Book 5 – The Lions follows a frightened but kind-hearted hero as she navigates a dangerous wilderness, forms unlikely alliances, and discovers that courage can exist even when fear never fully fades. What were some sources that informed this book’s development?

The Lions is the 5th book in a 10 book series, all written whilst I was travelling through Africa in a camper van with my husband. The lion’s story developed from a bit of a crazy event we experienced ourselves. We were on a guided walk in the Botswana Delta with a guide we later discovered was really quite inexperienced. We were aware there had been a lion kill that morning, as we had all heard it from our tent, and we stumbled upon a pride of lions just about to start their buffalo breakfast. It was a huge buffalo (particularly compared to us – we literally would have been a side of chips in comparison), and the lions had fought hard for it, The male roared so loudly at us that I think my heart stopped for a minute or two. We had a bit of a stare off for a minute, us and them, until both parties left – us walking backwards slowly, they walking in the long grass, quite quickly, in the opposite direction. It was that moment that inspired Book 5, particularly how the lions all scoff at Casper, a teeny weeny house cat, worried that they’d bother eating something that was smaller than the average hairball they cough up every now and then. 

What inspired Casper’s personality? Especially the choice to let her stay scared while still being brave?

I think Casper is all of us, brave and scared all the time. Anxious and confident. I mean, I know I’m anxious, and I know so many of my friends and family are too, but nobody ever really knows that, because we are confident too. We spend our life navigating new waters; whether it’s a new job or a new school or a new friend or a new town – how can we not be scared and anxious? But we have to do it, we have to get through, or wouldn’t we just be a shivering wreck all the time? Never leave home? I ran a film school for some years, back in Australia, and so many of my students were so, so anxious, and they thought they were the only one. But here they were, at a university, far from home, learning to become a filmmaker. I realised then that just about everyone is anxious, the most talented, the most beautiful, the most weird, wonderful, crazy – it doesn’t matter who we are, we’re all anxious and we should know that we are all anxious, and we are also all brave, and that it’s perfectly normal to be that way. 

Was there a particular animal character (or group of animals) you had the most fun writing, and why?

In this book I loved writing about the lion brothers. These huge, beautiful, confident (and a little arrogant) animals, kings of the jungle, who don’t have to do much but swagger around all day long while the lionesses hunt and care for the kids, and here they are, being yelled at by a tiny house cat (no bigger than a chip). But at the end of the day, the minute they hear their family is in danger, they jump up with no thought but to protect them, regardless of the danger. I enjoyed the brotherly love they had, the easy conversation between them, the confidence in their kingliness. 

In other books, one of my absolute favourites was the baby elephant, Bugle, in Book 2, The Elephants, because he reminded me of so many young boys (I have 4 younger brothers), and their obsession with things like poop and farting. I loved writing him because I found him funny and I probably was missing my brothers at the time! 

The story emphasizes cooperation across different creatures. Was that message something you planned from the start?

The entire series came about because I’ve always wondered if cats and dogs that get lost and then find their way home, sometimes hundreds of miles away, asked other animals for directions. And why wouldn’t they? And the world is so terribly chaotic at the moment, I just wanted to create a world where there is peace and kindness and no hatred for someone who is not like you. I know that my little Casperverse is all love and cooperation and gentleness in a harsh world, and maybe it’s unrealistic, but I find it peaceful and I want to live there, and I hope that when kids are reading my books they ‘live’ there too, if only for the few hours it takes to read. Maybe this behaviour, this cooperation can be as learned as bigotry is, and maybe, in the end, enough books like this will win the battle for the next generation so that it isn’t just wishful thinking anymore.  

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