Author Maria Gill's focus is on encouraging children through reading.
Author Maria Gill's focus is on encouraging children through reading.
Prolific children’s author and Margaret Mahy Medal winner Maria Gill talks to Craig Sisterson about why she loves showcasing nature, science, and real-life Kiwi heroes
The story of our country’s most world-renowned scientist isn’t one of winning the Nobel Prize, splitting the atom, or becoming the father of nuclear physics– though Ernest Rutherford achieved all those things and more. Instead, his is really a tale of persistence, says Maria Gill.
“It’s about not giving up, because three times he fails his scholarships,” says Gill, who’s written an exciting new picture book about the man on our $100 note, Ernest Rutherford: Just an Ordinary Boy. “I think that message about not giving up is something all kids want to hear. Trying to find how a book can be empowering to kids is something I’ll always try to do. That’s why I really enjoyed writing this book, to encourage kids not to give up on their dreams.”
The tale of a young boy who grew up in rural areas in the top of the South Island in the late 19th century and now lies alongside the likes of Charles Darwin and Sir Isaac Newton in Westminster Abbey, following a lifetime of scientific discovery, is the latest in a terrific string of children’s non-fiction Gill has produced, showcasing nature, science and Kiwi heroes.
Like Rutherford, she’s following her childhood dream … after it was left to marinate for a while.
Gill recalls being about 12 years old. Her family was moving to Australia for a stint that’d include living in a caravan for a few years (an experience that helped spark her adventurous spirit). A friend asked Gill to write in a friendship book, revealing what she wanted to be in the future.
“I’d never thought about it before, but I wrote down, ‘I want to be an author one day.’ I was a book nerd, but I was quite surprised by writing that down. But it wasn’t until I had children of my own and I was in my late 30s and reading lots of picture books that I thought, ‘I’ve got to put this dream into practice.’”
Gill was an intermediate teacher before her children were born but when her daughter was 4 she began taking online writing courses. The first things she got published were two stories, Cat Attack and Operation Dog in a 2004 anthology, Claws and Jaws, edited by Barbara Else. While Gill returned to relief teaching for a while, she quickly realised where her true passion lay.
“I’m quite an intense person with writing, and having to go out relief teaching was like, ‘Is this really what I want to be doing?’” she says. “I mean, I love teaching, but this is my passion, the writing, and I love going out and talking about books and encouraging children to read.”
The idea for Gill’s first book, Bird’s-Eye View, came to her while she was driving.
“I looked up and saw a hawk and thought, ‘Oh, I wonder what they can see.’ It starts off with a question like that sometimes. That first book had photography and was about what birds actually see, how wide is their vision? Like some birds, it’s almost like they’ve got a filter on and can see
things we can’t pick up because they’re flying at such a great height. They need to be able to see berries so they fluoresce for them, and things like a falcon hawk can see over a kilometre away.”
Gill had a book published nearly every year from then. Multiple books some years. And while she’d thought she was going to be a fiction writer, she ended up writing creative non-fiction.
“Having been a teacher I knew there were subjects I could write about, and I wanted books that kids would be entertained by, that would give them a love of nature or a curiosity about science.”
Gill has published dozens of books, including The Call of the Kokako, Toroa’s Journey, and Kate Sheppard: Leading the way for women. Many of her titles have been honoured as Storylines Notable Books. Her book New Zealand’s Hall of Fame: 50 Remarkable Kiwis, illustrated by Bruce Potter, was sparked by a dream and went on to win the Children’s Choice Award in the non-fiction category of the 2012 NZ Post Children’s Book Awards.
“I woke up and thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be fantastic to write a book about famous people back from when they were kids,’ when they had a dream, and how they became an All Black or doctor or whatever,” says Gill. “That would be an inspiring book for kids, and was the key message I was getting across when I was doing school visits. If you have a dream, believe in it, and don’t give up on it. It was a really empowering message. Kids were excited about those sorts of books.”
Gill’s book Anzac Heroes, illustrated by Marco Ivancic, won the Elsie Locke Award and the Supreme Book of the Year prize at the 2016 New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults. In 2020, Gill was honoured with the Margaret Mahy Medal for “lifetime achievement and an outstanding contribution to New Zealand publishing for children and young adults”.
While she first thought she’d be a fiction writer, now Gill really loves creative non-fiction.
“It brings kids into the story, they feel like they’re there,” she says. “I either want kids to feel like they’re being part of the adventure, and how that person was really brave, or it’s a non-fiction book with lots of interesting elements that will entertain them and they’ll learn something or really care about nature and want to help people. That’s what’s been driving me all these years.”
Ernest Rutherford: Just an Ordinary Boy, by Maria Gill
Ernest Rutherford: Just an Ordinary Boy by Maria Gill, illustrated by Alistair Hughes (Upstart Press, $25), is out now.
