Interview: Australian Children’s Laureate, Sally Rippin

Introduction by Melissa & Zainab from GWPS 

We interviewed Sally Rippin. She is a famous author and has sold more than ten million books around the world in 14 different languages. She is the new Australian Children’s Laureate.

Here are the highlights.

What is the message you would like to share as the Australian Children’s Laureate?

I’ve decided that I want to talk about all kids being readers. And the reason why I choose that as my laureate message is because I know that some people will find reading easy and some people may need some assistance to read. But we can all share stories, even if we find reading hard.

What inspired you to write Billy B. Brown?

When I first started writing these books, my youngest son was finding reading really difficult. He is dyslexic, so he will always find reading more difficult than others. So I decided I wanted to write some books that he would find interesting and fun that were easy to read.

All of the Billy stories really are based on things that I remember doing when I was growing up. So lots of the ideas come from my own childhood and I just put them in modern day setting.

How did you become the number one female author in Australia?

I’ve written lots and lots of books, so there’s almost 30 Billy books, there’s 25 Jack books, there’s 20 School of Monsters books, and I’ve been doing it for 25 years. So, I guess the answer to that question is, I work very hard and I always try to do my best work.

I also try to think about what my readers like from me so I can write what my readers would like to read. I try to write stories that kids these days will be able to connect with and see themselves in the story. I think that’s why the books have become so popular.

What is the hardest thing about being an author?

Probably the hardest thing about being an author is that nobody is going to tell you to do your work.  Nobody’s going to say ‘it’s nine o’clock, it’s time for you to be at work’. If you are a writer or an author, you have to do that work yourself. So you have to be very disciplined.

Some teachers at our school think graphic novels don’t have enough words and are not challenging enough. What do you think about that?

My son has dyslexia and ADHD. These things don’t mean that he’s not super smart. They don’t mean that he doesn’t love stories, they don’t mean that he can’t benefit from the things that reading stories can give us. When he was in about grade five, he discovered manga comics. Manga is amazing. It’s from Japan and some of the stories are very well known.

And all of a sudden I could not stop him reading. That’s all he wanted to do. And he just read book after book after book. Now do you think I was going to say to him, ‘oh, that’s not a proper book. Here you go, read another book’?

While he was reading these Manga books, he was talking about all the things that are important about books. He was talking about characters and he was talking about narrative and he was talking about complex stories and the way that people act – all the things that you would get out of a regular book.

It’s really important to recognise, and this is something I feel really strongly about, that there are lots and lots of ways to share stories. So I’m a very, very strong supporter of comics and graphic novels and manga as all being excellent ways to share stories. And I will defend that to my dying day that I’m happy to take anyone on who disagreed with me.

Out of all the books you’ve written, is there one that is extra special to you?

There’s one series that I really love. It’s a trilogy called Holly and Buster. Holly is a witch who finds reading very hard. She messes up her spells and this makes her very unpopular in school. But luckily she lives next door to Buster, who is a feelings monster. And Buster finds school very hard too because he has very big feelings. When he feels happy, he gets pink and light and he floats away. But when he’s sad, he gets small and gray. And so he gets teased a little bit at his school because he goes to a school where monsters have to be strong and brave and not afraid of anything.

So because these two live next door, they become best friends. But as you know, in any good story, there has to be a problem. And there is a very big problem in this town where Poly and Buster live in that this town, they believe that witches and monsters shouldn’t be friends, which is a terrible, terrible problem because the witches think they’re better than the monsters. And the monsters get very angry about this.

Poll and Buster try to set this right and they stand up for what they believe in, and they have to face lots of scary things and adventures, but they end up working very hard to defend their friendship. So I think that’s probably my favorite series.

Do you have a favorite Billy B. Brown book?

I didn’t, but I’m going to let you in on a secret. So this is my new Billy B. Brown book [The Wonderful Wedding]/And the reason why I wrote it is I’m going to get married at the end of the year.

So I wrote a story about getting married and about how marriage can be whatever you want it to be. It can be a big fancy wedding like Billy would like or these people in the story who get married, they just get married in jeans and t-shirt on a beach, and they just want everyone to know how much they love each other and they want everyone, they love to be part of that wedding and that’s what their story is about.

How long does it take to write a book?

It depends how long the book is, it depends how well I know the characters and it depends how hard it is to write. So some books are harder to write than others.

Because I know Billy so well and I have been writing books about her for a very long time,  I can write a Billy book pretty quickly. And when I say quickly, it’s probably working on a story for about a week and going back and forth with my editor for a few more weeks after that until we have something that’s just right.