4-Year-Old Lands Book Deal for Poems About "Baddies"

A 4-year-old boy in the UK just became one of the youngest authors to ever land a book deal thanks to his poetry. Nadim Shamma-Sourgen was discovered after a poet named Kate Clanchy, who's colleagues with his mom, started sharing some of his verse online. “I wasn’t tweeting the poems because they were so much like adult work--it was because they were so purely childlike,” Clanchy says. “Nadim has the very rare ability to articulate in images what it is to be a 4-year-old." In one poem, titled "Baddies," Shamma-Sourgen writes, "Baddies love their baddie friends / Even very baddie ones // Policemen might arrest them / But they’ll still have their love." Another poem titled "Coming Home" reads, “Take our gloves off / Take our shoes off / Put them where they’re supposed to go. / You take off your brave feeling / Because there’s nothing / to be scared of in the house." Shamma-Sourgen's publishing deal was announced Wednesday by Walker Books. His first work will arrive next summer; in the meantime, Shamma-Sourgen says, “I feel happy that my poems will be in a book. When my poems are in a book, can I please have a copy?” [Daily Beast]