I thought children's books may become irrelevant... But they're still going strong

David Walliams, best-selling author of children's books like Gangsta Granny, The World's Worst Children and Ratburger, is in India on his first book tour.

- Dhamini Ratnam

NEW DELHI: The 53-year-old wrote his first children's book in 2008 (The Boy in the Dress), which earned him praise from critics and brought him to the attention of young readers, and their parents, who couldn't seem to get enough. Since then, Walliams has been prolific. His latest book, Super Sleuth is his 43rd. He has also written a comic book (Astro Chimp, 2024), short story collections (The World's Worst series, started in 2016 is a hugely popular set), and turned his children's books into television films. In all, he's been translated to 55 languages, and has sold over 50 million copies worldwide according to a 2022 announcement by his publisher, Harper Collins. He's also sold over half a million copies in India -- where the children's literature market is the fastest-growing compared to other genres.

"I want to take over the world, I'm going to be the Elon Musk of children's novels," Walliams laughs. "That'll make an arresting headline," he said.

Yet Walliams's fame isn't restricted to young readers. In the early 2000s, together with writer-actor Matt Lucas, Walliams wrote and starred in sketch comedy gold, Little Britain, which ran first as a radio series and then on the British Broadcasting Corporation channel between 2003 and 2006. Over eighteen 28-minute episodes, the writer-actor duo created several characters and spared no one, high or low, in their cultural and social satire of British society. In 2008, they made a version for the American audience and later came out with a memoir called Inside Little Britain. More than a decade later, Walliams and Lucas came under criticism for their use of racial and sexist stereotypes in their sketches, which led to a public apology.