Here it is!

The cover for Angel Creek! It's still AGES before I'll have the finished book in my hands but seeing the cover makes me feel like it's SO much closer.

What do you think?

Play Tag

I saw this on Lenore Skenazy's Free Range Kids blog, it's brilliant - so funny! And perhaps the best argument I've seen yet for encouraging Free Range play.

A 1970s Childhood

Have you ever noticed how in many of the best books for children the author removes the parents from the picture as soon as possible? Whether it's children slipping through a portal into Narnia or Hogwarts, or simply sending Mum out for the day when a Cat comes to play? (Or if you are the ever-subversive Roald Dahl, you just kill them off on page one!) There's a very good reason for this. Think back to your own childhood. How present were your parents in the most exciting periods of your life? I don't know about you, but mine were always very much on the periphery. I'm sure they were watching me from some distance away (or at least checking up on me from time to time) but all of my 'adventures' were always played out very much in my private child's world, with parents just kind of like an annoying fly to be swatted away, buzzing in my ear every now and then to go and take a bath or eat some food - right when I was in the most important part of my game! Like many people of my generation, I imagine, (OK - I'm a seventies child!) I was given an enormous amount of freedom by my parents. I walked to school from grade 3 with my friend from across the road and our younger siblings in tow. We would hang out at each other's houses without consulting our parents, go to the park by ourselves and down to the milk bar to buy mixed lollies. We climbed trees, played in mud, waded in creeks. And survived.

These days, in many places, this is unheard of. A friend and I went to see a talk at the Wheeler Centre on Monday evening called ‘Free Range Kids’ by American journalist, Lenore Skenazy. Lenore published an article a while back in the US about letting her nine-year-old son use the New York subway on his own. Within twenty-four hours she was officially labelled 'America's Worst Mom' and found herself defending her decision on countless TV and Radio talkback Shows.

Lenore was a fabulous speaker (and incredibly funny!) and gave us some terrifying examples of how obsessive contemporary society has become in 'protecting our children'. She said an obvious example of how much childhoods have changed over time can be found by watching the original episodes of the educational children's TV show Sesame Street, where kids used to play in vacant lots and eat cookies and generally do their own thing (with the adults either absent or very firmly planted on the periphery). Nowadays when you watch one of these original episodes, apparently they come with the warning: UNSUITABLE FOR CHILDREN! I find this horrifying. And sad.

Lenore explained why, as contemporary parents, we are so much more frightened of allowing our children the same freedoms we enjoyed. Along with the fear of being disapproved of by other parents and the money made by selling us protective gadgetry we don't need, our 24/7 sensationalist media is the most obvious culprit. While statistics have proven that crime rates in the US and Australia are continually going down (and most crime committed towards children comes from someone they know) we are constantly being bombarded by terrifying news stories and Crime-based TV shows. The result being that people are becoming afraid to even step out their own doors. Surely it is much safer to keep our children locked inside on the computer, playing Nintendo games or watching TV? We all know the result of this on our children's physical health, but what about their mental health? What about the health of their imaginations? Creativity? And sense of community?

I was very inspired by Lenore's talk. My family and I are fortunate to live in a great community where many of the local kids walk to school, know their neighbours and play in the local parks. All this month, for example, my youngest son and I have been watching this little nature strip garden bloom and grow. It stands all alone on the street, in front of no house, yet some one has planted all these beautiful flowers just for everyone who passes by to enjoy. It may only be a small, simple gesture, but to me it represents all the good and beautiful things about an open, trusting and generous community and how there are many more good things out there than bad, if we dare to look for them.

(PS Thanks to Cath Crowley for inspiring me to write this post after posting a gorgeous clip on Facebook of Paul Simon on Sesame Street.)

Novel on its way - finally!

After way too long (and way too much heartache), my next novel looks as is it will finally see the light of day early next year. I had thought this novel writing gig would get easier, but I'm afraid the reverse might be true. This novel began as upper YA, then shifted down to mid-YA and now it is quite firmly planted in children's (8- 12 year olds), which I am beginning to think might be my preferred audience anyway. I have tested it out on friends, children, friend's children, and children's friends and now it is in the safe and most competent hands of my wonderful editor at Text who is massaging it into shape for me. Buffing it, polishing it into the diamond we hope it can be. Here is a draft of the blurb I received today. Along with a gorgeous cover sketch the designer sent through to me, I am beginning to imagine this thing finally becoming a book after all.

