Liccle Bit: Book 1 (Crongton)

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What a gripping tale of family and friends, love and loyalty... Lemar's voice is so strong and I loved the humour in it too.' Well here's a confession, the actual name Crongton came from Croydon and Brixton, two areas of London I know very well. But I wanted to make it fictional because at one point in my career I wrote a book called The Dirty South. I was promoting that in a south London school, in Brixton where the book was set. And I thought that I had the language and so on on point but not so. It didn't impress this very intelligent girl in the front row. She said: "Alex, we don't chat like that any more". So when I sat down to write the Crongton series I thought, you know what, it might be better if I try to make the place fictional so I can get away with my language and so on. I don't have to keep up with current trends, I can invent stuff when I need to. Books are absolutely crucial in getting us to think about new worlds': we speak to the award-winning author, Onjali Q Rauf Alex Alphonso Wheatle MBE (born 3 January 1963) [1] is a British novelist, who was sentenced to a term of imprisonment after the 1981 Brixton riot in London. [2] Biography [ edit ]

I do take some inspiration from my youth club days, from when I used to work in a youth club in Streatham. The language bouncing around the place was so exciting. So I do dip into that now and again. But I also dip into dance hall and reggae culture. I dip into hip hop. I dip into film noir, I love the language of film noir especially Humphrey Bogart films, Cary Grant films. And all those crime dramas going on from the late 40s, early 50s which I take inspiration from as well. When Caldonia points out the boys' lives don’t seem to be going places, their vague fantasy of robbing a post office is chivvied into reality.The plans descend into pure farce, including painted Star Wars toyblasters as their heist weapons! Armistice Day: A Collection of Remembrance - Spark Interest and Educate Children about Historical Moments Frank Cottrell Boyce on why reading for pleasure is the most important thing you can pass on to a child This book is a blast of fresh air and will appeal to all types of teenagers, from the booky to absolute reluctants (Barrington Stoke’s dyslexic sensitive publishing standards also help here).

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Wheatle has since spoken about the Brixton riots, most prominently in the 2006 BBC programme Battle for Brixton. [6] His early books are based on his life in Brixton as a teenager and his time in social services' care. [7] Sometimes it keeps me awake at night, and that's okay because sometimes being British we have to maintain the stiff upper lip, but it's okay to feel that at times because you're getting in touch with your younger self and you're processing the pain of your younger years. When I hear people say you must not dwell on that I think that's wrong. Sometimes we have to look at those instances of our younger life, process the pain and hurt in a healthy way. So I'm always doing that with my books and my characters. It's a long journey, I'm able to talk about it freely today because I've done that work and that processing in my poetry and so forth, when I was a teenager and up to the present day when I'm writing characters such as Mo and Naomi, because part of me is in them. What would it have been like for you to have books like the Crongton series when you were a child? The second shortest 14 year old in his class, Lemar – Liccle Bit to his friends – feels he may never get a chance with Venetia, the hottest girl in school. At home life is crazy too with a mother too busy to pay him any attention, a sister with a foul temper and a baby by the local gang leader, a dad who left when he was seven. He does have his two best friends, his grandmother’s cooking and his talent for drawing. Just when Venetia asks him to draw her portrait, he is pulled deeper into the gang scene with the pressure mounting and the local inter-gang war escalating. He needs to get out of this mess and save his family from. With all of Alex’s brilliance for dialogue, LICCLE BIT is a story of redemption, of love, of family, of trying to hold your head up, of one boy’s journey. Sales He wrote and performed Uprising, a one-man play based on his own life at Tara Arts Studios, Wandsworth, London. In 2011, he took Uprising on tour and performed it at the Writing On The Wall Festival, Liverpool, the Oxford Playhouse, the Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury, the Ilkley Playhouse and the Albany Theatre, Deptford. [ citation needed] The play re-toured theatres and literature festivals in 2012, marking the 50th year of Jamaican Independence. [10]

Birthday Honours List 2008". Archived from the original on 23 July 2008 . Retrieved 11 August 2008. Enter our competition to win the Crongton series by Alex Wheatle Can you explain how you created the Crongton dialect? Today we have a variety of narratives and different perspectives. It's very diverse now. We've been talking about diversity for a number of years but I think we're getting there now. So really if we see a troubled young person in a school now, a very good librarian can say: try reading this. This might help you get over whichever issue you're contending with and I think that's a great place to be right now. I think YA and children's books are on the march on this, I think they're in front of adult literature which can sway away from these issues. In fact now I've been immersed in children's writing and young adult narratives I find it very difficult to get into adult literature. For me, it's too slow, the plot doesn't get going, and I can find it very hard to engage with what the author's trying to do or say. Again I think that evade and avoid the issues of today, issues that children have to go through. JRR Tolkien in 1956: He created new words, new phrases and indeed, two or three different languages. Photograph: Haywood Magee/Getty Images As a new gang war breaks out on his estate, Lemar discovers that South Crongton's notorious gang leader has taken an interest in him. Before he knows what's happening, he's running errands. When he puts his own family in danger, Liccle Bit will be forced to question his choices. How can he possibly put things right?In his next novel, The Seven Sisters (2002), Wheatle moves away from what might have been an easy winning formula. Set in the suburbs and rural Surrey, The Seven Sisters (on the surface at least) turns from the politics of race in the early 1980s to a more personal, psychological narrative of four abused boys running away from a children’s home during the long hot summer of 1976. Behind the tragic events that are unflinchingly described in the novel, is a strong undercurrent of humour which will be familiar to readers of Wheatle’s other fiction and which gives a tonal complexity, as well as a sense of hope, to often bleak, depressive, and depressed visions. But I really don't think institutions like where I was, or the schools that I attended were fully equipped to deal with children like myself who had these great emotional needs and pain and so on. I don't think they had any idea. Maybe today they do. I really think, and this is why I'm a champion of children's books and YA books, I really think it could be a way where damaged children who have issues can deal with what has gone on in their lives. As a new gang war breaks out on his estate, Lemar discovers that South Crongton’s notorious gang leader has taken an interest in him. Before he knows what’s happening, he’s running errands. When he puts his own family in danger, Liccle Bit will be forced to question his choices. How can he possibly put things right? His second novel, East of Acre Lane (2001), has a similar setting, and won a London Arts Board New Writers Award. A prequel, Island Songs, set in Jamaica, was published in 2005, and a sequel, Dirty South, in 2008.

At least Lemar has art to help him escape, and it's even getting him some attention from the girl he likes, Venetia King. Yet Lemar has also gained the attention of South Crongton's most notorious gangster, and it's not long before he has Lemar running errands for him. Soon a chain of events will see Lemar down a road he never wanted to go down, will he be able to stop it? Breathing new life into a genre currently obsessed with vampires, dystopian visions or mawkishly sentimental stories, this tale set in a contemporary high-rise estate is topical and also a triumph of language ... Wise as well as witty, understanding rather than blinkered, this novel is a joy to read - Independent The book contains graphic descriptions of violence and brutality throughout, so this is one best for older children aged thirteen and up. Touring Literature Festivals & Theatres in 2012 marking the 50th year of Jamaican Independence". Uprising (2011 & 2012) . Retrieved 9 December 2020. [ permanent dead link]

In 2008, Wheatle was awarded the MBE for services to literature in the Queen's Birthday Honours list.