About Me

 I have always loved mermaids since I was a child, collecting stories and figurines. Growing up with my twin sister helped shape who I am today. We were left to our own devices and would feed off each other’s imaginations. We spent hours and hours hunting for fairies in our wild back garden which had blackberry bushes and an orchard. We would hide in the bushes leaving fairy traps and offerings, hoping we would catch one. We loved stories! I still rmemebr the first book I would read without help which was Winnie the pooh. I still have it on my book shelf. To me, books were little treasures of infinite travel opportunities. I would read for hours and hours. Often getting lost in stories. I was described as always daydreaming and my sister an dI would make up stories for each other. The person who shaped my imagination, besides my twin, was my Grandad. My lovely Grandad absolutely indulged my thirst for story telling and would sit for hours and hours telling me tales of his childhood and his time in the army. He was a rubbish soldier by his own admission and often crashed the vehicles in the woods in Germany. He had such humour and talent in his story telling and I wanted to capture his personality in my book through the character of Grandad. 

Growing up with the boat was a huge inspiration for my imagination. We would have our life in the vast garden and then be taken to the ocean for weeks on end and left to our own devices. My twin and I would then turn our attention to sea monsters, mermaids, pirates and smugglers! We would lie in our cabin on the boat with our faces against the porthole late at night when our parents were asleep and tell tales of pirates creeping under the boat and mermaids listening to us as we talked. The gruesome and mysterious world below the waves fascinated me. I would sit for hours just watching seaweed move, and small fish meander through their day. We were allowed access to a small motorised dinghy and would buzz around on the marina from dusk until dawn throughout the summer holidays. We would be gone for hours and hours with a little packed lunch and our life jackets. Off we went, legs dangling, bleached salty hair and bronzed skin- hunting for evidence of pirates or smugglers. 

I was very lucky to have adults in my life who allowed me to daydream and be me. Once I was an adult and I went travelling both for my job and for pleasure I fell in love. To this day and for the rest of my life I will be head over heels in love with travel and reading. After I became a teacher, I realised that there are a lack of traditional tales and a lack of stories which really capture a variety of cultures in an imaginative way. I wanted to show these children the wonders of the ocean, even if they couldn’t access it themselves. I wanted to share the wonders I had experienced as a child and that is where the idea started to form. As an older child my parents bought the house in Cornwall and all the immense magical of the wild beaches, roaring oceans and jagged landscapes filtered through me and I felt a wonder which I knew I had to write down on paper. The old tales and legends of the past, of life lived so close to the ocean needed to be explored once again and unearthed. The tales of people who had trodden on those jagged paths needed a new voice. 

Once I started working as a primary school teacher, I realised that exposure to traditional tales and folklore is very limited, despite it being on the curriculum throughout primary key stages. It is a marginalised and often undervalued/ taught niche in the reading curriculum. The art of storytelling is often lost. I found that traditional tales were available but tended to be fairy stories and Greek mythology. Both of these genres hold value but I wanted something a little more endemic to Britain and something which may spark an interest about the legacy on our own shores. There are magical tales which are just as exciting as Greek mythology from our own past. I was inspired by the story of Cressida Cowell who is the author of How To Train Your Dragon who based her tale on folklore from the Vikings in Scotland. Books like hers are a gem when teaching history through novels/ literature in primary schools as they are limited. The curriculum approach/ delivery is changing and has changed therefore books need to be available for children who want to explore and expand their horizons without leaving their classroom or home. There needs to be a greater combination of texts and no one size fits all approach, this is why I have included a recipe, a song and a poem in my book which all belong to the region of Cornwall- alongside the injection of historical myth. I tried to find child friendly Cornish myths and legends in order to deliver this to my class in a series of folklore lessons but could find nothing available- the droll tellers of Cornwall were storytellers who would roam the west country telling stories for bed and food. This is incredible! Yet no information can be found. I found myself writing my own content and thought there needs to be more done here so the children can have a quality text which is informative and imaginative. 

 Have you ever looked out across the ocean and wondered what secrets lie beneath the waves? Are you brave enough to find out? 

Isla is a girl with a huge imagination, who loves listening to her grandad’s amazing stories of his childhood in wild and rugged Cornwall. But when Isla’s dad goes missing on a diving trip in Mexico, Isla’s world is turned upside down. How did he vanish? Will her family ever see him again? Grieving his loss, and needing a change of scenery from busy London, Isla, her mum and her grandad decide to move back to Cornwall, to the family farmhouse in the tiny village of Zennor.

 Isla misses her dad, and is not used to country life, but when she discovers a magical secret locked away in an old book, Isla’s life takes another unexpected turn, as she discovers that the sea holds more adventures than she could ever have imagined. 

Based on the ancient Cornish folktale The Mermaid of Zennor, this delightful tale takes you on an incredible journey of curiosity, friendship, mystery and magic. Are you ready to dive in?