As Australia’s 2024-2025 Children’s Laureate, Sally Rippin is passionate about supporting children in reading, especially those that may struggle. This is reflected in her theme as Laureate, which is ‘'All kids can be readers!'. Rippen is Australia’s highest-selling female author and has written over 100 books for children and young adults, including the Billy B Brown series, the Hey Jack! series and the School of Monsters series. She has also written a non-fiction book for parents titled, Wild Things: How We Learn To Read and What Can Happen If We Don't. It includes her insights into how we can help all kids find joy in reading and advocate for them in the schooling system. Inspired by her own journey in supporting her son with dyslexia and ADHD, it includes countless interviews with educational experts and conversations she had with neurodivergent adults.
Ahead of the Sydney Writers’ Festival, I had the opportunity to speak with her about her role as Laureate, her books, and the importance of supporting children as they learn to read and write. She also gives crucial advice for aspiring authors and has exciting news on her upcoming projects. Read on for more.
Date- Saturday, May 25, 2024
Location- Carriageworks
I always like to start with this question, but if you could describe yourself in three words, what three words would you pick?
Ah, okay three words. They have to be interesting ones now don’t they. Okay I’ll go for tenacious. Can I say day-dreamer? If I can hyphenate that one? Creative’s too boring…imaginative. No, that’s like daydreamer. Gosh, you’ve put me on the spot already! It’s a tough question to start with. So let’s say tenacious, daydreamer, and curious. I like that word.
I like that word too. So you've written over 100 books, which is very, very impressive. What first motivated you to become an author?
I think, for me, and I don't know if you can maybe relate to this, but I've always loved reading and writing. When I was young, I was lucky enough to find it quite easy. When I was a child, I used to make my own books. Write stories, staple bits of paper up into books and draw the pictures to go with them. But I never dreamed that being a writer was actually something you could do. I just thought books were this thing that appeared in the world fully made, and authors were just these magical creatures that were so far removed from my life.
But I used to make books for children that I babysat. So as a teenager, we’d often make books together, and I’d make books for kids that I babysat. I lived in China for quite a period of time.
And over that period of time, I learned to speak Mandarin. When I came back to Australia, I started tutoring Chinese-Australian kids, just helping them with their homework and helping them with their English. There was one little girl I really bonded with, a young girl called Fan-Fan. She would always complain to me about her parents wanting her to speak Chinese at home. And I’d try to say you know, it's probably for a good reason. So I decided to make a book for her, like I've done for these kids that I babysat. I was in my early 20s by then, I wrote it and started to do the drawings for it. Because I think when you read a book, and you can see yourself reflected in the book, it can help you see the world a little bit differently. And that was my intention for her.
But while I was making it, I showed it to a friend who was a librarian. And she said, you should think about getting that book published, I’ve got kids who would really love to read that and see themselves reflected. And she said, I know this publishing house that are particularly looking to open up their list to make it a bit more, they called it ‘multicultural’ back then, I guess you'd call it ‘diverse’ these days. Why don’t you just send it in and see if this is something they'd be interested in doing? I'm like, “oh, no, really? But I suppose so”. And so I did. I just sent him this handmade book. And it just happened to be on the right desk at the right time. They helped me turn it into a proper book. And that was how my very first book was published.
Since then, I've taught professional writing and editing at RMIT University for years. And it never happens that way. It was a complete fluke. I was in the right place at the right time, a publisher was willing to kind of show me the ropes. There's a lot more that goes into getting a book on a publisher's desk, illustrating a book, all of those things. I think I was really lucky that I had something that this publisher was looking for. I also think it was also really lucky that I hadn't known back then how hard it could be to get published, because that may have put me off. It was just that this is something I love doing, something I was always going to do. And it just found its place at the right time. That book won an Illustrators Award, which meant I was then asked to illustrate for other authors. And my career kind of took off.
So you illustrate as well!
That’s how I started out, actually. I studied traditional Chinese painting in China for three years. And I studied Art and Design here in Australia. So I was going to be a painter, but ended up moving into illustration when I had little kids, because you could do it on a dining table, unlike a big canvas with some really toxic oil paints.
I love that. Your books are super relatable for their target audience of young kids. The characters solve problems, they make friends. Why do you think it's important that kids read stories like that?
