Indie Roo Is Now A Mother Too! is a heartwarming children’s book about family, safety, and growing up in the Australian wilderness. What inspired you to turn the real kangaroos visiting your backyard into characters in the Roo Series?

My mother read to me every night before bed until I was around seven. To this day, I can’t see a deer without thinking of Bambi, or a horse without thinking of Black Beauty. A mouse brings to mind Stuart Little, and yes, even spiders make me think of magnificent Charlotte of Charlotte’s Web. Those books instilled in me my earliest feelings of connection with wildlife.

Fifty years later, while wandering around our property in Australia with the two orphaned kangaroos I was raising (Max and Indie), I was saddened to have learned how little most people really know about these iconic Aussies. Watching them bounce at my heels, weaving through the bush and over rocks, I found myself thinking back to those stories that had touched me when I was a child. 

I was now so privileged to have experienced first-hand their individually unique personalities, their love for one another, their almost human behavioural and emotional qualities.

It struck me that most people never get the chance to know kangaroos this way. 

So, I began to wonder if I could do for kangaroos what those childhood books did for me.

How did Indie’s journey into motherhood shape the message you wanted young readers to take from this story?

Watching Indie raise Charlie confirmed that kangaroos are indeed sentient beings. The way they care for and raise their children is actually very similar to ours. My hope is that children will see themselves in Charlie and see their parents in Indie. That moment of pride that Indie feels at the end of the story is a universal feeling for every mother, and I want kids to know that too. By relating to Charlie, my hope is that empathy and curiosity for kangaroos and other wildlife will naturally follow.

But this story isn’t only about Charlie growing up; it’s also about Indie’s next chapter in life. She is a first-time mother, instinctively figuring it out. She wants to raise her boy to be confident, capable, and independent. So, my hope is that parents too will connect with this book while learning a bit about kangaroos.

Charlie’s separation from Indie is an important moment in the book. What did you hope children would learn from that scene?

Indie returned home almost every day after Charlie was born, sometimes spending just an hour or two napping on our patio or veranda, and sometimes most of the day. When Charlie was one year old, while Indie was sleeping, he went off into the bush exploring with Darcy, an 18-month-old kangaroo that was on soft release at my property.

I was there when Indie woke up and started panicking that Charlie had disappeared. I felt so helpless as she hopped around looking for him, returning to me over and over again hoping I could tell her where he went. Eventually, she came back to the bed where she had last been with him and she waited. 

An hour later, Charlie came bouncing down the hill, looking so proud of himself. It was his first big excursion on his own. As soon as Indie could sense he was on his way home, she closed her eyes and pretended she was still sleeping and hadn’t been worried at all. It was the cutest thing. A few minutes later, she got up and showered him with kisses and cuddles.

I am fascinated with how many kangaroo behaviours are so similar to our own. When I was a young girl and we were out, my parents always said, “If we get separated for any reason, you come back to this very spot and I will do the same”. It worked. Having a plan gave me confidence as I was growing up, and provided my parents with a sense of security as well.

This section of the story also gave me the opportunity to introduce other wildlife of the area. While these books are lyrical in nature, they were crafted to be useful in school classrooms. The Red Rabbit Books website has a downloadable guide for both home and school educators to use along with behind the books stories, photos and videos of the real-life happenings that informed each page.

The watercolor illustrations capture so much beauty in the Australian landscape. How closely did you work with the illustrator to bring that world to life?

I am the illustrator as well as the author of the Red Rabbit Books Roo Series. The third book is scheduled for release around Easter 2027. When my husband and I relocated to NSW, Australia, in 2020, I obtained a license to care for local wildlife. 

While raising orphaned eastern grey kangaroo joeys, I started adjusting my watercolour painting style to better suit the children’s books I now wanted to write. By then, I had already been raising funds for local wildlife sanctuaries as a wildlife conservation artist for a few years.

My thousands of videos and photographs of these glorious creatures have certainly come in handy.

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