Featured Interview With Author Ona Kingdon
Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
I was born in the UK and, as a young child, quickly discovered that by drawing and writing stories about things I saw, I could better appreciate the world around me: indeed, there was hardly ever a time when I didn’t have pencils or crayons to hand; They became my camera to the world.
I also grew up in the world of the theatre, so drama, dance, music and the visual arts played a prominent part in my childhood: This also helped shape me into the artist and author I am now as I love to tell stories through my art and evoke emotion through my writing.
When I left school, I attended university and trained as a Teacher of the Deaf. As a teacher, I continued to use the arts in all their forms; If there was a word or phrase a child did not understand, I would draw a picture, mime an emotion, or act out a story to help me to help them understand.
Interestingly, it was the arts that gave our family the inspiration to move to Canada. When my children were young, there were a group of animators in Bristol, UK that my children loved called 'Creature Comforts'. One of their animations was of a lion in a zoo who was fed up with living in a small, damp zoo enclosure. He wanted "to live in a big country where it didn’t rain all the time." My son loved this phrase and would repeat it every time it rained and, being a small island surrounded by water, it rained a LOT. It got us thinking though, and 3 years later, we moved to Canada. It was such a great place for the children to grow up in, and a wonderfully inspiring place for me creatively.
At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
One of my earliest memories is of sitting beside my grandmother with a book in hand, asking her to read it to me. Her renditions would bring the pictures and words to life in my mind. I can still hear her voice telling me the stories when I see my favourite childhood books. We would also play story games together. We would choose 3 objects that we could see, and then build a magical story about them. She would begin and then, when she tapped my shoulder I would carry on. So in essence: I was writing stories long before I could put words onto paper. Once we finished the story together, she would give me some paper and pencils and I would illustrate it.
Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
A good book, like a beautiful piece of art, is something that captivates us and appeals on many levels regardless of genre. Initially, you may get caught up in the storyline, but something stops you and draws you back. It may be a question the author posed or an illustration that encourages you to look at the story with new insight and so you read it again. Then you discover other nuances in the piece of work that make you question or want to find out even more. It is this, rather than a specific genre or author, that I am drawn to when reading books.
Tell us a little about your latest book?
My new book ‘The Paper Butterfly’ takes the reader on a journey of discovery through the eyes of the paper butterfly. Although fiction, it is based on the true life cycle of a super monarch butterfly.
From the initial idea to the release date, it has been almost exactly three years writing and illustrating it. I began with a plan/ a storyboard and then wrote chapter by chapter. The story was created indoors, but my writing chair looks out onto my garden where I could see the butterflies fluttering around. Now illustrating, that was another story. Many paintings happened in my garden. I had the monarch caterpillars crawling across me in search of their next juicy morsel or butterflies fluttering around me as I painted them. The migration images that appear in the second half of the book were painted over our long Canadian winter and were created indoors. My paintbrush and I went on a grand adventure that winter. Over the last year, I have been editing, re-editing, proofreading, photographing and scanning all eighty-plus illustrations, and laying out the book.
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