Sally Grindley - Children's Author

THE YEAR IN REVIEW, A PREVIEW OF THE NEW YEAR

2011-12-24T14:03:00.000-08:00

It's that time of year when we look back over the past twelve months and forward to the next twelve - so here goes!

2011 saw the publication of my eight-book series called ARK ADVENTURES, designed for early readers to tackle themselves. The books provide an insight into the problems Noah might have had getting some of the animals onto the ark - and Noah is a little hapless so nothing is straightforward, especially where chameleons, giraffes, giant tortoises, bears, penguins, kangaroos and chimpanzees are concerned! As for the sharks - do they really need to come on board? They seem to think they do!

My eighth young novel, MY NAME IS ROSE, came out in June. It's about a Romani gypsy girl, who is so traumatised by the loss of her parents that she loses the ability to speak and finds herself being torn away from everything she has ever known. Displaced and friendless, she encounters much prejudice and exploitation, before summoning the willpower to reverse her circumstances.

My first picture book for some time came out in July. BUSY DAY has a simple verse text and follows a group of animal friends as they set off for the seaside on a big red bus. On the way they pass lots of different forms of transport. Barbara Vagnozzi's illustrations are wonderfully colourful and packed with details for young children to spot.

I've done a lot of writing in 2011 - and finished the year with a bang! I was delighted to be asked by Bloomsbury and the Zoological Society of London to write a series of young novels about endangered species. I spent hours researching each one and discovered many amazing - and disturbing - facts. The first four 'International Rescue' titles are practically put to bed, with PAWPRINTS IN THE SNOW (about Amur tigers in Russia) due for publication in February 2012, and the other three scheduled at regular intervals over the following nine months.

The final edits have been made to MOBILE MATILDA, my picture book about a gadget-mad meerkat, and it's set for publication in September 2012. I love Margaret Chamberlain's pictures - she's done a wonderful job and really captured the 'essence' of meerkat. Whilst paying a visit to London Zoo as part of my research for International Rescue, I was allowed into the meerkats' enclosure and was lucky enough to be able to feed them with handfuls of live mealworms - which don't feel anywhere near as bad as you might imagine! One of them even ran over my feet - a meerkat, that is, not a mealworm.

I'd long thought about doing a follow-up to SHHH!, one of my most successful picture books, and I've had an idea on the drawing board for quite some time, but although the idea was a good one I didn't think it was quite there - so I put it away and turned my attention to other things. When, eventually, I looked at it again, I was excited! It was much closer to being 'finished' than I had realised, and after a few tweaks it was ready to be submitted to my publishers. They're excited too! I'm not even going to tell you what it's called - yet - but watch this space.

That's the bang I'm ending the year with. Now I'm looking forward to an inspired 2012, with my first project being a new novel. I've been invited to take part in the Edinburgh Festival and the Birmingham Young Readers event and I'm in the process of setting up a nationwide tour of schools and libraries. I would be nothing, though, without my young readers, parents, librarians and teachers, and I would like to thank all of you for your great support.

Have a very happy festive season and all the very best for a fantastic new year.

2011-11-03T09:50:00.000-07:00

Are you watching David Attenborough's FROZEN PLANET? Wow! The photography is extraordinary, as are the lives of animals living in polar regions. There have been some hilarious moments too - penguins 'stealing' stones from each others' nests and seemingly trying to look innocent, fledgling albatrosses (is that the plural?) attempting to fly and crash-landing, and polar bear cubs romping in the snow and giving mum a hard time.

On the subject of polar bears, some years back I wrote a picture book called POLAR STAR about a mother polar bear and her cubs. I think it's still in print. It was heavily based upon what happens in real life and I did a lot of research at the time. I was gratified therefore to see my story played out before my very eyes in one of the episodes of FROZEN PLANET - gratified because I always worry that I might have got a detail wrong.

From an author's perspective, the great thing about animals is that their individual quirks and oddities provide a huge variety of starting points that can be built upon to create endless possibilities for stories. And a bit of research, even for a less-than-realistic approach, can throw up the most unexpected bits of information that can be incorporated within a story. For instance, when researching giraffes I discovered they like onions! I used that nugget in a book, but always wondered how accurate it was, until I had it confirmed recently by a giraffe keeper at London Zoo.

