Author Kristina Rahim on writing her debut children’s novel
IMAGE BY JO MIESZKOWSKI
I was as young as the children I now write for when I realised all families were different. Even though my own family didn’t look like everyone else’s, I never shied away from these differences; instead, I was proud of them. And that’s how I feel today about the family my wife and I have built together.
In my experience, a positive of being in a LGBTQIA+ family is that there are no stereotypes, and we chop and change which family roles we each take on. When our children were small, it quickly became tiring having to repeatedly “come out” to explain our family setup. However, once they were in school, it was our girls who got the questions instead of us.
It was during one of these moments that a six-year-old new friend of our eldest confused the word “donor” with “doughnut”, a mix-up that went on to inspire the title of my debut children’s novel.
The Doughnut Club follows the story of 12-year-old donor-conceived Quinn Parker. When she and her younger brother, Ollie, are told by their mums that they have 16 donor siblings they never knew existed. Quinn is delighted, wondering if one of these donor siblings might be more like her. Her quest to find out more soon becomes more complicated. Could one of these donor siblings really be her worst enemy?
The Doughnut Club landed in bookshops this May. In the months leading up to publication, the first question children I met asked was always: “What’s your book about?”
This allowed me to practise talking about the book before it hit the shelves. I was struck, however, by the number of blank or confused faces that looked back at me when I described Quinn as being donor-conceived.
These reactions only confirmed to me how important it is to get more children’s stories out there that include all types of families, created in different and beautiful ways. Hopefully, by offering children an insight into families different to their own, more conversations can be started.
School is a big part of most children’s lives, and classrooms are filled with kids from a whole host of different families. To aid understanding and acceptance, it’s more important than ever for schools to ensure their book collections or libraries have enough diverse representation – and for publishers to produce (and in my case write!) those books for them.
Giving children the opportunity to see the world through a different lens can be a huge step towards removing that fear of the unknown. I’m a big believer that stories can change the world. The more representation there is in children’s books, the more open and inclusive the next generation will learn to be.
No two families are the same. There is no one set path to follow when it comes to how to live or to love. This is something that should be celebrated – in books and in life – because if that wasn’t the case, life would be incredibly dull.
Everyone’s welcome at The Doughnut Club, the wonderfully accessible debut novel from fresh new voice, Kristina Rahim, for readers aged nine and up. Out now and available in all bookshops. Published by Nosy Crow and cover illustration by Marina Tena Borras.
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