CBeebies actor releases kids’ book after welcoming baby with husband
Joseph Elliott, pictured next to his latest children’s book, Nora and the Compass of Chaos. (© Nici Gregory)
Joseph Elliott, pictured next to his latest children's book, Nora and the Compass of Chaos. (© Nici Gregory)
“It’s hard to be something unless you can see it,” actor and author Joseph Elliott tells PinkNews, speaking about the two-dad family in his latest children’s book.
Nora and the Compass of Chaos, Elliott’s sequel to Nora and the Map of Mayhem, was published earlier this month and, in his own words, is “a comedy adventure story told from the perspective of a very sassy, no-nonsense, 86-year-old woman, who has a secret history as a monster hunter”.
The story is a “wild, anarchic ride that just so happens to have some wonderful representation”.
Elliott, who stars in CBeebies’ Swashbuckle and CBBC’s Big Fat Like, welcomed a daughter into the world in March.
“She has completely changed our life in every conceivable way, but totally for the better,” Elliott says. “She’s just started smiling and it warms my heart in a way I never knew possible. People [see] us as a unit and we’re showing people that this is a future that might be possible for them.”
His role as a father partly inspired his latest story. Atticus and Autumn, the two protagonists, have two dads, which, Elliott says, “is not a big part of the books”, more “incidental”.
He goes on to explain: “One’s called dada and one’s called papa and there [are] pictures of them together as a family unit but it’s never really discussed.
“But having that incidental representation, where it’s not laboured, is important for young readers, without the being aware, to expose them to different family units.”
Readers who also have two dads will be able to “see themselves in the book” and hopefully feel “validated” rather than “alienated”, he adds. “I wrote the book for all those people, for our daughter as well, to show that there is a family that looks something like hers.
“I never imagined I would have a family one day because there was nothing out there telling me that was possible. Now I’m playing a small part in trying to rectify that by putting something like this out into the world.”
‘It makes me even more determined’
In April, the American Library Association released its annual report on banned books, showing that LGBTQ+-themed titles topped the list again.
Since 2021, literature and human rights organisation PEN America has documented nearly 16,000 book bans in public schools nationwide. In the 2023-2024 school year, they found more than 10,000 bans affecting more than 4,000 titles.
Speaking of the bans, Elliott says: “It makes me even more determined to create these books, to show there is a need for them, and they will find their audience somehow.”
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