In a lovely and extraordinary gesture, the British library has accepted my autistic son’s book. The Chief Exec took the time and effort to write to him.
The book doesn’t have classic “literary merit” but it’s made me feel the openness and inclusivity that libraries embody.
If you were to take the book on its own terms, then it uses many techniques of the “found poem” form but also mashes up or enjambs an old folk story trope with modern - hyper-modern even - characters.
In that sense it’s imaginative power is unique. The type of mind and attention to detail plus the repetitive stim of words is atypical in a wide sense.
The illustrations are part of the whole and display a singular vision.
It has child-like qualities in the way that it is fantastical. Yet this echoes Spike Milligan or Borges or Dr. Seuss in playful nonsense.
Perhaps for a moment it allows to think in a way of something other.
There are now two generations of Yeoh in the British Library. My own work sits there because of the 1968 Theatre Act that requires a deposit of playscripts of all plays performed in Britain.