When I created the character of Lionel, I tried to reconnect with the deep feelings of two- and three-year-olds, and I found myself confronting some contrasting and powerful emotions! It’s a very rich universe that you don’t always find in stories for toddlers, where things are often soft and kind.
“When I was eleven I used to pretend I was a boy a lot, and I was longing for love. All I wanted to do was to play-wrestle with my friend Michael. He had bleached hair and could play Nirvana songs on his guitar. But I was so tall and skinny it was hard to get boys interested. They liked the short and cute girls, not ones with cricket legs like me.”
As so often is the case, I was working on multiple stories about boats that weren’t really going anywhere, until Elephant appeared and ideas started to click. Once I figured out the storyline, I started pondering every beat of the story. What does it mean, what do I want to say? And how can I visualize this as clearly as possible?
For me, humour is important. It allows you to write about sad things that otherwise would be hard to deal with. I have always felt deeply for people
As a child I was obsessed with the idea of flying and of seeing the world from above. That was related to my passion for maps—and of books with maps in.
My previous book in Germany was a Western with a boy as the main character, so this time I wanted simply to tell an exciting story centred on a girl.
In their own way these ‘little’ books are as challenging as the much bigger books I’ve been doing in recent years. They don’t take as long because they don’t
For Women in Translation month we asked Swedish writer Frida Nilsson about the translation process. Nilsson’s new book released in English is Hattie and Olaf, one of over a dozen novels she has written for children which have been published around the world. The Ice Sea Pirates, her most translated book, is available in 20… Read more »
Joy Cowley is one of New Zealand’s best-loved writers for children and adults, with an international reputation. She has won a multitude of awards and honours for her bestselling books, including the Prime Minister’s Award for contribution to literature. She was shortlisted for the Hans Christian Andersen Award in 2018. What… Read more »
The image of the small girl and the big dinosaur, the idea that something could be so gigantic, struck my young mind. I still remember the feeling back then of my heart pounding fast. Since then, I have become addicted to reading about these worlds that are far away in time or space but real to me.
