It's hair story

As a young girl growing up in Ripon in the Fifties, Christina Shingler was something of an outsider. She was a mixed race foster child struggling to find herself in a place where her distinctive look - her darker skin and tight curly hair - was never reflected back at her.

"The first time I came across more than two black people together was when I went to Leeds," says Christina. "Some people just could not get over the way I looked, and some still can't now. People make assumptions. They say I don't sound black on the phone."

After living in Italy and America, where she married, had a daughter and divorced, she is now back in Ripon and has just had her first book published. Princess Katrina and the Hair Charmer (Tamarind, £6.99) is a children's fairytale with a twist - Princess Katrina is black.

"I've always devoured books, but when I was a child I realised there was no one like me in them," says Christina. "My foster parents did their best, but the material just wasn't there.

"I remember getting a book one Christmas about a black boy - basically a little nigger boy - with long limbs, wild curly hair and big rolling eyes. I couldn't see how I was supposed to make a connection between myself and this witless character.

"Recently I checked on the Internet to see if this book actually existed or whether it was something I had imagined. But there it was, along with the other nine books the white author had written.

"It's easy to be horrified with hindsight, but things were different then. My foster mother even dressed up me and my foster sister (who was also mixed race) as Robertson's gollies for a fancy dress competition. Can you imagine that?"

She is quick to point out that her childhood was not unhappy, just unsettled. She was a clever girl with a passion for books and an urge to write, but her academic achievements at Ripon Grammar School were unimpressive.

"I spectacularly failed my A-levels," she said. "I don't really know how I stumbled into the sixth form in the first place. I got my results on the Italian coast, where I was working as an au pair. Failing in the Italian sunshine wasn't too bad."

Christina discovered she had a good ear for language and decided to do a degree, commuting from Florence to Hull University during term time.

"That was a real eye-opener," she says. "Hull was not the place it is now. It was down at heel. I would come from Gucci shops and style as a way of life, to Costcutter and pound shops."

After completing her degree, she got a job in the press office at the Italian Embassy in Washington. She worked there for nine years, but America never really became her home.

"It wasn't until I went to America that I discovered I was a European," she explained. "It was a strange experience for me. I felt as if I was living in a place with a gaping hole at its centre. It was like a great big donut with all the icing and the sugar and the sprinkles, but nothing in the middle. I think writing was my way of trying to fill that hole."

Christina wrote a couple of pieces for the Washington Post and tried to write the great American novel in a corner of her sitting room. But nothing seemed to fill the hole.

So she returned home to Ripon and took a job as a Government information officer in Leeds. Her desire to write was still very strong, but it didn't come to the fore until she visited India as part of a group from Ripon Cathedral in 2001.

"I thought it would be a life-changing experience, and it was, just not in the way I expected," she says. "My hair started to cause a bit of a sensation. Gangs of kids would gather to point and laugh.

"We visited the Taj Mahal - one of the wonders of the world - and people were still staring at my hair."

The experience brought back feelings of embarrassment and insecurity she hadn't felt since she was a child. She began to write about her feelings and didn't stop until she had finished her book, then called Kinky-Haired Girls Don't Get The Blues.

It was accepted by Tamarind, a multi-cultural publisher that produces less than half a dozen books a year. Illustrator Derek Brazell was called in to produce the beautiful, zesty pictures that bring Christina's colourful characters and lyrical prose to life. And the name was changed - apparently the word "kinky" is a bit of a no-no in children's fiction.

In the book, Princess Katrina has no respect for her hair. She believes it is what stands between her and being nice-looking.

"My point is that sometimes the thing you don't like about yourself is the thing that makes you special," says Christina. "I want children to be able to identify the wonderful, positive things they can do with their hair and not concentrate on what they can't do.

"Black hair doesn't have that swishability factor, but it can do amazing things. It's great stuff and it's beautiful."

She has written two more children's books that are currently with her agent, but she is adamant that she is not a children's author. To underline the point, she has also written a novel, which is with an agent in New York, and is currently working on a stage piece, including music she has written herself.

"It deals with life through hair," said Christina. "Can you feel a theme developing here?"

Updated: 09:04 Wednesday, April 14, 2004