Nadim Shamma-Sourgen is now the youngest published author at the age of 5. Previously, Thanuwana Serasinghe was the world’s youngest published male author. He was four years 356 days old when Junk Food came out in 2017.
Nadim was four when he wrote a poem on “brave feeling” which was hung up in his room. This week, at age five, Nadim will become the youngest commercially published author in Britain when a book of his poems, Take Off Your Brave, goes on sale.
His other poem is about his mother, who “smells like blown candle” and another is about his ideal school, with “kittens as teachers”. His mother Yasmine Shamma, who is a lecturer in English at Reading University, has said that the impact of Covid-19 lockdown brought a bit of sadness in Nadim’s poems.
One included the lines “Baddies love their baddie friends/ even very baddie ones.”
In the forward of his book, poet Clanchy said: “When I shared Nadim’s poems on my Twitter account thousands of people liked them and left comments like ‘What a talent!’”
Both Nadim’s mother and father believe that any child can do this. His mother told The Times, “I think there is a lot that can be done to help young kids write poetry ... I think the earlier you can introduce children to the notion of poetry the earlier you will be able to foster a love of that art that could go on for life.”
“I was like, ‘Oh my goodness’. He is a very chatty kid who presents as super-outgoing but here he was telling me he puts on a brave face,” she added as she explained how he wrote sad poems with a brave face. Nadim's three year old sister also has two of her poems in the book, published by Walker Books.
