Letter from a Laureate: Chris Riddell
To celebrate 20 years of the Waterstones Children’s Laureates in 2019, we asked Chris Riddell to tell us about his memories of holding the post in 2015–17
Chris Riddell meeting children at an event
Dear reader,
As the ninth UK Children’s Laureate I tried to keep busy…
I visited as many libraries as I could and mentioned school libraries and librarians and the vital work they do whenever I interviewed in the press, radio and TV.
By using social media daily, I documented what I did as Laureate and through Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr connected with a wide audience.
My posts were collected and published by Macmillan as Travels with my sketchbook, the proceeds going to BookTrust.
Here are some of the highlights of my time as Laureate:
- Drawing live for audiences using my trusty visualiser …
- … at the the Jermyn St. Theatre – Under Milk Wood
- … at the Hay Festival – Blue Beard, The Goldberg Variations, Mythos by Stephen Fry and Norse Myths by Neil Gaiman
- … at the National Theatre – illustrating poets reading at the Clippa Poetry Awards, and Poems for every day of the year and Foyle Young Poets Prize and the Imagine Festival – Noggin the nog and Chris Riddell and Friends
- … at the Royal Albert Hall illustrating Dreams of freedom with Chickenshed Theatre
- … at the National Portrait Gallery, the House of Illustration and Seven Stories
I also got a chance to draw with the National Youth Orchestra at the Barbican and on stage with the band The Leisure Society at Somerset House.
I drew at the all-party Parliamentary Group for Libraries at the House of Lords, with Tom Hiddleston at the BBC’s 500 words competition at The Globe Theatre, on Lauren Laverne’s Radio 6 show, in David Walliams’s Very Large Kitchen
I had a lovely time and I tried my best,