Guest Post: Kylie Mort on The Inspiration Behind Big Emotions

I was inspired to write Little People Big Emotions as I sat in stillness, meditating on my front veranda.

We live in a world where frenetic movement is the norm, where it is expected that we raise our little people to join the ever-present stream of movement and energy. 

Even as we 'relax' we are watching screens, mindlessly partaking in the programming of a world that dictates who we should be. 

Manipulated and coerced to participate at all times in fear of missing out. More and more often in this modern culture we are losing the ability to just be. To be still, to be present, to be in the moment, to be unique.  

The imagery of this illustrated narrative came to me when I was in stillness. Breathing in the peace and solitude of the natural environment around me and letting my mind truly rest. It is when we are at rest that inspired action can arrive and just as the butterfly lands softly on the shoulder of my daughter Mackenzie in this narrative, the story whispered to me…

Guest Post: Shae Millward on The Inspiration Behind The Story of The Rabbit's Magician

The Law of Conservation of Energy – a fundamental law of nature – states that energy cannot be created or destroyed, it can only be transformed or transferred from one form to another.

I had long known of this scientific principle but had more recently come across a transcript of a speech about why you want a physicist to speak at your funeral. It was incredibly moving, the way the science-talk, which is often cold and clinical, radiated with warmth – a heart-warming warmth.

 

'You want a physicist to speak at your funeral. You want the physicist to talk to your grieving family about the conservation of energy, so they will understand that your energy has not died.' *

Guest Post: Ellie Royce on The Fantastic Journeys of Storytelling

This week we welcome, Ellie Royce as she uncovers how we are all made of stories and explores the many ways to tell them.

Guest Post: Wendy Haynes on Where Stories Take You

I didn’t think Hayden’s Bedtime was going to be my first published book.

The story for Hayden’s Bedtime had been brewing for a while. I wrote it for my grandson, who has trouble falling asleep at night.

My son Clint has all sorts of trouble getting Hayden off to sleep every night. I wrote the book to make bedtime a fun and happy experience with dad checking behind the door, under the bed, inside the cupboard, and in the drawer.

Guest Post: Teena Raffa-Mulligan on Catching Butterflies

Every book has its own back story and sometimes as a writer I can’t pinpoint what inspired a particular book. When the Moon is a Smile is rather easier to explain.

One summer evening when our grandson Joel was small we set out for an after-dinner family walk along the beach path near our home. We hadn’t gone far when the crescent moon in the sky caught our attention.

Memory has blurred the lines over whether it was Joel or his mum who first said the moon was smiling, but as in the book’s dedication, that night he saw the moon smile. The moon as a smile was such a lovely image that it stayed with me.

Blog Tour: All of Us Together by Bill Condon

Kids' Book Review is delighted to take part in the blog tour for the latest book by Australian children's author Bill Condon. All Together Now (About Kids Books, 2016) is a junior fiction novel set in the Great Depression in the 1930s. Read on to find out how Bill's life experience has influenced his writing.

I was first published as a children’s writer more than 30 years ago. Now I’m a fully-fledged dinosaur of 67, and I’m still getting away with it. I’m a very lucky bloke.

At school my best subject was staring dreamily out the window. As a consequence I didn’t do well in exams. The only subject I was remotely good at was English, so that left a lot of room for disappointment. After failing Year 10 I moved to a different school, repeated the year, and finally passed the School Certificate. And then, as quickly as I could, I left school. I never sat for the HSC. Never went to university. This made me a highly suitable for unskilled work, which I did until my mid 30s. During those years I mowed lawns, chopped down trees, delivered groceries and bread (until I smashed the bread truck), cleaned offices and toilets, and worked for a long time in factories.

However, my school days hadn’t been a complete dead loss, because when I was about 14 there was a teacher who praised me in front of the class for a story I’d written. Time distorts memories, so I can’t be sure if I’m right, but I think it’s likely that was the only praise I had from my teachers. Sadly, I don’t remember the teacher’s name. All I know is that directly because of her, from that time on, I began to dream about one day being a writer.

12 Curly Questions with Stacy McAnulty

Photo credit: Grant Blair with Idlewild Photography

 1. Tell us something hardly anyone knows about you. 
I often eat cookies for breakfast. I prefer homemade chocolate chip or peanut butter, but most mornings it’s Milanos or Oreo Thins.

2. What is your nickname?
Mommy. Not very original, and maybe it’s more of a job title.

3. What is your greatest fear?
Rational: Something awful happening to my children.
Irrational: Jellyfish! Anytime something brushes my leg in the ocean I scream. I’m a lot of fun at the beach.

