I noticed that more and more political pronouncements were being made about these asylum seekers, the intent being to deny that these were actually people-human beings. I didn’t know much about this world but I started to look more closely at the television and newspaper reports. Then I went one step further and started entering an imaginative world in which I tried to put myself in their place. First I began to notice there were plenty of children on these boats and like any other parent, I wondered what it must be like to take your family on this sort of journey.
MG: It really started in late 2001 when almost every night on television we started to see asylum-seeker boats and that developed into the “children overboard” controversy. I can’t explain why but when you find it, you know. Not only do I have an endless stream of stories but this sort of writing feels right for me. This struck a powerful chord and I realised there was a part of me that had been looking for the chance to express itself through the voice of 11-year-olds. The television films were the first things I’d written that were my own stories and the first time I’d written stories where the main characters were about 11 years old. MG: Apart from the obvious genre considerations on the nature of the story and the way one writes, the most important difference for me is personal. KT: What’s the difference between writing for children and adults? So I wrote an original novel and it took off from there. In fact, it seemed to be the type of writing I’d been looking for. A publisher asked me to turn these into books so I thought I’d give it a go and enjoyed it very much.
Generally I wrote for adults but then authored a couple of family movies- The Other Facts of Life and Second Childhood -for the Australian Children Television Foundation. I produced a wide range of material, mostly television comedy, including the Norman Gunstan Show, for a few years.
Morris Gleitzman: I was a freelance writer for 10 or 12 years. Kaye Tucker: Could you explain how you became an author of children’s books? He has also co-written two successful novels-Wicked! and Deadly! -in collaboration with Paul Jennings. Some of his best- known books include: Two Weeks with the Queen, Misery Guts, Worry Warts, Puppy Fat, Blabber Mouth, Sticky Beak, Belly Flop, Water Wings, Bumface, Gift of the Gab, Toad Rage, Adults Only and Toad Heaven.
Morris Gleitzman, author of Boy Overboard, a children’s novel based on a fictional account of the journey of Afghan child refugees, spoke with Kaye Tucker last month about his work.Ī well-known prize winning writer of children’s literature, Gleitzman was in born in England in 1953 and immigrated to Australia in 1969.
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