Discover an underwater realm
Siobhan McDermott was told ancient tales as a child.
Travel sickness meant that Siobhan McDermott could never read in cars or on buses as a child. On her way to school, she entertained herself by coming up with her own stories, inspired by the Chinese legends and Irish folklore she heard through her Irish father’s and Chinese mother’s families.
McDermott grew up on Lantau Island in Hong Kong. She often travelled by ferry to visit her grandparents and the boat trip inspired her first book, Paper Dragons: The Fight for the Hidden Realm. It’s about 12-year-old Zhi Ging, who embarks on an adventure to an underwater world where she has the chance to train with the immortals – and eventually become one. She starts at the school of Hok Woh, where she studies with strange tutors and faces thrilling trials.
McDermott told The Week Junior that while she was on the boat on the way to see her grandparents, “I would spend the entire time trying to peer down past the waves, imagining that there was a whole other kingdom that lay beneath.”
Immortality – the ability to live forever – is important in both Chinese and Irish mythology. McDermott loves an Irish legend about a man’s journey to Tír Na nÓg, a world where nobody gets older. Similar to Zhi Ging’s underwater school,
Hok Woh, once people leave Tír Na nÓg, their immortality fades away and they must face death.
One of McDermott’s favourite books when she was younger was Artemis Fowl by
Eoin Colfer, a story inspired by Irish legends. She read it when she first moved from Hong Kong to Ireland, and loved to imagine that she would bump into a fairy or a leprechaun at any moment. She said, “I was really excited to live in a country that had such rich magic to it.”