‘Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take but by the number of moments that take our breath away.’ (Anonymous)

Imagine, if you will, being an Australian author of children’s books and hearing that Leo and Diane Dillon, the royal couple of American children’s illustration, have agreed to paint the pictures in your latest book. It takes your breath away.

Imagine, many years after later, seeing for the first time your words and the Dillons’ pictures in exquisite harmony, with their names and yours on the front cover. It takes your breath away.

Imagine giving the book to a good friend while you’re out having coffee, and watching her read it and weep. It takes your breath away.

The book arrives in bookstores across Australia very soon, in the final days of September. It’s called The Goblin and the Empty Chair. I wanted to see if I could write a fairytale, to be Hans Christian Andersen for a moment, or one of the Brothers Grimm, to enchant older children with a dark tale of fear and rejection, typical of the fairy story genre, which ends with love and acceptance and everyone living happily ever after. On my website, in the ‘SEE AND HEAR MEM section, under: Hear Mem Read Aloud, you can find my YouTube rendition of the Goblin story. I’ll stand back and imagine watching you watching me, judging how successful I’ve been. Or not, as the case may be. Needless to say I hope it takes your breath away!

The Goblin received this starred review in the September 1, 2009 issue of Kirkus Reviews in the USA: THE GOBLIN AND THE EMPTY CHAIR
Written by Mem Fox Illustrated by Leo and Diane Dillon
(Beach Lane Books; ISBN 9781416985853; September 2009)

An unspecified medieval setting, an outwardly grotesque creature who is tender and compassionate, sad humans beset by difficulties, three tasks performed by the hero and a moral about looking beyond appearances; all of these are familiar elements in the fairy-tale tradition. Fox is a master at crafting tales that linger in memory over time, gently adding to the canon of classics. Her text is full of imagery and repeats several lovely phrases, with the theme of gentle kindness permeating the carefully chosen language. The Dillons’ signature style raises the level of achievement even higher. Each page is framed in three parts with the text at bottom, a central watercolor illustration of a key event and its concomitant strong emotion and a border strip depicting actions that immediately precede the text. Gargoyles mirroring the emotions of the characters peek from behind each frame. The family’s despair is never explained, but there is a pictorial clue that young readers will understand. A perfect combination of words and images. (Picture book. 6-9)

There was more to take my breath away last week. I discovered by accident that Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes is on top of Oprah’s current list of best books for ages 0-2. The roar of hoorays and hurrahs from our house could be heard all the way down the street! Fortunately we know all our neighbours and love them dearly. One of them is 80 and still riding a bike for 30 kms a day. He puts the rest of us to shame. Another bought about 60 of my books yesterday (in preparation for the Christmases of her entire family) and felt terrible about asking me to sign them. For heaven’s sake!! I LOVE our neighbours and LOVE signing books for them. Another neighbour mows the front strip of our lawn, the one that everyone can see as they wander down the street. Another leaves a cake every so often. It’s like living in a little village where everyone looks out for everyone else, especially in times of illness and abject woe, all of which we have suffered over the years. This neighbourliness is a rarity, I’d say, in 2009. We’re so lucky. I never take ‘luck’ for granted. What goes around come around. Kindness breeds kindness and makes us happy.

I’m loving the slow life. I look back now on the fast-paced idiocy of my hectic travel: 107 trips to the USA, on and off planes every second day, and wonder how I crammed it all in without collapsing. And then I remember that I DID collapse, often, from asthma, stress and exhaustion. I would phone my angel husband Malcolm from America and cry my eyes out, (this was even in the last three years, after I was over 60!) because I was so tired and occasionally even homesick.

I’m still on the go in Australia and still wildly fired up about literacy and the reasons why the first five years of a child’s life are so important to development in every sphere: scholastic, social and physical. But I’m choosing events more carefully and spacing them out more sensibly. A few weeks ago I spoke twice at a wonderful conference in Sydney. It had taken me three weeks to write one presentation and on the way to the airport I said to Malcolm, ‘You know, I’m over this. I’m truly OVER all this work at my age.’ I felt grumpy about getting on a plane yet again, having to be away from home instead of pottering around the garden in spring. Then I found myself at the conference speaking with passion about the teaching of reading and of course I came home on a total high! ‘Don’t tell me,’ said Malcolm. ‘You LOVED it.’ I did. I doubt, in spite of my best intentions, that I’ll ever be able to retire completely, especially as too many people make learning to read so difficult when it should be one of the easiest and most joyful tasks in the world. I need to be out there.

And of course I’ll go on writing, if and when an idea wafts over me. I wrote the first draft of a new book (it could become my first lift-the-flap book) about four weeks ago while I was lying on a couch watching the wind in the trees outside our sitting room window. Relaxation is the best route to creativity. So! Expect THOUSANDS more books before I die. Well, one or two at least…

Warmest wishes, Mem Fox