"Little Bee" Author Talks About Buzz

Chris Cleave Makes It Personal With New Book

(CBS)  The author of the book that's got the literary world buzzing, Chris Cleave, appeared on The Early Show Wednesday to discuss his book, "Little Bee," and answer questions from our show's producers.

Maggie Rodriguez, Early Show co-anchor, asked Cleave about the importance of writing about chance encounters that can change our lives -- like the one in the book between two British journalists and a young Nigerian girl in the country's oil fields.

Cleave responded, "I tried to take a big situation that's happening in the world, and just make it real, make it personal and say, 'What if this happened to you, out of a blue sky? What if this happened to you, where your world meets the world of someone completely different, what would you do?'"

Robert LaForty, Early Show producer, asked Cleave about the character, Charlie, and how Cleave managed to write in the voice of a 4-year-old.

Cleave said he has a lot of inspiration from his eldest son, who was nearly four years old when he was writing "Little Bee."

"To be honest with you, it was one of the easiest characters I've ever written," Cleave said. "I just took dictation."

Cleave added that he loves the way young children are "incredibly direct, incredibly honest."

"I love the way they see life," he said. "...They see, like life and death, they look it right in the eye, and they're so funny."

Lauren Danza, Early Show producer asked Cleave if he thought some people would find it improbable that two British journalists would end up in Nigeria during a war.

"There are these very few places in the world where you can be simultaneously on holiday and next to a real troubled hot spot," Cleave responded, "so I don't think that it's that much of a stretch that these two intelligent people might have decided 'I don't know, let's go somewhere a little bit different' -- and it turned out to be a little bit too different for them."