4. Describe your writing style in ten words.
Really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, short.

Kidding. I’d say:
Simple yet entertaining, relevant but not preachy, often grammatically incorrect.

5. Tell us five positive words that describe you as a writer. 
Dedicated. Passionate. Lucky. Creative. Beautiful.

6. What book character would you be, and why?
Curious George. He gets away with everything. Don’t we all want to go to a museum and swing from the dinosaur’s neck or take a firetruck for a spin? Except in real life my role is The Man with the Big Yellow Hat.  I’m constantly keeping my own monkeys in check.

Guest Post: Lili Wilkinson - What is a cult, anyway?

Kids' Book Review is delighted to welcome Lili Wilkinson as part of the blog tour for her latest YA novel, The Boundless Sublime. Check out the end of the post for information about other stops in the tour and links to Lili's website and blog.

I sighed. ‘What do you even mean by cult? Is every gathering of like-minded people a cult? Is your art class a cult?’

‘No,’ said Minah. ‘A cult is something that indoctrinates you into a restrictive ideology by suppressing your sense of freedom and cutting you off from your friends and family.’

-The Boundless Sublime

I visited a school recently where I told the students I had a new book about a girl who joins a cult.
‘What’s a cult?’ one boy asked.
‘It’s a horse,’ a girl replied.
‘No,’ said another boy. ‘It’s a gun.’

In my research for The Boundless Sublime, I read a lot about cults and new religious movements. And there’s a lot of debate about whether such-and-such an organisation is a cult or not. But really the difference between a cult and a religion is kind of like the difference between a weed and a plant. There isn’t one. It’s just that some plants are unwelcome in our gardens, and we call them weeds.

Blog Tour: Guest post by Fleur McDonald

Kids' Book Review is delighted to welcome best-selling rural fiction author Fleur McDonald who is celebrating the launch of her picture book Noisy Nights, illustrated by Annie White and published by New Frontier Publishing.

I didn’t realise there would be a difference between writing for adults and writing for children. But there seriously is.

When I started writing Noisy Nights, I had a goal in mind. That was to try and help my son with his attention span. Hayden, at eighteen months, was ‘at high risk of autism’ and his concentration ability was very poor.

I had started writing my first Rural Lit book, when I was tinkering around the edges of writing children’s books. As much as I read the passages of Red Dust out loud, to make sure everything flowed well, I had to do it a lot more when I was writing Noisy Nights.

Serenading the stock on the farm had never been a high priority to me, but as I was writing, I found the need to get the rhythm and pacing right, which meant I had to read it out loud. I’d stand talking to myself and the animals out in the paddock. ‘The cows moo-ed and the sheep maa-ed,’ I’d chant, as I beeped the horn encouraging them towards the gate.

10 Quirky Questions with Wendy Orr

1. What's your hidden talent?
Singing to animals

2. Who is your favourite literary villain and why?
Captain Hook. He’s purely evil… but I can’t help feeling a bit sorry for him. Especially about his hand.

3. You're hosting a literary dinner party, which five authors would you invite? (alive or dead)
Jane Austen, Rosemary Sutcliff, Jules Verne, William Shakespeare; Ursula le Guin
(I also have a much longer list of living author friends but I’m not going to hurt anyone’s feelings but leaving them out!)

4. Which literary invention do you wish was real?
Time travel

5. What are five words that describe your writing process?
Slow, tortured, obsessive, all-consuming, satisfying

6. Which are the five words you would like to be remembered by as a writer?
Honest, uplifting, page-turning, inspiring, entertaining

Blog Tour Guest Post: Wendy Orr on Visiting the Dragonfly Song Locations

Photo credit: Robert Gould

Kids' Book Review is thrilled to welcome author Wendy Orr as part of the blog tour for her latest book, Dragonfly Song (Allen & Unwin). Wendy shares the thrill of visiting the locations where her story is set. Make sure you check the list of blog tour stops at the end of this post.

Dragonfly Song is set on a fictitious northern Aegean island, and in Knossos in Crete. As in most of my books, I used a mixture of research, imagination and logic to create my versions of these places – despite a lifetime of longing to see them, I’d never managed to get there.

But the book I’m working on next needs much more specific, less documented knowledge, and so in May, my husband and I headed to Crete. I’d been corresponding with the archaeologist Sabine Beckmann for some time, reading her papers and bombarding her with questions. When I got an email from her one evening, inviting me to spend a couple of days with her, I was too excited to sleep. The reality was even better than I’d imagined, because she also helped structure the rest of our time there – not just where to go, but what to look for.

