Meghan Markle is a children’s book author.
Her book, The Bench, released on June 8, just four days after Meghan gave birth to her and Prince Harry’s second child, Lilibet Diana. In an interview airing today with NPR’s Samantha Balaban for Weekend Edition’s children’s book series “Picture This,” Meghan talks about how her husband’s relationship with their son, Archie (2), inspired her book.
Meghan shared how, for Harry’s first Father’s Day, when Archie was a little more than one month old, she got him a special gift: a bench. This would be a place for them to “reset.”
“As most of us do, you go, what am I going to get them as a gift? And I thought I just wanted something sentimental and a place for him to have as a bit of a home base with our son,” Meghan says in the interview.
“This is your bench,” the book, a poem, begins. “Where life will begin/For you and our son/Our baby, our kin.”
Meghan also speaks in the interview about how it was important to her that the watercolor illustrations in the book, done by Caldecott Medal recipient Christian Robinson, were inclusive:
“Growing up, I remember so much how it felt to not see yourself represented,” says Meghan. “Any child or any family hopefully can open this book and see themselves in it, whether that means glasses or freckled or a different body shape or a different ethnicity or religion.”
She calls the book “a love story” and adds that she hopes that readers can see it as a “love story that transcends the story of my family.”
Meghan added that The Bench is a favorite of Archie, who “has a voracious appetite for books.”
“Archie loves the book! Now the fact that he loves The Bench, and I can say, ‘Mommy wrote this for you’ feels amazing.”
Hilary Weaver
Hilary Weaver is a freelance writer based in New York who writes about politics, queer issues, Meryl Streep, Glenn Close, and every woman the Queen has ever made a dame.
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