Kelly Shakespeare
Christchurch author Rachael King has been named a finalist in the NZ Post Children's Book Awards.
Kelly Shakespeare
Rachael's books; The Sound of Butterflies translated into multiple languages. Her first children's book, Red Rocks, has been shortlisted in this year's New Zealand Post Children's Book Awards.
Where magic happens
A comfortable villa in a leafy St Albans street seems far removed from the windswept, rocky shoreline that haunts the pages of author Rachael King's children's book, Red Rocks.
Rachael has made her home in Christchurch with husband Peter Rutherford since 2008, when they moved from Wellington so Rachael could take up a year-long writing residency at the University of Canterbury. The couple have two sons, Thomas, 6, and Alexander, 3.
On the day of our interview, Rachael greets me with an apology for the toys, books and general domestic muddle spread through the kitchen and main living area - the inevitable outcome of life with young children. She shoos me through into the villa's tidier formal lounge, where she explains how the idea for Red Rocks first came to her about six years ago.
She was taking a walk at the time, a new mother with a baby, towards Red Rocks on Wellington's rugged south coast, where there is a seal colony. She found herself thinking about a story that would involve a boy finding a seal skin there and taking it home, only to discover it is the skin of a selkie, or seal-woman. Without the skin, the selkie cannot return to the sea and must stay in human form.
In her book, the boy character, Jake, is spending a few weeks with his father in Owhiro Bay, having flown down from his home in Auckland, where he lives with his mother, half-brother Davey and stepfather Greg. His father lives in a tiny rented house and spends much of his day in a shed above the house writing books about New Zealand wildlife.
While his dad writes, Jake walks to Red Rocks. On this exposed stretch of coastline, where the rust-red rocks rise high all around him, Jake is aware this is a place where magic could happen. He finds what turns out to be a selkie skin in a tiny cave near the sea and decides to take it home,
Footnote:
This is a delightful article, do be sure to read the rest - link here
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