Eirlys Hunter and Kirsten Slade
Meet author Eirlys Hunter and illustrator Kirsten Slade!
h3. Eirlys Hunter My mother used to read books and tell stories to me and my sister. Our father preferred poetry and fed us on Edward Lear, Lewis Carroll, AA Milne etc, and I also got poems and stories from the radio at 1.45 every afternoon. Listen with Mother. I became a crazy-keen reader and I was lucky enough to have a children’s library a kilometre away from my house. I used to walk there every Saturday and sit in a quiet corner reading. I often went midweek as well, to change my six books, and I’d read as I walked home. When I was twelve I got glasses, and the real world came into focus for the first time. I liked being able to see the expressions on people’s faces and distant views, but I missed being able to live entirely in my head. I try to write the kind of stories I used to like to read when I was young, and that my children loved to read and have read to them. Stories with interesting characters who do surprising things. Stories that you have to keep reading—just one more chapter. Stories which you can live inside because the place they’re set becomes more real than the place you’re reading the book.
h3. Kirsten Slade Kirsten is an illustrator and cartoonist based in Wellington, New Zealand. The Mapmaker’s Race is the first children’s book she has illustrated.
