friend died from breast cancer and she left three children. The family couldn’t find any books which dealt with the death of a person.

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“There were a few which dealt with loss and grief through the death of an animal but very few which dealth with real people.”

And so Hilary decided to publish The Copper Tree.

The book follows the illness and eventual death of a much-loved teacher told through the eyes of a young child.

“The book was also inspired by St Gemma’s Hospice (Leeds) which established a Tree of Life made out of copper where bereveaved relatives could inscribe the name of someone whose died, I thought it was a lovely idea.” The children in The Copper Tree are encouraged to write down memories of their teacher, which are inscribed on copper leaves and then hung on the tree. “It is like everlasting life,” says Hilary.

In writing The Copper Tree Hilary says she felt a huge weight of responsiblity.

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“When writing for children you can’t use metaphors or euphemisms. If you say that a person has lost somebody then children think they can be found. The language needs to be clear and without ambiguity.”

Hilary also sought advice on current thinking from psycholgists and worked very closely with the charity Winston’s Wish. She ran a copy of her book past child bereavement experts to make sure she had handled the subject in the right way.

“I spoke to a lot of experts to see what the perceived wisdom is nowadays as it is very different to our parents’ generation when they didn’t talk to children about things like illness and death. Nowadays the perceived wisdom is that it is better to talk about things. I remember not being told things as a child and how I would then imagine they were much worse than they really were.”

Hilary, who is related to William Wordsworth, was born in Devon but spent her early years with her parents and three sisters growing up in Nigeria.

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“My parents were lecturers and we moved to Nigeria. Two years after we moved, war broke out and it was quite a worrying time in many ways. It didn’t affect ex-pats that much but our nanny Grace had been attacked on the way back from church and so my parents hid her in our house.” Although her parents tried to shelter Hilary and her three sisters from the worst of the violence, she remembers their car being stoned on the way to church.

“My father would break the curfew to take injured people to hospital. But at the time all I remember thinking was that good would come out of evil.”

Her interest in writing came at an early age while living in Africa.

“I was taught in part by an American missionary who got us interested in Dr Seuss and The Cat in the Hat books which had a great influence on me.” At the age of nine Hilary remembers a teacher telling her that she could be a writer one day.

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“My father, an economics lecturer, wrote text books, so I was exposed to the field and knew it was possible.”

The family moved back to the UK, first to Dorset and then Yorkshire. Although always harbouring a love of writing it wasn’t until she had her own children that she actually put pen to paper and published her first book. Until then she’d been working in children’s television and radio production.

“My eldest daughter had a terrible fear of spiders and I couldn’t find a book about a friendly spider and so I thought I’d write one.”

Since Sarah the Spider in 1995, Hilary has written 40 children’s books. Her own children are now 21 and 19 but she still runs ideas for her books past them.

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But being a children’s author, even a successful one, hardly earns enough to pay the bills and so Hilary works as a freelance radio producer for the BBC, producing shows such as Aled Jones’s and also writing his scripts.

The Copper Tree by Hilary Robinson and illustrated by Mandy Stanley is published by Strauss House (£6.99).