Jamie Oliver apologises after his children’s book is criticised for ‘stereotyping’ First Nations Australians

Exclusive: Publisher takes responsibility for the failure to consult Indigenous groups, who say the fantasy novel trivialises complex and painful histories

Jamie Oliver says he is “devastated” by the offence he has caused to First Nations people and has issued an apology, after calls by Australia’s peak body for Indigenous education for the British celebrity chef to withdraw his children’s book from sale.

Oliver is in Australia promoting his latest cookbook, Simply Jamie, but it is his decision to join a growing flock of celebrity children’s book authors with a 400-page fantasy novel for primary school-age children that has come under fire.

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Angie Thomas, author of The Hate U Give: ‘Books play a huge part in resistance’

The author’s young adult novel became a publishing sensation and an acclaimed film. Here, she answers questions from readers and famous fans on activism, social media and coping with rejection

In book publishing, it seems, they still do fairytales. Really not very long ago, Angie Thomas was a secretary to a bishop at a megachurch in Jackson, Mississippi. At nights – and during quiet periods in the day, she furtively admits – she worked on a young adult novel inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement. She had previously written a children’s book, but hadn’t had any interest from agents. “Yeah, I had more than 150 rejections for that one,” says Thomas matter-of-factly.Thomas’s break came when she cold-contacted a literary agent who was doing a Twitter Q&A. The story speeds up now: the novel became The Hate U Give (THUG), a YA sensation about a 16-year-old girl called Starr who witnesses her friend Khalil being shot by the police and turns to activism. THUG, published in early 2017, went straight into the bestseller chart in the US and stayed there for a year. It was a hit here too, and named overall winner of the 2018 Waterstones children’s book prize. It has now sold more than 2m copies globally. Last year, a film adaptation was released, which has been a critical and commercial success.

“Oh, it’s definitely surreal,” says the 31-year-old Thomas, on the phone from Jackson. “I still can’t believe it. It does feel like a dream I’m going to wake up from.” Her agent now is one of the 150-plus who turned down her first book. “So I hold that over his head,” she says, and giggles.

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