Book remembers our fallen soldiers
ASTATUE OF A SOLDIER stands in a square in the wind, rain and sun, every day and every night. The statue watches everything around him grow and the days, months and years tick past. Every year, people gather near the statue to remember and honour the soldiers who fought for them. This beautiful book This is Where I Stand is in honour of our fallen soldiers, to remember their feats for us all year round. Written by Wellington author Philippa Werry and illustrated by Kieran Rynhart, it is poignant, lyrical and emotive. We asked Philippa some questions:
What inspired you to write this book? I’ve written a lot about war and peace, both overseas and in our own country, in non-fiction books like Anzac Day, Armistice Day and The New Zealand Wars and novels like Lighthouse Family and The Telegram. I’ve visited a lot of war memorials around the country. All those things came together in the idea of telling a story from the point of view of a statue, and ideas started tumbling into my head about what the statue might see, hear, think and remember. What research was involved?
I’d done a lot of research on war memorials for some of my earlier books, so I almost immediately identified an actual war memorial statue to base the story on. That was the statue at the Devonport War Memorial, in Auckland, often called “The Untidy Soldier” because of his trailing laces and scruffy uniform.
What was the process working with Kieran?
I absolutely love Kieran’s illustrations. It’s a big thrill when an illustrator totally gets the heart of your book. Picture book writers and illustrators often don’t even meet, but we had coffee together with Lynette and Penny from Scholastic, and Kieran talked us through some of his ideas. I hadn’t realised what a difficult task I had set him. The book focuses on one statue, and it was his job to make it seem vibrant and alive, which is exactly what he did, by using different angles and perspectives and surrounding it with life and movement. I also sent him some photos of the Devonport statue, from when I attended the Anzac Day service while I had the 2019 Easter residency at the Michael King Writers Centre.
What do you hope children and families will take away from this book? I know that war can be a hard subject to talk about, and for some recent migrants and refugees it will have been
part of their life, not just history. But I hope that we can talk about what it means to remember something, and how a statue or memorial can help us remember other people who made big sacrifices so that we could have our freedom.
What do you enjoy most about being a writer? What I love most is creating something that wasn’t there before, and that nobody except me could have created.
What advice would you give your younger self about becoming a writer? I would tell younger-me not to be disappointed if what I first wrote down didn’t match the wonderful story I had in my head. Good writing isn’t magic, it doesn’t just appear on the page. It’s a matter of getting those first words down, and then working and working at them to make them better.
What is next on the agenda for you? I’m writing a sequel to The Telegram. The characters from that book stayed in my head, and I wanted to explore what happened after World War I ended. I’m also interested in ideas about the place of women and immigrants in New Zealand society at that time. Women had taken on a lot of traditionally male roles during the war, and then had to step back when the men returned. Immigrants from countries like China and India faced a lot of prejudice and racism, and people with German ancestry were viewed with suspicion even if they had lived here for years.