I sat down with Kate O’Donnell via zoom nearly two months ago. The subsequent Christmas rush, my self-imposed two-week work ban, and then an unexpected influx of work across January contrived to keep me from properly going back over our conversation until now. Despite the gap, I can clearly remember speaking with her. She’s got that natural effusive loveliness that radiates, even through an internet connection.
Behind glasses, her eyes crinkle, as she speaks, accompanying a smile that is unabashed in the frequency of its appearance. If there is someone who embodies pure delight, it has to be her.
She is modest about her very impressive accomplishments, not least of which is the role she played in helping to establish the Younger Sun bookshop – one of the premier independent bookstores in Melbourne, waving it away and claiming she was “lucky to be in the right place at the right time.” As is the habit of so many generous people, she immediately directs credit to someone else: “Deb, who owns the bookshop is a genius. It’s her brainchild, I just brought the kids books.” But O’Donnell does more than just ‘bring the kids books.’ She is passionate about reaching younger readers and when I ask what her favourite moment has been across her career as a bookseller and author, it’s “hands down a teenager or a child coming into the bookshop, and you finding that book which will blow their minds, and showing them something which you didn’t know they wanted.”
That gentle, lovely passion and the desire to empower young people is powerfully realised in her second Young Adult book, This One is Ours, which came out at the end of September 2020, as it follows 16-year-old Sophie’s six month student exchange in Paris, and how the experience fosters a burgeoning sense of political activism within her.
The central point of Sophie’s activism was perhaps my favourite thing about the book; the fact that that a young person finding their political voice doesn’t necessarily need to possess all the answers, or even the capacity to articulate precisely what exactly they find so in need of changing within the world. I mention this to O’Donnell, alongside my appreciation for Sophie’s struggle with her own “intense privilege”, and she nods enthusiastically.
“Trying to grapple with that malcontent is really difficult, and you have so much to say, and I think what I was trying to say is that it’s ok to not quite know where you’re going.” It’s a powerful message to anyone who’s approaching their adulthood in today’s world, and it’s already resonated with readers. O’Donnell tells me with earnest pride, “I’ve had some really amazing feedback already for some younger readers […] who have said ‘I’ve always been frightened by activism and put off by stories about politics but the story showed that however you want to participate, you’ll be welcome’. It gives them permission to turn a part of their brain to it.”
O’Donnell acknowledges that Sophie’s activism was born from her own fascination with the mai 68 protests (a student-led protest movement in May of 1968), and the fact that “when I was a student I was so in love with the idea of 68, and the revolution that just didn’t quite get there.” The May 68 protests are a huge part of modern French self-understanding and identity, and arguably were emulated by the recent Gilets Jaunes movement. Of the movement, O’Donnell reflected, “I found it difficult to make sense of who they were and what they were trying to say” but the movement’s posters in turn inspired her to make Sophie an artist because “I was interested in the way her art could be her voice as she became more political and more engaged.” The full history of the mai 68 protests, the factors which led to them, how they unfolded, and their long-term effect on France’s culture and identity is a complex one, compounded by the fact that France—like any country—struggles with question of race, immigration, and privilege.
To compress all of these elements into an accessible book aimed at teenage readers is an impossible task, and O’Donnell acknowledged she was “frustrated that I couldn’t explore everything more deeply.” Indeed, she admits quite freely “there were large portions that I hoped would come to fruition and never did”, but what O’Donnell has ultimately created is a story that fulfils the purpose set out to when writing, as “I was thinking of the teenagers I sell a lot of books to in Melbourne as a bookseller.” That’s because This One is Ours makes complex concepts and prospects inherently accessible, and it’s books like this that can inspire people to go out and do research of their own, and develop their own complex views. While we get hints of the mai 68 movement, of France’s struggle with fraught questions, and even of the current youth-led climate-strike movement, there isn’t overwhelming diatribes about them. Instead, O’Donnell gives just enough information to pique a reader’s interest and inspire them to be empowered enough to go out and discover more for themselves.
Indeed, if there’s a clear villain in the book, it’s people who have wealth and privilege and choose to close their eyes to the ongoing issues that plague the world, from questions of wealth inequality to climate change. Without giving away spoilers, I raise this with O’Donnell. She’s emphatic, describing people who refuse to acknowledge what their position can give them the capacity to recognise and take action against as “the antithesis to what I hope Sophie will grow up to be.” She continues. “Wilful ignorance because [one has] got plenty of other things [one] could be doing instead makes [someone] a pretty bad [person].” But O’Donnell doesn’t beat her readers over the head with that point—she respects them enough to arrive at that realisation herself
And that’s ultimately to what my mind keeps returning across our conversation: O’Donnell really keeps her audience in mind. When she was still working as a bookseller, she went in to primary and secondary schools in Melbourne’s West (an area with diverse cultural backgrounds; when I went to a school in that area in late 2019, the teachers told me that there are over 50 language backgrounds in their school community). “I’d already written This One is Ours by then,” she notes, “but with future work, it’s got me thinking about who I’m writing for.” At the core, she notes “there’s a gap in the market” for “YA books for less strong readers.” While for some, such an observation could be deemed a savvy—or even cynical—business strategy, for O’Donnell, it’s clearly a comment that arises from a place of passion. She wants to reach young people, and she wants to make sure that every young person can find a book that reaches them. If that book happens to be hers, that’s great.
