Emma Donoghue lightens things up
Author’s new book for kids celebrates the unconventional family lifestyle
Emma Donoghue has written a number of dark novels, including the award-winning Room, Frog Music and last September’s The Wonder.
But a novel for children? A novel that will put a smile on your face after the first page?
Donoghue’s new book The Lotterys Plus One, illustrated by Caroline Hadilaksono (HarperCollins Canada), is the story of an unconventional family led by a lesbian couple and a gay couple who are the moms and dads of seven children.
Along the way, they found a winning lottery ticket, moved into an old mansion and changed the family name to Lottery.
“I wanted it to be about a family that’s larger than life, but I didn’t want it to be about rich people living a swanky, glamorous lifestyle,” Donoghue said of the first book in a planned series.
“So, I made them an environmentally conscious family who will use second-hand things and the children will go scavenging for useful things.”
Getting the names straight can be a challenge. The parents are CardaMom and MaxiMum, PopCorn and PapaDum. The children, aged one to 16, are named after trees — Sic, 16, boy, Catalpa, 14, girl, then Redwood (Wood for short), a boy, Aspen, 10, a girl, Sumac, 9, a girl, Briar (a preschool girl who shaved her head and now answers to Brian) and Oak, the toddler. The children are home schooled.
Enter Grumps, PopCorn’s father and the children’s grandfather whom they’ve never met because he lives in the Yukon.
It turns out Grumps is suffering from the early stages of dementia and set his house on fire.
So PopCorn and Sumac go to the Yukon and bring him home to live at their Victorian mansion called Camelottery, throwing a curve into their already chaotic lifestyle.
Donoghue said she tapped her own children, Finn, 12, and Una, 9, for inspiration.
“The kids would come off the bus and immediately start talking and I’d be listening and asking if I could use this or that,” Donoghue said.
Donoghue said she gets “bored with children’s fictions that stick to conventional patterns.”
“I thought it would be fun to write about a family that’s very different, but with characters who take their (unconventional family shape) in stride,” said Donoghue, who lives in her own unconventional family, the mother of two children with partner Christine Roulston, a professor of women’s studies, feminist research and French.
“I didn’t write it for political reasons, but I’m sure some people will be provoked by it. But the tone is so breezy and it’s just such a highfunctioning, loving family, in many ways with old-fashioned values of stability and love. They are not social freaks.”
The book is written for children ages eight to 12.