Lauren Child: why children need '˜more time to dream'

The illustrator-cum-author, who was crowned at a ceremony in Hull, said children were grappling with everything from social media to the recent terrorist attacks.

Ms Child, who also authored the Clarice Bean picture books and Ruby Redfort novels, was presented her medal by her predecessor Chris Riddell in front of an audience including 200 primary schoolchildren at City Hall in Hull, currently UK City of Culture. Ms Child, whose Charlie And Lola books spawned a global hit and Bafta award-winning TV series, said: “I think there’s a lot of pressure on children, a lot is expected of them.

“There is always something difficult going on in the world. When I was a child it was nuclear war, that was the big ogre. We have another ogre going on, all these horrors, particularly recently. That’s a pressure, they worry about it. It’s an anxiety, something you can’t control.

“There are other things, the economy, they hear all these gloomy stories, you won’t be able to afford your own house when you are grown up.

“That’s why I think books are so powerful, it’s a world you can escape into that’s safe.”

Parents, she said, needed to speak to children about the recent terrorist attacks to stop it becoming a “monster growing in your head.”

The author, one of whose jobs was painting spots on Damien Hirst canvases back in the 1990s, intends to champion creativity: “If we allowed our children a little bit more time to dream and stare into space they make connections and that’s how you have ideas and great ideas.”

She said people often asked her where her ideas came from, as if they were magic, when they were “perfectly capable” of coming up with brilliant ideas. “If you take time to stare out of a window, you see the most incredible things.

“That’s what a writer and illustrator is doing - noting peculiar things, little snippets of conversation you hear in supermarkets, all these things give you stories and ideas.”

More than one-third (38 per cent) of children in Yorkshire and the Humber left primary school last year unable to read well, according to figures provided by the National Literacy Trust. In Hull the figure is 36 per cent, two points lower than the national average - figures Ms Child described as “incredibly troubling.”

And she echoed outgoing Children’s Laureate Chris Riddell’s concerns about school libraries closing, saying: “If we are saying on one hand it’s vital to get children out of the poverty trap. If it is vital why do we think it’s OK not to have libraries?”

She hopes her new role will help “elevate children’s books as an art form” and encourage book festivals to stop treating children’s books “as the poor relation to adult books”.

She also doesn’t think there are enough strong girls and characters from diverse backgrounds in picture books or on screens: “There are lots of books which turn out to be girl books.

“They are talked about in a disparaging way, as if it’s wrong to be a girl..or as if subjects that we’re talking about are not important.”

Previous winners of the title, which is awarded every two years, include Sir Quentin Blake , Michael Morpugo and Jacqueline Wilson.

Mr Riddell, an illustrator and political cartoonist for the Observer, said: “It is a great joy to hand over to Lauren who is a wonderful champion of children’s books. Lauren is going to put creativity into the centre of what she wants to talk about - and she will do that with wonderful wit and humour.”