Oh no. The horror. The total horror. I appear to have put my foot in it again. People in countries other than Australia please bear with me: this is an Australian story.

I have been away for a month. The last two weeks of that month were taken up with the American tour for my new book for babies: Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes. As I left the USA it was #7 on the New York Times children’s best seller lists. By the end of the tour I was barely able to walk I was so tired, but I was over the moon and feeling fantastic.

The moment I got into the car Malcolm told me that our daily paper had a dreadful article about me in it, saying that I hated children. Nothing could be further from the truth, as every child in Australia knows, if I have met them face to face. Their parents know it too, if they have ever seen me in action. So what’s the truth here? How did this hideous statement get into the papers and make me feel as if 25 years of working with and on behalf of children has been undone in a week? I am utterly undone by this turn of events: horrified, mortified, miserable and furious.

Imagine the circumstances: in the week in late September when I was about to leave Australia for a month I was interviewed twice by two different journalists. The first interview in that week was two hours, followed by an hour with a photographer. Lovely journalist. Great photographer. But altogether exhausting. The second interview, the day before I left, when I was stressed out of my mind with everything that needed to be done prior to my departure, was three and half hours long, followed by another photographic session. I was almost weeping by the end of it, due to an extremity of tiredness and trying to make good, articulate sense with the words that were coming out of mouth. Once again, a lovely journalist and a very kind photographer, but nevertheless soaring stress levels and bone weariness. I could hardly concentrate by the end of it.

This second journalist said he presumed I had a special affinity with children. I thought about it, and God knows why or what possessed me, but I claimed NOT have any special affinity with children. I’m not blaming the media. I’m blaming myself completely for misquoting myself. The crazy truth is that I have a deep affinity with children and always have had, even as a child myself.

Just last week in a bookshop in San Jose, California, I asked for a distressed and crying baby in a book-signing line to be brought to me and I was able to calm him immediately. I am, as they say, ”good with babies.” So why on earth did I say I wasn’t?

What I was trying to convey to the journalist—and obviously I failed spectacularly—was that children’s authors are often able to write well without knowing any children at all, let alone liking them. Maurice Sendak, the author of the classic WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE, has no children in his life and interacts with them very rarely and very reluctantly. Beatrix Potter had no children, yet look at what she produced for little children. May Gibbs, the author of the Australian classic SNUGGLEPOT AND CUDDLEPIE, had no children either. At least I have one child who she is the centre of my life and the person for whom I wrote POSSUM MAGIC.

What I was attempting to explain was that it’s not essential to be able to communicate with children face to face in order to be able to write books that they love. Instead, in my blinding stress, I made the erroneous remark about my having no special affinity with children. I also said I disliked badly behaved children—the whingers and the moaners. I said: ”Don’t get me started…” But, hey, who in the entire world likes whining, moaning children? Only saints and angels, and who among us is an angel or a saint?

So, in the way of the media, here I am with my previously good reputation in tatters, being reported across the country as: “Children’s author Mem Fox hates children.”

I love children. No one has their well-being more at heart than I do. No one enjoys reading to children more than I do. I watch their reactions and feel as if I am falling into their big wide eyes in a kind of dream. They are hilarious and adorable and I’m on a total high when I am with them.

So please pardon my mistake. Understand how it was made. And now that you’ve read this far, please help me to repair my standing by standing up for a once-beloved author who was so tired she didn’t know what she was saying.

Yours most sincerely

Mem Fox