Children’s author visits
A story about a pig escape had Waipawa School pupils enthralled recently when they were visited by a children’s book author originally from CHB.
Jennifer Somervell, a student at CHB College from 1970-74, is the author of the award-winning Tales From the Farm picture book series, which are based on her childhood growing up on the family’s Silodale dairy farm near Takapau.
Last week she visited Waipawa primary where she dramatised parts of the fourth book in the series, the pig escape story A Very Greedy Tale, and spoke about the writing, illustrating and design process.
Now living in the South Island, Somervell said the students were surprised to learn it could take 18 months to prepare a book for publishing and that the illustrations, which were done by her sister Margery Fern, took more than a year to complete.
“If you had told me when I was a student at CHB College that I would be a children’s picture book writer one day, I wouldn’t have believed it. But, as I said to the children, the best stories to write are the ones that are real to you.”
Somervell said the book series had been “surprisingly successful”, selling more than 10,500 copies in the five years since the first modest print run of the first book The Day Dad Blew Up the Cowshed in 2012. The second book The New Old Truck has sold 4000 copies and was in its third reprint.
Along with the two most recent titles, The Eel Hunt and A Very Greedy Tale, all four books had won first place awards in the United States-based Purple Dragonfly Book Awards for excellence in children’s literature, she said.
“The day that my dad blew up his cowshed was an absolute highlight of my childhood,” said Somervelle, who is working on preparing a fifth book, Uncle Allen’s Stinky Leg, for publication in September.
The books are available from talesfromthefarm. co.nz, Paper Plus in Waipukurau and Indexkids, Waipawa.