"In her new falling-down home, in her new street, in her new suburb, Jelly waits for high school to begin. She feels happy in only two places: up in the branches of the old apricot tree, and by the creek over her back fence. One night, Jelly and her cousins spot something in the creek's dark waters—the faintest pearly smudge. At first they think it’s a bird, but it isn’t…it’s a baby angel with a broken wing. And they decide to keep it. But soon things start to go wrong, and Jelly discovers that you can’t just take something from where it belongs and expect that it won’t be missed…

Sally Rippin's Angel Creek is a book about growing up: being brave and selfish and tough and scared. It's a book about an angel. But not the sweet variety. And it's about the adventures you can have in the streets around your house in the middle of summer."

It's a miracle!

Writing Billie...

There are times in your life when something absolutely marvellous just seems to fall into your lap. Billie B Brown has been one of these things.

Hilary Rogers, the publisher at Hardie Grant Egmont, took me out for coffee one day and told me that she wanted to begin a new series of books for young readers (primarily girls) but with a strong female lead – a tomboy, I suppose – to balance out all the fairy and princess books that seem to heavily dominate the younger reader market these days. She asked me – would I like to write for the series – or write the series? (The catch obviously being very tight deadlines.) Well, what you have answered? Really, that’s like asking my seven year old if he’d like lollies for dinner!

I had a million things on, as I always do, and my sensible mind was saying, Sally, you really can’t cope with writing a whole series right now! What about the overdue novel and that set of illustrations you are halfway through? And aren’t you about to begin marking hundreds of assignments from all of your RMIT students? But obviously the offer was way too tempting to even begin to be overrided by my sensible mind and I set to work that very night putting together a whole list of ideas for Hilary to consider. Fortunately, I have a very strong memory of myself at Billie’s age, and so once I started coming up with story ideas, I just couldn’t stop! As luck had it – Hilary loved my ideas and we spent the next few weeks to-ing and fro-ing about how the series would evolve.

Billie went through many incarnations – at one stage I even called her Ruby Rose – without any idea that there was a famous MTV star who went by that name. (Fortunately the Hardie Grant staff are much hipper and groovier than I am and were able to (kindly) let me know!) We talked about the length of the stories (short) and the kind of language and sentence structure I should be using (very simple and pared-back for beginning readers – much harder than it looks!) Then, there was the troublesome dilemma of illustrator. I am also an illustrator and for quite a while we toyed with the idea of me illustrating the series even though we all knew deep down that there was no way I was going to be able to write and illustrate the books as quickly as Hilary wanted to publish them. So, with great difficulty, I handed over a little piece of my baby to be illustrated by someone else.

This is the first time I have done this, and I now know what trepidation and excitement picture book authors must feel when they wait to see what an illustrator has done with their precious words. As it turns out, the Hardie Grant team found the perfect illustrator, in a young (very gorgeous) Japanese-Kiwi woman, called Aki Fukuoka. Aki has created a Billie even more wonderful than I could have imagined (let alone illustrated). Super-groovy, fabulous dresser, feisty, messy – gorgeous! When I look at the series now I can’t imagine Billie any other way. And along with the gorgeous sherbet-y cover colours, the books look almost good enough to eat!

The team at Hardie Grant have been a joy to work with right from the start. And I don’t use the word ‘team’ lightly here. I am only a small part of the enormous success the Billie series has had so far, even though it has only been on the shelves since April. Everyone has worked so hard to get this little girl up and running, and the response to the books has been amazing. I have never received so much fan-mail in my life! Not only from little girls, but parents and teachers, too, thanking me for finally creating a character their girls can relate to.

Writing this series has been so delightful, really just one of those wonderful fortuitous things that comes along just at the right time. I really feel very lucky to have had such a great writing career so far, but I have to say creating the Billie B Brown series has definitely been the icing on the cake.

*This article first appeared on the Kids Book Review blog.

*The above image is the cover of The Perfect Present, to be released November 1, 2010

Chenxi in German!*

Wow - it never rains but it pours. THIS is also super exciting. I LOVE the cover, and the new title translates as 'The Silk Painter'*. Gorgeous! The best thing about the German translation is that now the 'real' Chenxi will be able to read it, in what has now become his second language (I don't think it will be ever published in China any time soon, considering much of what the novel is about has been banned from the Chinese media.) Soon after I left Shanghai, Chenxi left China to live in Austria where he has now become a successful artist. We keep in touch - but haven't seen each other since we were teenagers. This would definitely be a good excuse to meet up again to celebrate.

*since I posted this, my German publishers have now changed the title to Shanghai Love Story. A German edition, but with an English title. See cover on right.