This is me, Clarice Bean.

I am not an only child but I sometimes wish I was. My family is six people which is sometimes too many. You might think it would be a relief to come to school but if you do then obviously you don’t know my teacher Mrs Wilberton. Sometimes I stare boredly into space, thinking utterly of nothing. This makes Mrs Wilberton very irritated. She wants us to do a book project which sounds utterly dreary… until I find out there is an actual prize. Me and my utterly best friend, Betty Moody, really want to win… but how?

Lauren Child does a great deal of staring into space, and this is how she thought of Clarice Bean. When Lauren Child was younger she liked watching cartoons, overhearing conversations, and her ambition was to wear sunglasses on the top of her head. She still likes to watch cartoons and overhear conversations. She has achieved her ambition. She has written probably almost 11.5 books. And some of them have won prizes.

Lauren says:

After a slow start, Utterly Me Clarice Bean sort of turned into 24000 words, mainly about Clarice’s life at school, her dragon-ish teacher, her best friend Betty and their shared passion for the Ruby Redfort books, written by the fictional fiction author, Patricia F Maplin Stacey. 

I remember the struggle I had writing Utterly Me – it was very stream of consciousness and had no actual structure and desperately needed some. At the time series fiction was the big new thing; it was the big thing when I was a child too. My sister was mad about series books, particularly the girl-detective series, Nancy Drew. I thought it would be good to have Clarice Bean crazy about a similar series, called The Ruby Redfort Collection. I thought it would work if I interwove Clarice Bean’s school day with extracts from the Ruby Redfort book she is currently reading – then I could have life imitating art – as indeed it so often does. 

I illustrated the books with black and white drawings and collages, and kept the moving about words and different fonts. It felt important to keep this connection with the Clarice Bean picture books so there wasn’t a sudden leap from Clarice picture book to Clarice novel.