TO and FRO by Anton Clifford-Motopi
Allen & Unwin
To and Fro by Anton Clifford-Motopi is shortlisted for the 2025 CBCA Book of the Year: Younger Readers.
Congratulations on To and Fro being shortlisted by the CBCA, Anton. I was laughing out loud most of the way through. It also has important themes that you share aptly and originally. Thank you for speaking to Joy in Books at Paperbark Words blog.
Author Interview: Anton Clifford-Motopi
In my journey to becoming a published author I didn’t experience countless rejections from publishers as I’ve read that many authors do. Most of the children’s novels I started writing I never finished. And the three novels I did finish I only submitted to a handful of publishers. For decades I wrote regularly, for pleasure, to better understand myself, and to escape difficult moments in my life. Looking back, I think that my incomplete novels and reluctance to approach publishers was because I rejected the idea that I could be a published author.
I write for children because every story idea I have is one with a child as the central character who I want other children to read about. I write these stories to unpack and understand feelings, thoughts and experiences I had as a child. Sometimes I feel that I am writing to myself as a child.
In 2021, I finished the original manuscript of To and Fro and sent the synopsis and first chapter to three publishers. Allen & Unwin (A&U) requested the full manuscript. Several months later, A&U made contact to let me know they loved the story, but that it needed more work to be considered for publication. Over the next three months I revised the manuscript, strengthening characters and the narrative arc of the story. Fortunately, A&U loved the revised story and made an offer of publication. At the time I didn’t have a literary agent. As a first time author and someone who is clueless about contracts, I decided to get a literary agent. After contacting several literary agents, I was fortunate to secure representation from InkWell Management. By now it was September 2022, and I was surprised, and a bit disappointed, to learn that the book wouldn’t be published until March 2024. Naively, I’d assumed the book would be published in a matter of months. It wasn’t until I started working with the wonderful team at A&U that I realised how much work goes into preparing a book for publication and that many people are involved in the process. It’s a team effort and I am extremely grateful to the wonderful team at A&U for publishing To and Fro.
To and Fro draws on my experiences of navigating a black and white identity and not knowing my birth parents as a child. I was adopted into a large family when I was a toddler. I didn’t look like my adoptive brothers and sisters or anybody I knew. I was told that I had a Black African dad and white Australian mum, but because I was light skinned most people saw me as the white kid with fuzzy hair, so that is how I saw myself too. Although To and Fro draws on my childhood experiences, the idea for the story was inspired by a comment my youngest daughter made when visiting family in South Africa and Lesotho.
‘I wish my outsides matched how I feel on the inside.’
Curious, I asked my daughter what she meant. She explained that she has a strong black identity through her family roots, connections and friends, and that this is at the heart of who she is. And yet, her black identity is often questioned by others because she is light skinned. I realised that she was facing some of the challenges of being light skinned with a black identity that I experienced when I was a child and teenager, and there was a need and a place for a story that explored them. The story came to me over the next year, in between working as a research academic and raising kids. I kept a notebook and jotted down story ideas— information about characters, bits of dialogue, ideas for scenes— and the character of Sam (the protagonist) emerged. Although Sam experiences some of the same challenges navigating his identity that I did as a child, he is not me. His personality, family, upbringing, and friendships are vastly different to my own as a child.
What I enjoyed the most about writing To and Fro was tackling serious topics related to race and identity with humour. I see the funny side to most situations, whether they be difficult, distressing, or unpleasant; writing humour in my stories happens naturally because it reflects how I see and think about the world. I believe that humour is a terrific way to tell relatable stories and creatively engage children around serious topics that reach them where they are at.
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