sallymurphy.com.au

Sally Murphy, Australian author

Mandy: The Book I Wished I’d Written

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I’ve been blogging lately about poems which have impacted on me, and there are more of these to come, but today I want to talk about a book which did the same. Of course there are many many books which have stayed with me long after I read them. Often I don’t remember all the details of such a book – just the way it left me feeling, especially if I read it a long time ago.

I remember a lot about Mandy which I first read when I was about seven years old. The book wasn’t mine. It belonged to one of my sisters, and I don’t know if it was recommended to me or if I just picked it from the shelf. I’m pretty sure the first thing which attracted me was the title. Mandy was, along with Wendy and Melissa, one of my favourite names. These were names I considered pretty, and secretly longed to be called. Now that I’m older, I can’t see what I didn’t like about my own name, but back then, I longed for a prettier name.

Mandy

My copy of Mandy, a treasured possession.

Anyway, that’s by the by. I read Mandy, and I loved it. It was a book that I wanted to hug. It had a character I wanted to hug. It had sad bits – Mandy was an orphan, stuck in an orphanage, and seemingly without hope of being adopted. It also had happy bits – most especially a happy ending. And it had a secret place: Mandy discovered an abandoned cottage in the woods next door to the orphanage and decided it would be hers.

So I loved this book, and secretly wished the book was mine and, more importantly, that I had written it. I wanted so much to have created that world, that character, that happy ending. So, I got myself an old exercise book and I rewrote that story, in a very thinly described take-off. My version was called Tereasa (my main character as named after my best friend – though I misspelt Teresa). Of course, I was 7 and my version was not as good as the original, but I was very proud of that book, which was my first ever novel. So proud that I wrapped it up and gave it to my mum for Christmas, who was equally as proud that her little girl had written a book, and so kept that book for thirty years, before very kindly giving it back to me after I became a published author, so that I could show it off.

Tereasa

Tereasa, another treasured possession: the first novel I ever wrote.

One of the things about books you have loved is that sometimes, when you reread them, they don’t live up to your memories. However, I’m pleased to say that a few years ago I tracked down a copy of Mandy on eBay, and finally owned my own copy. A funny thing happened when it arrived in the mail, though: I was scared to read it, in case I was disappointed and it no longer had that magic. It took me a couple of years before I finally took it from the bookshelf and reread it. And the magic was still there. I still wanted to hug both Mandy the character and Mandy the book.

Incidentally, when I first loved Mandy I didn’t realise that the Julie Edwards who wrote it was also Julie Andrews who I adored in movies such as Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music. What a clever lady to have managed both a phenomenally successful acting career and to create beautiful children’s books.

I still kind of wish that I’d written Mandy but now what I hope and wish more is that one or more of my books might be making other kids feel the same way I did when I read that one. I hope there’s a reader somewhere hugging one of my books, or wanting to hug my characters, or a writer somewhere wishing that they had written Pearl Verses the World or Roses are Blue, and starting on the path to one day being a published author.

Thank you Mandy, and Julie Edwards, for inspiring me then and now.

Five Cool Things About Writing for Children

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One of my students at my teaching dayjob asked me recently why I needed a day job if I am a ‘real’ author (as opposed, I guess, to being an unreal one). I explained that , like most authors, I need a day job to supplement my income. She was a bit puzzled by this, and went on to ask why I bother with writing if it doesn’t make me enough money. 
Although I answered her with several reasons, I’ve been thinking about this conversation – and all the wonderful things I love about being an author – and have decided  to kick off a new semi-regular series of posts (semi-regular meaning I’m not sure how often I’ll do it) celebrating the good stuff in my life by talking about the good parts of being an author.
So, here goes – five cool things about being a children’s book author:
1.      1.   Holding a book in your hands with your name on the cover and knowing that you wrote it. You.
2.     2.   Holding that same book and knowing that kids (and maybe adults too) are going to read it – and picturing that happening.
3.     3.  Getting to go into schools, and to festivals, or online venues such as blogs and forums, and talking to kids about your books and the sheer joy of reading and writing.
4.     4.  Getting to do silly things and pretending it’s research for your next book.
5.     5.   Fan mail! Young readers say the nicest things – sometimes through snail mail, sometimes by email, and other times in person. I have had notes scrawled on the back of festival programs, or corners torn from notebooks, which have become prized possessions.
These are not the only five cool things about what I do – and not even necessarily the top five things, but they are the first five things that came to me when I started to write.
I’ll be using the five cool things format again to talk about different topics. Stay tuned! In the meantime, I’d love to hear what YOU think is cool about writing for children.

Why I Write Sad Stories

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I was asked recently why I only write sad books. I was quite taken aback by this question, because I don’t think of myself as someone who writes sad books. But at the same time I knew where the asker was coming from. After all, this person may have read some of my more lighthearted stories in the past, but most recently she had read both Pearl Verses the World and Toppling, both of which deal with some pretty weighty issues.

While perhaps this person’s question stopped me in my tracks a little bit, it really isn’t unusual for me to be asked why I write stories that make people cry. Whenever I visit a school and talk about Pearl or Toppling, a child will ask a similar question – especially if they have not actually read the books. And there’s the crunch for me. If you haven’t read the books, you could well hear about them and think they are going to be overwhelmingly sad. After all, Pearl Verses the World deals with issues of dementia, death, and loneliness, whilst Toppling focuses on childhood cancer. These are not light topics, and when I wrote both of these stories I was really confronted with my own emotions surrounding these issues.

But I hope, I really hope, that when young readers read these books the overarching feeling they are left with by the end of each story is not one of sorrow or helplessness, but one of hope. Without giving too much of either story away (I do try hard to avoid spoilers to my books), both stories focus not on easy solutions to these problems, but on young characters finding hope, finding ways to deal with the tough stuff that arises in their lives.

I really strongly believe that kids need books that allow them to cry (if they feel the need to), that allow them to relate to harsh life experiences, to empathise or sympathise with characters of their own age as they go through tough stuff. But I also believe that they need to see that no matter how hard life is, there is always some glimmer of hope.

Does every book need to be sad/serious? No. Whilst I’m really proud of these two books, I am equally proud of my books about frogs that float and bears that sing, and kangaroos that pull Santa’s sleigh. Kids need all kinds of stories, and I’m grateful that I’m able to write them.

sallymurphy.com.au