22 November 2023 , 11:50
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Sir Lenny Henry has revealed that he decided to start writing children's books in order for his daughter to have characters that she could identify with, as a mixed-race girl.
The 65 year old star, who recently marked 50 years in the TV industry, said that he found it "weird" to read a story to his daughter Billie, who would ask "where am I?" During an interview to discuss his latest children's novel The Boy With Wings: Clash of the Superkids, he was asked why he first penned a children's book and he said:"I never saw any black superheroes. We've got Blade."
Sir Lenny Henry says he first wrote a children's book for his daughter (Capital)
Sir Lenny Henry appeared on Capital XTRA Breakfast (Capital)He added: "The Black Panther, The Falcon, Black Lightning, Static, we’ve got a few superheroes, but not very many and we’ve certainly got no leading people of colour in children's books." Speaking to Robert Bruce and Shayna Marie on Capital XTRA Breakfast he added: "People like Dabo (Adeola) and Mallory (Blackman), there's some really good black authors now but there just weren't any for a long time, and I'll tell you, when you're reading stories to a young mixed-race girl and she can't see yourself in a book, it's really weird. "
He then said: "She loved The Hobbit and all the CS Lewis books, but she was like, ‘where am I?’. I ended up writing two books for my daughter, they’re about a little girl called Charlie and she had big hair and she had all these adventures, and I guess these books are for my granddaughter when she gets older. I just want my family to see themselves in a book. It's important to me."
Sir Lenny first shot to fame in the mid seventies after winning a talent show called New Faces. On the back of his win, his career in TV sky-rocketed. And it was at this point that his mum started to take his career path seriously.
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Last month he told the Mirror: "I got my first ever standing ovation on New Faces and thought ‘oh I like this’. After my New Faces audition, I had my mum’s acceptance. Up until then, I was a waste of space. She thought I was useless, then suddenly I was this kid who could be on telly." Lenny concentrated on doing impressions of Some Mother's Do 'Ave 'Em star Frank Skinner and newsreader and documentary film maker Trevor McDonald, which gained him a fan base among the British public.
He added: "I used to love doing impressions of Trevor McDonald because he was probably the most famous black guy on television. To me, Trevor was a god. And then one day, he just walked on. It blew my mind. It’s nice when something goes into the zeitgeist and people are talking about it. For a brief minute there, kids were doing characters from The Lenny Henry Show and Three Of A Kind in the playground. That's a thing to cherish."
As he gained notoriety over the years on both sides of the pond, Sir Lenny's started to rub shoulders with a host of high profile names, including the South African icon Nelson Mandela. But after taking a picture of the former political leader, Sir Lenny's daughter thought that he was her grandfather.
During his interview on Capital XTRA Breakfast he continued: "Meeting Nelson Mandela, it was great, I had my picture taken with him after the second Mandela Day and for quite a long time it was stuck to the wall above my daughter's bed, and for a really long time she thought he was her granddad!"