What do doctors, teachers, lawyers and actors have in common? Quite a lot, if you’re a children’s author. Some of the most interesting books for children and young adults have been written by people whose previous careers have provided them with a wealth of experiences, characters and stories to draw upon.
Take Adam Kay, the former junior doctor whose medical career became the inspiration for his bestselling writing. After This Is Going to Hurt brought the reality – and absurdity – of life in the NHS to millions of readers, Kay turned his attention to younger audiences. Kay’s Anatomy combines his medical knowledge with plenty of jokes and gruesome facts, while his Dexter Procter series imagines a ten-year-old doctor working in a hospital.
Teachers, unsurprisingly, are particularly well represented among children’s authors. Michael Morpurgo worked as a teacher for a decade before becoming a full-time writer, and his experience of working with children undoubtedly helped shape his understanding of young readers. His hugely successful War Horse, meanwhile, draws on his lifelong interest in history, animals and the human cost of conflict.
Julia Donaldson also worked as a teacher, alongside jobs in publishing, before becoming one of Britain’s best-loved children’s writers. Her background in performance and song-writing is particularly evident in the rhythm, rhyme and read-aloud quality of books such as The Gruffalo.
For Matt Goodfellow, more than a decade as a primary-school teacher became a valuable source of insight into children's lives. His verse novel The Final Year draws readers into the emotional world of a boy navigating the final year of primary school – a world Goodfellow knew first-hand from the classroom.
Then there are the lawyers. Louis Sachar, author of the amazing Holes and There's a Boy in the Girls' Bathroom to name a few of his bestsellers attended law school and passed the Bar exam before swapping his wig and gown for pen and paper. Meanwhile Michelle Paver, author of Wolf Brother earned her law degree from Oxford University before becoming a lawyer in the City of London. Rashmi Sirdeshpande swapped his legal career for children's writing, bringing the skills of explaining complicated ideas clearly to books such as Dosh, which introduces young readers to the world of money.
And the world of acting has produced its own crop of authors. Ursula Jones, who worked as an actor with the Royal Shakespeare Company and in Coronation Street, became an award-winning children's author with The Witch's Children. Then there are the likes of David Walliams, Ben Miller and Julian Clary, Jo Cotterill, meanwhile, combines her experience as a professional actor with a prolific career writing for children and teenagers, including YA fiction.
Even the current Children's Laureate - Patrice Lawrence - who champions children's voices in her books draws heavily from her twenty year career working for charities that supported social justice, equality, and the rights of unheard children and families.
Perhaps that's the real secret: authors don't necessarily leave their old careers behind. They take them with them – transforming classrooms, courtrooms, hospitals and stages into material for stories that introduce children to new worlds.