Wendy in Knossos

So, early the first morning, we headed to Knossos. Knossos is the site of a palace – or temple or administrative centre – that was built, burned and rebuilt several times until its final destruction around 1450 BCE. It was excavated and partially reconstructed by the British archaeologist Arthur Evans in the early 20th century.

Normal Norman Blog Tour: Tara Lazar - Girls Can Do Anything

Girls can do anything.

This is something I just didn’t realize as a child. No one bothered to tell me that I was responsible for my own path in life, my own success. I thought life was something that just happened to you, something that you couldn’t control. Becoming a scientist, a mathematician or an astronaut never entered the realm of possibility for me. I didn’t see it for other women, so I didn’t imagine it for myself.

It’s so important for young girls to witness the extraordinary achievements of other women. That’s why I love picture book biographies like The Mermaid Queen by Corey/Fotheringham and Ada Byron Lovelace and The Thinking Machine by Wallmark/Chu. They tell the stories of women who achieved despite the odds, besides being told they couldn’t or shouldn’t.

Blog Tour: 12 Curly Questions with Stephan Britt

1. Tell us something hardly anyone knows about you. 
Very few people know that I sleep upright, like a horse. I also eat two bags of oats for breakfast everyday and I can count to ten simply by tapping my feet.

2. What is your nickname?
I’m not sure I’ve ever been given a proper nickname, but I do fondly remember my father often calling me “Hey you!”

3. What is your greatest fear?
Not being able to come up with a clever answer for this question.

4. Describe your illustration style in ten words.
“Any child could do better with one arm tied behind his back.” Is that more than ten? I lost count after my left horseshoe fell off.

5. Tell us five positive words that describe you as an illustrator. 
Upright, well-groomed, jaunty, civilized, breathing.

6. What book character would you be, and why?
If I could be any character, I would like to be a bookmark; preferably one with scratch ‘n sniff kittens on it. That way no matter what book you read, I’ll always be there, holding your place ‘til we meet again. And I’d smell like fresh kittens too.

Blog Tour: Dianne Bates shares an Awesome Project

Kids' Book Review is delighted to welcome well-known children's book author Dianne Bates to share the publishing journey of her latest books, Awesome Animals: Dogs and Awesome Animals: Cats.

Some years ago I wrote three children’s non-fiction books about cats, dogs and horses as a book series. Each contained fun facts and amazing stories about animals – a Guinness Book of Records meets Ripley’s Believe It or Not!

Each book had the same format as the other two titles. For example, Awesome Dogs looked at dogs in history, dog adventures, famous dogs and famous people’s dogs, TV, stage and movie dogs; and working, lucky, and clever dogs. There were many jaw-dropping facts about dogs, stories that were amazing but true, jokes and verse featuring dogs, and for the true dog-lovers, there was a list of children’s novels featuring dogs.

I also created a marketing proposal to help any publisher make a decision to publish the series. The proposal included the demographics of the intended audience (children aged 8 to 12 years with a reading age of nine), a description of the series’ contents and approach, the main strengths of the series, any major competition (I couldn’t find any), markets to which the series would appeal and an author bio. I then found as many possible publishers for the series and began my submissions.

Blog Tour: The Story Behind 'Sad, the Dog'

Kids' Book Review is delighted to welcome author Sandy Fussell as she celebrates the release of her first picture book, Sad, the Dog. Read on to learn about Sandy's inspiration for writing this heartwarming story. You can follow the Sad, the Dog blog tour via the links at the end of this post.

All of the characters in my novels are fictional. Sad is the only character I’ve known in real life. He lived next door to me for many years.

Or I should say, she lived next door to me because while Sad, the Dog is closely based on a true story, there have been many tweaks and twists along the way. Sad’s real name was Cassie and he was a girl.

The first two lines are the only part of the story I fabricated. Cassie wasn’t an unwanted Christmas gift. Her owners had family troubles. While Cassie was well looked after, no-one had any time to love her; exactly what can happen when a pet is given as an unexpected present.

My back deck looks into the yard next door, and I’d see Cassie lying there. She was a spaniel-type dog with blotchy black-grey fur, long dangly ears and deep, dark eyes. The sort of eyes that are full of expression and I thought they looked sad.

Blog Tour: 10 Quirky Questions with author Rachael Craw

Kids' Book Review is delighted to welcome author Rachael Craw to celebrate the launch of Stray, the second book in the fabulous Spark trilogy. Make sure you check out the other stops on the Stray Blog Tour listed below.

1. What's your hidden talent?
I sing beautifully.

2. Who is your favourite literary villain?
Sauron.

3. You're hosting a literary dinner party, which five authors would you invite?
Margaret Atwood, Patrick Ness, Maggie Stiefvater, Kate Atkinson, Elizabeth Knox.