Use a bit of poetic license and add the odd human characteristic and animals can take on a whole new life in story form. I used a lot of poetic license when I wrote MOBILE MATILDA (to be published in 2012). Matilda, a meerkat, is so obsessed with gadgets that she neglects her meerkat duties. She inhabits a meerkat world of digging and sentry duty, but she herself has lost much of her meerkatishness - which is why she nearly comes to a sticky end. The story wouldn't have worked nearly as well with another animal in the starring role.

I didn't, by the way, jump on the meerkat bandwagon because of a certain television advertisement. MOBILE MATILDA was conceived some time before those comparative meerkats first appeared. It just took a while for a publisher to spot its potential. I hope it won't take readers quite so long because I rather like it, and Margaret Chamberlain's pictures are delightful.

Now, I wonder if I can come up with a story about the elephant seals I saw on FROZEN PLANET... Mmm, maybe not!

VULTURES

2011-09-13T10:58:00.000-07:00

I've never been a big fan of vultures - apart from the three in Disney's version of The Jungle Book, which are hilarious! - yet I've written two books about them.

THE SULKY VULTURE is one of my most successful picture books and is often used interactively by teachers in nursery and reception classes. The story was inspired by my mother's observation that with their heads pulled down and their shoulders hunched up they look grumpy!

Now I've tackled the subject of endangered vultures in India, as part of my series for Bloomsbury and the Zoological Society of London.

FEATHERS IN THE WIND (to be published in 2012) is above all an adventure story, but it's set against the background of the annual kite festival in Ahmedabad. The festival, on January 14th, is a major part of the celebrations surrounding Uttarayan - the day when the sun starts to travel northwards marking the end of winter. Sadly, numerous vultures and other birds are seriously injured or killed by the kites, many of which have their lines covered in ground glass to enable their owners to cut competitors' kites from the sky.

Vultures are also endangered because of a brand of antibiotic used by Indian farmers to keep their cattle healthy. The birds feed on the carcasses of cattle, an essential 'cleaning up process', but where the antibiotic has been used it is often still present in the carcasses, and has been found to be lethal to the scavengers. In the absence of vultures, wild dogs are moving in, many of them rabid, and becoming a problem in towns and villages.

Much is being done by conservationists worldwide to ensure the survival of the various vulture species in India (and Africa, where there is a similar crisis), including the establishment of breeding programmes. Birds seriously injured during the kite festival and unable to fly again, are now introduced into the breeding programmes to help boost future populations. In the meantime, farmers are being encouraged to use a different, safe antibiotic, though the higher cost means there is some resistance. It's one of those cases where the interdependence of humans and animals is both vital but contradictory.

As for the kite festival, it's too important a tradition for anyone to suggest that it should disappear, however, kite flyers are being encouraged to avoid early morning and evening flights, when birds are most active. Meanwhile, vets and volunteers do all they can to save those birds that do become entangled in the dancing lines.

CRITICALLY ENDANGERED!

2011-08-20T15:07:00.000-07:00

Hello!

At a time when I'm about to write my fourth young novel about endangered species, I've heard on the radio this week that authors are considered by some to be a critically endangered species! YIKES! Is this going to be my first and only blog?

It's certainly true that it's harder and harder to earn a living as an author. I know, we've all read the major success stories in the press, but, as in any other walk of life or profession, very few hit those dizzy heights of fame or income. For the rest of us, it's more often than not a second income from another source that keeps our heads above water. The widespread discounting of books has hit us straight in the pocket, and now the advent of ebooks threatens us again.

We're also expected more and more to be performers as well as authors - something not all of us are comfortable with, though coming from an amateur theatrical background I've always quite enjoyed performance storytelling. God forbid that it should become a prerequisite to being published that an author should be adept at public presentations of their work.

I like being an author - most of the time! - and books have a vital role to play in igniting and fanning the imaginations of children and adults. So if authors are critically endangered, I hope help is on the way - and lots of it! In the meantime, I'm taking the Brook family off to save black rhinos in Kenya, and no doubt nine-year-old Joe will wind up in some sort of pickle (danger), as he always does.

The International Rescue series is being published by Bloomsbury in collaboration with the Zoological Society of London. The first two titles - PAWPRINTS IN THE SNOW and SHADOWS UNDER THE SEA will be published in February 2012.