My second book, Letter to a Weta,  also reflects my interest in NZ’s natural environment and its smaller creatures. I wanted children to know about our familiar but little understood weta, and hope the rhyme and fun engages them in learning more.

It took many attempts before I had the angle I wanted, and then the whole story fell into place. Matt Kambic (http://www.mdkambic.com/), the clever illustrator of Letter to a Weta, and I, sent emails and samples of work back and forth with ideas and corrections for nearly year – we both had periods overseas –  before we were both happy and ready to send it off to the printer.

Here is what the story is about.

A girl has her leg in plaster and is bored, bored, bored. So she does something a little crazy – as you do when you are bored: she writes a letter to a weta. To her and her mother’s amazement, the weta writes back. The weta does her best with limited resources from the bush,

The paper looked faded, and tatty and smeary.
Her ink was the juice of the karaka berry.

She also wants to know where a human’s feelers are,

Where are your feelers? I always have two.
They help to know, what’s what, and who’s who.

This book would suit a 3-8 year olds, especially if the parent is into encouraging a love of nature