What I try to do, and I’ll often say this when I'm teaching adults about writing for children, is often we look at children from the outside in. And it can be hard for us to understand why they do the things that they do. Sometimes kids are very unpredictable, very emotional, all of these things.
But one of the things that I somehow never lost the ability to do is to go back into my childhood self. I can picture myself at four, five, six, seven years old [sic]. And not only can I see what I'm doing, what I was interested in, the kind of games that I was playing and the things that I was thinking, but more importantly I remember how I felt.
I think core to any authentic writing is to actually be in your work somewhere. So, if I'm writing something that's really trivial to an adult, like losing a tooth for the first time, they're like “wow, big deal, everyone loses their teeth!”. But for a child, that's a huge thing in their world and their life. So I can channel back into that feeling of what that feels like to do something for the first time. To see something for the first time. I think that's what children connect with, I think that they can tell that I get them. And not only do I get them, I respect them.
I think what they're experiencing is valid, important and huge for a child. I think it's easy as we get older to trivialise children's experiences, or minimise them. And I think the reason why kids, I expect, can relate to my work is because they can feel that there's authenticity there. That I get what it's like to be a kid. And all of my books start from that place: what does this feel like from the child's perspective?
Thank you. Can you tell me a bit more about your writing process? How do you develop characters and plots?
I would say they all come in different ways. For example, there was a series that I worked on a few years ago called “Polly and Buster”, and Polly is a witch who struggles to read. I don't name it in the book, but we understand that she's dyslexic. She messes up her spells and she finds it very hard to make friends, because nobody wants to be in a group with her, because she’s going to ruin the spells. Her best friend was a monster. And he's also ostracised from his schoolmates, because he feels things very keenly. So if he’s sad, he gets small and grey. If he’s angry, he gets big and pink.
The core of that story, and they come from different places, was my son was quite young, and we were hearing news reports about just terrible things that were happening between different races. And as most children do, he was finding it really hard to understand. Why do people treat each other differently? And, badly in that way? I think often the best way you can explain the complicated adult world to children is through allegory. So I didn't want to write a story about, say, you know, a white child and a person of colour and make it so obvious. I wanted to create two very different characters, and show how apartheid, essentially, can happen just through belief systems and misunderstandings. So that's why I chose a witch and a monster.
But at the same time, there's a lot of me in all my characters. When I end up with a completely fictitious character, like a witch or a monster, you know, they can be fun and inventive. But still, the core of how they feel is from me, or from my experience. My youngest son struggles to read because he's dyslexic and has ADHD. So a lot of watching how he would feel disconnected and disengaged from school, is what I put into the Polly character. The emotional upheaval was very much me. So it's a little bit of everything. That might be a news report I hear, or it might be children talking about themselves, it might be a conversation I had with someone, that can be the core. And then other things just start to come into that space and really build the story out.
So at the moment, I'm writing very short stories in the series called “School for Monsters”. So it's just one character, one story arc. With this series of stories, I'm really specifically trying to represent as many kinds of experiences with the world as possible. So, the most recent monster I wrote is visually impaired, but she has these incredible tentacles, and she's super fast. She comes into her own when all the lights go out. It's like, I've got this, I could save the day. What I'm also trying to show in everything I write is a sense of agency for children, because children so often feel like their worlds are not under their own control. So whichever character I write, a lot comes from me, a lot comes from what I see around me. But also, most importantly, I want children to see themselves reflected and to see that they do have power and agency. It's just not always evident at the time.
I love that answer! So, congratulations on being the Australian Children's Laureate for 2024 to 2025. Can you tell me a bit more about your role and what work you've done to support children's literacy?
Yeah, thanks so much, it’s such an honour. And it's a lot of work, mainly because I'm still trying to write books as well. I think it's come at a really good time for me. So a few years ago, I still had my younger son in school, and it would have been really hard to travel, and it requires a lot of travelling. But it also requires me to really think about, specifically, what I want to bring to this role. So each Laureate has a chance to choose their mission statement. Mine is, “All kids can be readers”. And the reason why I chose this is because, as I've mentioned my younger son to you, watching his struggles through school. What I really recognise is that if we don't have the opportunity to become readers or engage with stories, we don't just miss out on the joy of books, when there's an ability to express ourselves, we miss out on our ability to engage in learning, because so much is through speaking, language, reading.
