"You wouldn't ask a history teacher to teach maths, would you? You wouldn't ask an English teacher to teach French, would you? Dumb question" No joke: his next book after that had a character who called everyone who went to my school "gay" and we had to have an assembly about it
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I found the bit in his next book! It's TERRIBLE! As I recall this came out a few months after he came and did a talk to us and it was truly hard not to take it personallypic.twitter.com/AENXwamhB6
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Oh boy please don't Twittersnitch me by tagging Anthony Horowitz into this thread guys
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[extremely soundcloud voice] Wow this blew up Seriously though, this has become much bigger than I meant so I would like to clarify a few things: 1. I shared this because I suddenly remembered it and it made me laugh out loud, not because I want to cancel Anthony Horowitz.
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2. I, and I cannot stress this enough, was 10 years old at the time. This was 20 years ago. I remember being devastated at the time by it, and I do have a VERY strong memory of the teacher-author analogy, but over 20 years it may have snowballed into something bigger in my head.
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3. I don't think it was my question alone that provoked the line about Highgate School in the book - it was probably the whole experience of doing a book reading there. 4. It may not have been an assembly, it may have been a form period specifically designed to talk about it.
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5. 20 years later, I find my interaction funny - but I do think there's something very dangerous sad about a children's author using the word "gay" as an insult, even if it is "in character". I have no idea how badly that affected gay and closeted students at Highgate and beyond.
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6. Please don't tweet angry things about/to Anthony Horowitz on my behalf - I accept that he may have been in a bad mood or just not realised how harsh it sounded to my 10 year old ears. I went back to my school recently to give advice on writing and I'm sure stuff I thought...
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...was just me being flippant (about the constant rejection you get as a writer) may have come across as dismissive and heartbreaking (I really, really hope not, but if a Highgate School kid does a tweet-thread about me in 20 years time, that'll be why).
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7. BUT I do think authors - and in particular, kids' authors - have a responsibility to think about what kind of message they're sending out, and casual homophobia in a kid's book (again, even it's in character) can't just be a throwaway line, because it does so much damage.
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