I have just moved further into the countryside, meriting access to a mobile library – a jolly bus filled with books. I’m looking forward to using this service: when I lived in the city, aside from toddler read-and-sing-along sessions and volunteering for my local school, my library usage had been utilitarian, in support of my part-time work in academia.

A few years ago I started writing for children. If I’m lucky, this will bring many more visits to libraries for events and book borrowing. To be a writer, after all, you have to read, read and read some more. While writing a novel for 8-12 year-olds, I read stacks of kids’ books, but I also drew heavily on academic literature and my own ethnographic research into migration and ideas of home and belonging.

Tiger Skin Rug (Cranachan Publishing) is the story of two boys who move from India to Scotland. The values and cultural references coursing through the book stem from many years’ worth of research in the form of archival digs, conversations, data gathering and time spent engaging in daily lives and customs of Hindu families in Zambia. Writing an ethnography is, by definition, ‘writing culture’ and the process demands a degree of immersion within a group, of which the ethnographer is most likely an outsider. It also demands ‘self reflexivity’: this is an awareness of the affect of one’s self as an outside researcher on the situation, and a sensitivity towards all those within that situation. An ethnographer is not objective but will seek to provide an authentic narrative. A good ethnography will therefore never be reductive, and will embrace complexity.

Tiger Skin Rug confronts the same big issues tackled in my research (migration, identity, ideas of home, the intersections of privilege and prejudice), but for a different, younger and distinctly more important, readership. I didn’t want to shy away from tricky ideas for children, but rather wanted to invite in lots of different ways of thinking about one thing – the meaning of home. My interest in home, particularly relating to migration and how children experience migration, reflects my own life experiences. It also reflects my deep concern that people in all manner of contexts continue to exclude others based on ideas and perceptions of place, authenticity and belonging – ideas and perceptions that often confuse or conflate ethnicity and nationality, race and class.

My current academic remit strongly resists attitudes that hinder cultural exchange and understanding. I am part of a global study abroad college where I sit on a working group for the college JEDI team. JEDI here stands for Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion. The ‘Empire’ we are fighting is not, however, in a galaxy far, far away: we are plotting to decolonise the curriculum and revamp training to ensure fairness and representation for all. My next book is a nonfiction title coauthored with Joan Lennon. Talking History: 150 Years of Speeches (Templar Publishing, out July 2021) offers children a range of voices and political stories from around the world.

Writing for children, in turn, has influenced the way I think about my academic work. It has opened up teaching possibilities and allowed me to make new literary and theoretical connections. Supporting students’ learning and independent research projects often involves directing them to relevant books and articles. Increasingly, I find myself recommending fiction, too – which provides me with the perfect excuse to visit that mobile library.

A big thank you to Joan Haig for a fascinating blog and to Cranachan Publishing for the opportunity.