We can quickly convince ourselves that we're unintelligent, and so I watched my son go through primary school, just surviving, because in primary school, you just have one teacher who will look out for your strengths. But once you get to high school, then you're on your own. Then his mental health went down, his self esteem went down. It was just devastating to watch, he’s a beautiful young man. And so I feel really passionately about ensuring that all children, provided they have the right support, they can thrive. A lot about what I've written about, since his experience, is the kids are actually fine. Kids are perfect as they are. But if we can adjust their environment, if we can adjust our expectations, then we can give them the framework they need to thrive.
So part of that mission statement is talking a lot. So, I will be talking a lot with kids over the next two years because I love doing that. But the kids are okay, who I really want to be talking to are the changemakers. So journalists like yourself, you know, people in media, but also politicians, teachers, librarians, people who have the ability to affect a child's world and their future, and actually, really destigmatize neurodivergence. Just destigmatize disability, learning difficulties, get us talking more about it, and how we, as the people responsible for these children growing up, can give them the support they need. So that they can come through this education system, that is very antiquated, with their self esteem intact. So I did write a book about this called “Wild Things”. And so that's kind of the core of my mission statement is about not just preaching to the converted, but also reaching out to other avenues that support children who may struggle to fit into more conventional, mainstream education systems.
You wrote Wild Things back in 2022 and you're also speaking on it later today. Can you tell me a bit more about what you and Cat Rodie have in store for attendees?
Thank you! I specifically asked to have Cat interview me, because when the book first came out, and I did a tour to promote the book, I was doing a lot of interviews in a lot of different places. I think it was Gleebooks, I noticed that they organised a journalist called Cat Rodie, and I knew nothing about her. Anyway, we set up in front of this group of adults to talk about the book. She started to talk to me about the book, and she just burst into tears. And I was a bit taken aback, because she's a professional journalist, but she told her story about when she was in primary school. She's dyslexic, quite dyslexic. When she expressed that she might hope to be a journalist one day, she was completely shut down by her teacher, you know, you will never amount to anything pretty much. But here she is, a journalist. Not only that, she's now started up her own company where she sets up at different schools all around Sydney, it’s called the “Press Gang”. And she has young kids interviewing famous authors, like we’re doing today! And writing them up into these newspaper journals that they publish. And she particularly goes into schools where there may be disengaged kids or kids who may struggle to learn, because she can see the difference it makes when you're young. You could just have somebody believe in you, and there's no reason why any neurodivergence, dyslexia, ADHD, autism, any of those things should hold anyone back.
You know, if they’re given the right support and people really believe in them. There's no reason they can't reach their potential. Because I had such a lovely interview with Cat all those years ago, and because she has lived experience, not just in dyslexia, but also ADHD and autism, I specifically asked her if she could interview me today. Because I feel it's all very well for me to talk about the experience of having supported a child through school as a neurodivergent person but even more importantly, we need to be listening to neurodivergent people talking about their lived experience. So I think both are valid ways of getting the support, being an ally but also listening to their own voices.
Very excited to go listen to that! So what are some of the biggest challenges you've had to face in your career so far? How did you overcome them?
So, it's very difficult in Australia in general to make a living from the arts. It's very difficult for creators of children's books to get media coverage. Often children's authors supplement their income by doing a lot of workshops in schools, and doing festivals and things like that. But it can be very hard to make a living just from a job writing or illustrating books.
So I have been, I wouldn't say lucky because while there is luck involved, but I think often it's looking at opportunity and putting yourself in uncomfortable places to find opportunity. So there is a certain amount of luck. You know, there's a certain amount of privilege, obviously, that I've been born into, which I know that I can fall back on. But I was lucky that I did have a series of books that did well enough that have allowed me just to write pretty much for living and do other things. So I think the main challenge, in general for creative types in Australia, is just making a living. And also, for many of us, we have to do the work to supplement our income, which means that we don't have time for writing, particularly if you’re raising families and that kind of thing. So that's a huge challenge.
