Our Australian Girl at ALEA

I am a massive fan of Penguin’s Our Australian Girl series. I’ve reviewed it on my own blog, and also wrote about the launch and today I was estatic to be in a session listening to the background with the publisher Jane Godwin and two of the authors, Sofie Laguna and Alison Lloyd.

Jane Godwin, publisher of the books, said, ‘I wanted to offer girls a more memorable reading experience’ and that she ‘wants young readers to absolutely fall in love with these characters.’

Jane said that she feels the books come at the right time with all the talk about History in the curriculum.

Sofie Laguna said that, ‘The thing that you need to do when you’re the person coming up with the character is be inside the character. Perhaps a character is defined by their struggle; that creates who they are. I had to get inside Grace as soon as I could. I heard her voice in my head, with the cockney accent, it’s going to sound cliche but I had to feel and understand her struggle and pain.’

Jane said, ‘It’s in the face of conflict and struggle that we prove who we really are.’

There are certain things that are timeless (manitcuplive girls from Letty)

Alison Lloyd said that, ‘Relationships, friendships, acceptance’ – she did research at schools and friends with kids and worked out what mattered to younger girls.

‘I wanted her to be true to the times’ as Alison has read historical fiction she felt unbelievable.

Alison talked about researching the history. She went to libraries and spoke to people and travelled.

‘It was just a history of sex slavery!’ Jane said that Sofie told her. Due to the readership age, Sofie said she couldn’t include most of those details yet couldn’t entirely wipe that history either.

Sofie said that she researched heavily too. Although she didn’t make it to London, she read widely and spoke about how bleak it was in London in that era.

She touched on writing about Aborigines and how there is always talk about non-Indigenous people writing about them.

They talked tight deadlines and word counts (most are around 15,000 and the largest started at 22,000 which was whittled down!).

Sofie said it was, ‘Ultimately a very positive writing experience.’

Jane said that the sixteenth book was just sent to the printer!

An interesting note that Jane said that was from the Aussie Bites and Nibbles that the titles that sell the best are the overly girly and overly boyish rather than the more gender neutral.

‘Companion series for boys’ Jane explains, are in the works. She says it’s in very early stages, won’t be linked novels like OAG but will be the same eras so teachers can use both series in the classrooms.

From conception of idea to published was two and a half years, the actual writing was about twelve months.

It was a fantastic sessions and personally I could have sat there all day and listened!