Jamal and Joseph, though they come from very different families have loads in common - the TV they watch, their sporting heroes and their ambitions for the future...
I tried really hard to avoid the sometimes voyeuristic way we look at the lives of people from ‘other’ countries and cultures and see everything through the child narrator’s eyes.

It’s vital that the genuine childlike friendship and personalities comes across, but you have to be careful both to get the facts about cultures other than your own correct and ensure that there isn’t the kind of wholesome, overly positive ‘message’ that children are both patronised by and see through immediately.

I was very lucky to have some wonderful people to turn to - people who were generous with their time and open to my questions. I think we are often so fearful of offending people from other cultures that we become emasculated by it and stay ignorant as a result, But to get answers, you also need people who are happy to answer what can be ignorant questions.

Milgo Abdi & Ayan Samatar
were invaluable and spent many hours answering my questions about Somalia and Somalis living in the UK. Milgo has a beautiful son called Jamal, and he kindly lent us his name for the title, her daughter, Jamilla, also posed as Jamal's mother as a young girl.

Suzanne Issa
was happy to discuss aspects of Islam so I was able to understand which things were particular to Somalia and which could be said of Muslims more widely.
She helped me to make the right generalisations without giving the impression that Muslims are all the same - I learned so much working on this title

Amy Fernandez & Sho Ying Ben-Nathan
had long discussions about what it’s like to be of Chinese origin in the UK.