Spare me the hell of the celeb children’s book

Keira Knightley is the latest star inspired to take up the pen since the Duchess of Sussex’s own great literary atrocity became a bestseller

Keira Knightley, she of immaculate, chiselled Englishness, of Pride and Prejudice, Bend It Like Beckham and Atonement, has paused from her admired acting work to lend her talents to writing a children’s book. It comes out next year, courtesy of publisher Simon & Schuster and is called I Love You Just The Same. Knightley, 39 and mother of two, has also done the illustrations, bringing to mind David Walliams’ mockery of actor Dennis Waterman in Little Britain who, when offered new parts, would insist that he “star in it, write the theme tune, sing the theme tune”.
According to Simon & Schuster, Knightley tells the story of a young girl dealing with the changes that come with the arrival of a new sibling.
“The book explores themes of separation anxiety, resilience and the ability for the heart to expand as a family grows,” they said. At which point I can hear the teeth grinding of actual children’s authors as my own face constricts and contorts at the nauseating spelling out of the book’s noble intentions.
Because writing for children is the hardest kind of fiction. When done well, it is a miracle in which parent and child unite. It is a multi-layered creation where the parent gets pleasure in reading and the child in listening. Children’s writing is a discipline of tight sentences, whether they rhyme or not, of scarcity of words, of loaded meaning, energy, pace and drama, of colour, originality and wit. The masters of the art come in the form of, to name but a few, Julia Donaldson, Richmal Crompton, A. A. Milne and Roald Dahl.
So apologies for pre-judging, but Knightley’s creative juices around “separation anxiety [and] resilience” remind me of that other great literary atrocity, The Bench; Meghan, Duchess of Sussex’s vanity project of grating rhymes and saccharine statements of the obvious about paternal love. At least one could savour the reviews: “It is mind-boggling how bad this book is,” recorded the New Statesman.
Unfortunately, it became a bestseller, giving other celebrities encouragement to pen their own children’s books. To which, I say, leave it to the experts. In the same way in which I want broadcasters, not celebs, on Radio 2. Similarly, I remember well the trauma I faced one morning, around 10 years into my editing a magazine for Waitrose, when they revealed the hiring of their new wine expert: one Phillip Schofield.
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