Bill Tuckey and Francisco de la Mora on The Most Amazing Saturday Morning Rubbish Club

Today marks the UK release of The Most Amazing Saturday Morning Rubbish Club! To celebrate the special and inspiring story of a trio of uniquely capable kids, we decided to ask Bill Tuckey (the author) and Francisco de la Mora (the illustrator) all about how this book came to be.

Bill Tuckey is a veteran reggae DJ, a beloved broadcaster for Kiss FM, and a prolific writer and editor whose journalistic credits include The Voice, Time Out, and the Independent. He also owns a successful graphic art business. Bill is the father of two sons with ASD [Autism Spectrum Disorder].

Francisco de la Mora has been working as a scriptwriter and illustrator since 2008. With SelfMadeHero he has published acclaimed graphic novels about the artists Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, and has been illustrating for The Hackney Citizen since January 2018. Francisco is also the founder of Symbola Comics, a creative editorial space that aims to develop communication solutions for academics and institutions through graphic medicine-focused comics. He is the father of a son with PVL [Periventricular leukomalacia].

SelfMadeHero: It’s not every day that you see a book like this one, handling this topic in this kind of way. Our readers might already know that you are both parents of disabled/neurodivergent children, but considering your very different career paths, how did you come to work together on this graphic novel?

Francisco de la Mora: Bill became a good friend of me and my family a long time ago. My partner, Daniela, knew that Bill had a lot of things to say about many different topics, and she wanted him to write a story for me to illustrate. She came up with a brilliant idea I won’t discuss here because I hope one day Bill will be willing to go for it. Bill came back to me sometime later with a totally different concept: The Most Amazing was in his head. And we started working.

Bill Tuckey: I really wanted to work with Fran because A) I like him and B) because I thought it would be fun to tell a story in a medium I hadn’t worked in before. It felt important that we would be able to collaborate on every aspect of the book and so our shared parental experiences felt like a good starting point. When Fran told me that he and his son Martin were spending weekends in the local park picking up rubbish, my imagination got going…

SMH: Drawing from your own parental experiences, your children’s experiences – what was it like to undertake that emotional journey?

Francisco: For me, it has been one of the most pleasant experiences in my career as an illustrator. Drawing Uma, the character who is based on my son, was wonderful. I was able to see him through Bill’s eyes, and confirm that his world — the world of my son, and therefore the world of Uma the character — is wonderful.

Bill: To depict someone I love very much as a hero, and to identify their neurodiversity as a strength rather than a disability felt rewarding. And relating some of the common difficulties faced by parents of children with additional needs felt empowering too.

SMH: The rights and public perception of disabled and neurodivergent people are both very pressing topics in many countries, including the UK. Did public discussions of disability play any part in influencing the course of this graphic novel’s development?

Francisco: For me, this book is not political (I don’t believe everything is political). For 8 years, I’ve used my platform in The Hackney Citizen to talk about political issues, not only disability rights, but all sorts of things but this book is not about that. It’s a book that tries to go away from hospitals, therapy rooms, political and social discussions about disability rights, etc. All these spheres of public life shape the lives of the characters, but, just like the disabilities themselves, they don’t define them.

Bill: What we really wanted was just to tell a great story to be enjoyed by people of all ages and life experiences. But obviously  there are elements of the book in which society’s disability in accommodating and respecting people with additional needs are highlighted. It’s the backdrop rather than the focus though, because the characters are bigger and better than that.

SMH: In particular, this graphic novel touches on an interesting aspect of conversations around accessibility: that accessibility issues are the concern of whole communities, and that improving accessibility for disabled people is also beneficial to the broader public. Is that something you hope for more people to understand?

Francisco: Maria Montessori used to say: “as fast as the slowest.” She was talking about a classroom, of course, but it can be applied to public life. If you work hard for the community, and for the needs of the most, the whole system benefits. That is very easy to spot in the UK as an immigrant, no matter how hard we all are trying to break the many good things we have for everyone, like education and health. Here, you know that you won’t be left behind if you cannot pay for school or doctors’ bills, and that is worth something. But if you want a much simpler example, look at the wheelchair ramps in the streets. Those things haven’t always been around. Now they are used by people with kids in buggies, kids and adults on bikes, scooters, and any wheeled device, workers carrying heavy things with a dolly, and they even make walking easier for everyone, but especially for little children and older people.

Bill: As the Jamaican proverb goes, “Each one teach one” – all of us on this planet are equally valuable, important and capable of contributing to each other’s growth and fulfillment as humans.

SMH: Representations of disabled and neurodivergent people in fiction have been, at best, a mixed bag. Do you have any personal favourite examples of representation done right?

Francisco: I am not for judgment, so I won’t go deep into the discussion of whether they are well or badly represented, but I will say that I like when the character is the lead. Examples for me: Sheldon Cooper, Dory, Sam Gardner. Also, I like to see or read about caregiver characters, family members, or people whose lives are shaken by having to care for someone with a disability — for example, George and Lennie in Of Mice and Men.

SMH: Did the process of creating and producing this book change how you think about neurodiversity and disability? Was there anything you found yourselves learning from it?

Francisco: Yes, I am very moved by how the community (for now, our close friends and families) are receiving the book and the process of creating the story. Not only the ones who are affected by a disability close by, but also people who are learning and taking something from the book. The thing I learned most clearly from the process is that we should give ourselves and others time to accept and adapt to differences.

Bill: Writing the book has helped clarify my understanding of the false distinctions that society draws between ‘able’ and ‘disabled’ – everyone is special  and has something to contribute. But I think the learning journey is only just beginning now we have introduced it into the world. I’m really looking forward to where it takes us.

SMH: This is a book that balances some serious topics concerning some of society’s most vulnerable people and an inspiring adventure for the entire family. That said, if you could put a copy of The Most Amazing Saturday Morning Rubbish Club directly into the hands of one person – or one kind of person – who would it be?

Francisco: This is a very good question. If the book can help shape the political discussion and, in the end, change — for the better — some laws on how to best support people with disabilities, I would like to put it in the hands of politicians. Especially right-wing politicians, who are often the ones who think we don’t need to work for the community and who believe in individualism. In the book, there is one character who represents this very well: Connor, the carer. He is there to help, to accompany, sometimes to be Finn’s legs, Uma’s voice, Arthur’s compass — and with that little bit of help, the three children can live a fantastic adventure they wouldn’t have been able to achieve alone. I believe that anyone — neurodivergent or neurotypical — who has accomplished something meaningful in life has one or more Connors behind them.

Bill: If this book makes one person with additional needs feel a little bit more valued and understood, I think it will have been worth it.

Thank you for reading! The Most Amazing Saturday Morning Rubbish Club is out now in the UK, and out in North America on December 2nd!

- The SelfMadeHero Team