4. Which literary invention do you wish was real?
Hogwarts.

Blog Tour: My Unforgettable Year

KBR welcomes author Adem Besim on tour for the release of his new young adult novel, My Unforgettable Year. This is a coming-of-age story about triumph and tragedy, love and loss, acceptance and letting go. We hope you enjoy this interview, which sheds some interesting light on Adem’s writing.

When did you begin your writing journey?

Besides the stories I wrote as a teenager, I began writing this novel in January 2012. I worked on it on and off throughout that year. I finally struck a motivational nerve the following year in March during my course, and got back to it. I finished it around May/June of this year.

What is your greatest joy in writing?

My greatest joy in writing is the achievement of creating a story in your mind with realistic characters, settings, and a plot, and executing it. I also love hearing that my readers were hooked on my work and actually wanted to read it.

Blog Tour: Snap Magic vs Pond Magic – Independent vs Trade

KBR is delighted to welcome friend and talented author/illustrator Angela Sunde, on tour with her latest book! Here, she tells us about her new book, Snap Magic, and how she decided to 'go it alone'. Inspiring stuff. Be sure to follow Angela as she goes on tour, with some wonderful blog visits. Schedule at the end of this post. Take it away, Angela!

Hello! It's wonderful to be here on Kids Book Review once more.

My Aussie Chomp, Pond Magic, was always going to be followed by a stand-alone sequel. With such strong and quirky characters, tween-focused themes and humorous twists and turns, how could I not write another story about the easily embarrassed and unwilling heroine Lily Padd?

And so the sequel, Snap Magic, was written and submitted as an Aussie Chomp, unfortunately at the very same time that Penguin closed the Aussie Chomps list. I had a coffee with my Penguin editor soon after and she absolutely loved Snap Magic, saying Lily’s character was ‘incredibly good fun and so sparky’, and hoped the 'twist in the road' would make me more determined to get my stories out there.

Blog Tour: The Jewel by Amy Ewing

Kids' Book Review is delighted to have Amy Ewing stop by on her blog tour for The Jewel, the first book in an exciting new dystopian trilogy published by Walker Books. Amy kindly took some time out to answer our questions about The Jewel. You can follow The Jewel blog tour via the links shared below.

Congratulations on The Jewel. It’s such an interesting story. How did the idea come to you – did you start with characters and build a story around them, or did you start with the story concept and then the characters developed to bring it to life?
The concept for The Jewel came from a lazy Sunday afternoon I spent watching movies on basic cable. Taken came on, and I thought to myself, “Sure, why not? I like Liam Neeson.” For those of you who haven’t seen it, there is a scene when his daughter (the one who gets taken) is paraded onto a stage and bid on by powerful men who want to buy her as, essentially, a sex slave.

As I watched that scene, I wondered to myself what it would be like if, instead of men, it was women bidding on her. Why would a woman buy another woman? I thought at first it would be to carry their children for vanity purposes. Why go through nine months of hormones and stretch marks and dietary restrictions when you can have some other girl do it for you? Slowly the idea evolved to the point that these women needed these girls. That generations of inbreeding had caused too much chromosomal damage, and that these surrogates had the power to fix it. And so, the Auction was born, and Violet’s story came to life.

The Jewel is the first book in a trilogy. What are the challenges and benefits of writing a series? Did you have the entire storyline mapped out from the beginning, or did it continue to unfold after the first book was completed?
The best part is definitely getting to explore more of the world I’ve created and watch the characters grow and change. The hardest part is figuring out all the plot points, and getting them to blend together the way I want. The synopses of books two and three that I originally submitted when I sold The Jewel have been completely scrapped. I work pretty organically, just mapping out basic plot points and figuring out how to get there as I write. But now that I’m almost done revising the second book (yay!), the third book is becoming clearer and clearer in my mind. Let’s keep our fingers crossed it stays that way!

Blog Tour: The Summoning of the One: Interview with Royce Bond

KBR welcomes author Royce Bond, on tour for the release of his new fantasy novel The Summoning of the One. We hope you enjoy this interview which sheds some interesting light on the author process.


Who is your favourite author and why?
I have two favourite authors, C.S. Lewis and Tolkein. I love the worlds they created and have spent numerous hours in those worlds.

My wife and I actually purchased a Chronicles of Narnia book on our honeymoon. She began reading it to me aloud and this continued almost every night for thirty years. It’s only in the last four years that we have stopped this habit, but now I’m writing this, I feel I’d like her to start again.