I guess the way that I overcame that was I started to take myself more seriously, as my own advocate. And in a sense, I hate the word but like, almost like a businesswoman. And it's because I always see myself as an artist. But I do think I do have quite a strong entrepreneurial streak as well. So I think that's meant that I've been able to create a successful living as a writer, because I had to take myself seriously and not think “I don’t need to understand how tax works! I don’t need to understand how contracts work”, or, you know, “I don't want to do that, I just want to write beautiful stories and draw pictures”. And it was when I stopped telling myself that those are the things that I wasn't good at, and trained myself to be better at them, that I just got better at taking myself seriously. And I think that helps other people take me more seriously.
Interestingly, during this time, as the Laureate, I've hired a PA (personal assistant) for the first time, which is all very fancy. So she used to work as a publicist at the publishing house. And I met her years and years and years ago, because that's how we know each other. But because she's a little bit younger than me, what I find myself doing is role modelling, how I think women need to be more assertive, and take up more space, because she's just starting her own company. And she's got to, you know, be able to take herself seriously and be assertive, ask for what she needs. And I think, well, I'm older than her. So I can be a role model. And so I'm finding myself just by wanting to do the right thing by her, stepping out of that comfort zone of myself, instead of just thinking oh, you know, I'll just be sweet little Sally and just be happy with whatever I get, into actually being more assertive and demanding to be respected and asking for what I need. And when you do step into that space, people treat you that way too like, wow, who would have known! and it is tricky, because it doesn't mean you have to be an ogre or unlikable, it's just that you understand that you have a voice that needs to be listened to, like your male counterparts, or like people in different industries. And so yeah, that's a practice for me. And that's what I continue to work on.
What's been your proudest achievement to date?
My proudest achievement, I think, is my ability to bounce back. Going back to your first question about the words and maybe use resilience. Because I think that's probably the greatest skill that doesn't just get you through life as a creative, but gets you through life in general. So having a lot of setbacks, I've had a lot of hurdles and challenges, and challenging people in my life. But I think my capacity to still really see beauty in the world and really see the good in people is the thing that I'm most proud of. That even if people haven't acted in the best way, I can still try to view them with compassion, and to try and understand how it is that they got to that place. That's something I really like about myself and it makes me like the world to because really the world is only the way you see it. If you suspect that people are going to take advantage of you or you think that people are intrinsically bad, did you know in in many cases, that's what your experience is going to be. What am I most proud of? It's probably my capacity to see good.
That's such a nice answer. Do you have any upcoming projects you're excited about?
Yeah, I think as you can have this as a scoop, because it's not kind of publicly out there yet. But I have been talking to an animation company about potentially creating School of Monsters into an animated series. It's exciting. Quite a small company but they have made some really good quality stuff out there. And the thing that I like about working with a smaller local company is that I'd be very involved. So I'd be writing the scripts. And my illustrator would be working and making sure that all artwork is the way that we want it to be. And it's been a lifelong dream of mine. To have an animation. I love animation, good quality animation, like Hayao Miyazaki or something like that. And so if we can make this happen, and once again, it's even harder to get anything for animation up on the screen than it is to get a book published, so I'm not holding my breath. But if it happened, that would be just like, I’d die so happy.
That would be amazing. Are you reading anything at the moment?
That'll give me a chance to do a favour for my friend who I'm gonna go and see now, who is a wonderful children's author called Nova Weetman. She's just written a memoir that is exquisitely written, beautifully written. So we're very close. We had some severe lockdowns in Melbourne for very long periods of time. And Nova’s husband was dying during the lockdowns. While she could access medical care, but she couldn’t have people come in and nurse her husband, so she was doing a lot of it on her own with two teenage kids in the house. So we would walk quite regularly in the park, and kind of debrief about this really challenging situation. She's written this beautiful memoir about this experience and that sounds like it will be very heartbreaking and it is, but it's also warm and wise. There's humour in there. And in a way, it was like a love letter to Melbourne as well. She's very much somebody who really loves her neighbourhood, loves her community, and that comes out so beautifully in her work. She's a lovely, lovely writer and this is her first book for adults. It's a beautiful book. That's what I'm reading at the moment.
Exciting. Lovely. Thank you so much.
My conversation with Sally Rippin was extremely enlightening. Her insights and first-hand experiences remind us of how important it is to be able to access literacy. All children should be supported in learning to read and write. For those who need extra care and consideration, adjustments in their learning environments can make a world of difference. Through increased advocacy and awareness, and listening to neurodivergent voices, we can better support our youth in their literary education.
