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Christian Robinson / Random House Children’s Books
Christian Robinson / Random House Children’s Books
On Prince Harry’s first Father’s Day, Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, got a seat.
“As most of us do, she goes, ‘What am I going to get as a gift?’ And I think I just wanted something sentimental and a place for it as a home base with our son,” Megan says. .
And on a small plaque on the back of the seat, she wrote a poem about the moments she hoped to share on that seat.
Random House Children’s Books
The poem reads: “This is your seat, where life will begin / For you and our son / Our child, our kin.”
Now, two years later, Meghan and Harry have added a second child to their family – daughter Lillipet Diana was born in early June – and this poem is a children’s book. The Duchess of Sussex spoke to NPR about the book shortly before her daughter was born.
The Bench is a series of vignettes – fathers and sons share a seat while drinking cider, waiting for the bus, looking at the stars, and putting on their shoes. The seat is where they cry, celebrate, and mend their broken knees and broken hearts.
Megan says the poem was inspired by watching her husband and son Archie together.
“I often find, and especially in the past year, that I think many of us have realized how much is going on in the quiet,” she says. “It was definitely moments like that, watching it out the window and watching it [my husband] Just, you know, rock him to sleep or hold him, or you know… Those lived experiences, from my observation, are the things I infused into this poem. “
Christian Robinson / Random House Children’s Books
Christian Robinson / Random House Children’s Books
When it came time to turn the poem into a picture book, Megan asked Christian Robinson—the Caldecott honoree and the illustrator behind Milo Imagines The World and Last Stop on Market Street.
“It was like, ‘One day I got an email like, ‘Do you want to work with Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex? I’m in complete disbelief and zeal, says Robinson. “For me it was just a no brainer.”
It was also a creative challenge – Robinson usually works cutting paper and acrylic. But for The Bench, he did the illustrations differently.
“I wanted him to try something a little new and do watercolor,” Megan says. “And this was precisely because I felt that when you talk about masculinity and you talk about fatherhood, it often can’t come across the same smoothness that I was really looking for in this book. And I just wanted to feel that this sounds ethereal and Christian and Light were able to use this medium. And create the most beautiful pictures.”
Christian Robinson / Random House Children’s Books
Christian Robinson / Random House Children’s Books
Robinson says he’s been up to the challenge.
“What makes creativity fun is when things are improvised…when you just have to kind of explore and play and experiment,” he says. “I really think it was just the right note.”
The poem begins and ends with illustrations of the author’s family. A red-haired father and his child sit on a bench surrounded by their dogs. But the rest of the book shows all kinds of families – something that was important to both the author and the illustrator.
“I think for me inclusivity and representation of as many different families as possible were at the heart of this book,” Robinson says.
“Growing up, I remember a lot about how it felt like not seeing yourself as an actress,” Megan says. “Any child or any family I hope will open this book and see themselves in it, whether that means glasses, or freckles, or a different body shape, or a different race or religion.”
Meghan said one of the casts she wanted to include on The Bench was of a military family. Years ago, she was on the USO Tour with a Texas sergeant.
“He told me the story of how he wasn’t able to teach his son how to play game because he was away,” Megan says. “So he and his son would mail this baseball back and forth from Texas to Afghanistan and write history on it.”
Christian Robinson / Random House Children’s Books
Christian Robinson / Random House Children’s Books
In The Bench, a mother stands at the window crying of joy, while a father in uniform greets his son outdoors. The father threw out his bag in excitement, and the boy dumped the pacifier to jump into his father’s arms.
“This page is true for him and his family,” Megan says. “There are a lot of small moments like those that were personal memories or anecdotes that I wanted to infuse there,” Megan says.
Like her favorite flower, the favorite flower of her mother-in-law, and of course the family’s saving poultry.
“I needed my girls there,” Megan says.
But although The Bench is a very personal and intimate poem Meghan wrote for her husband, she says she hopes readers will find her message universal.
“It’s a love story,” she says. “It’s really about growing with someone and having that deep connection and that trust so that, in good times or bad, you know you have that person,” she says. “I really hope people see this as a love story that goes beyond my family’s story.”
This interview was produced and edited by Samantha Balaban and Melissa Gray for broadcast. Petra Meyer adapted it for the web.
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