Grannysaurus Rex

 The Back Story

Grannysaurus Rex was my first kids book manuscript to be accepted as a book. It was contracted by Omnibus (Scholastic) way back in 2002 and came out in 2004. I wrote The Thirsty Flowers even earlier, in 1999, but it didn’t come out until 2006. Scholastic published a ‘back story’ for the book as Behind the Book Teachers Notes, which I’ll reprint here.

Grannysaurus Rex is your first picture book. What made you want to write for kids?

I’ve always loved kids books. I remember the books I loved as a kid, and I like the idea that someone in the future might think of my books in the same way. I have a huge love of and respect for Dr Zeus. My first attempt at writing for kids was a long poem about thirsty flowers that was rejected by a lot of publishers.

How did you come up with the idea of a story about sugar rampages and nightmares, dinosaurs and grannies?

I thought of the idea one day while I was doing the dishes. I was thinking about how my mum gets migraines and turns into a monster. It made me think of the phrase ‘My Grannysaurus Rex’. I realised straight away that the concept was too difficult for kids as they don’t really know what a migraine is. I still liked the idea because it pulled together the idea of grannies and kids who like dinosaurs. Instead of a migraine, the story came to be about sugar nightmares – kids definitely understand lollies.

Lots of writers say that writing a picture book looks easy, but it is hard to boil a story down to such a few words and to leave lots of room for the illustrator to help tell it as well. How did you find writing a picture book?

My first version of Grannysaurus Rex was 1500 words long. I got a letter from Omnibus saying that they liked the story and they could see it as a picture book, but it would need some changes. I followed the publisher’s directions. I cut the story back from 1500 words to 500, and got rid of a character – a mum who kept giving warnings about the bad things lollies could do to your teeth and so on. This version was accepted.

I was delighted as I saw the illustrations that David was doing. I had to make some more changes as he progressed. Sometimes the story had to be changed or words had to be cut.The final version of the story is only about 400 words long. As a first-time writer for kids, I needed guidance from the editor as to what suited the reader’s age group and what wasn’t needed because the pictures told the story. Occasionally I found these editing decisions tough, because sometimes I had to cut lines that as a writer I was proud of, or thought were funny. I found it hard to let go of my idea of Granny’s transition into Grannysaurus being bold and dramatic, say a double-page spread. It was thought that the transition should be shown over three smaller panels, to soften it and make it less scary for little kids. I could see that the reason was good, but the idea was still hard to let go of.