Jackie French

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Jackie French 2013

Jacqueline Anne "Jackie" French (born November 29, 1953 in Sydney ) is an Australian writer who is best known for her children's books. Her diary of a wombat has been translated into numerous languages.

Life

Jackie French spent the first three years of her life in Sydney. The family then moved to Brisbane . Jackie French, who suffers from dyslexia , learned to read from her mother before going to school. After her parents' relationship broke up and the marriage ended, she left home at the age of 15. Despite a scholarship to the University of Queensland , she worked for the anthropological museum during her studies. Jackie French was involved in the Springbok argument . In the early 1970s, she and her then partner moved to Canberra to be as far away from human civilization as possible. Many animals live on their estate in the Araluen Valley, including some wombats . Jackie French and her husband Bryan built the house and energy supply on this property, which has over 800 trees, by hand. Jackie French has a birth son and two stepdaughters.

She is an Australian Capital Territory Children's Ambassador and is involved in Club Cool , a project that teaches children to read, and the At Home with Books program . She also works to rescue and reintroduce injured animals and is the director of the Wombat Foundation .

Works

Jackie French writes books on organic horticulture and other subjects, but mostly children's books. Her work now comprises 132 books and has received more than 50 awards.

The first children's book she wrote was called the Rainstones . The publisher HarperCollins accepted the manuscript, although it went down in the publisher's annals as the dirtiest, worst-typed manuscript ever offered. This was due not only to French's dyslexia, but also to the havoc wombat "smudge" wreaked on the typewriter. Rainstones was nominated for the NSW Premier's Award and CBC Younger Reader's Book of the Year shortly after acceptance. From this time on, Jackie French wrote columns for a newspaper and a magazine regularly and from then on lived as a writer. She appeared several times on Bruce's Backyard .

The idea for the diary of a wombat , probably her best-known work, came about when she had to explain the noises in the background during a phone call: “Mothball”, one of the wombats on her property, dealt with the garbage can, destroyed the doormat and gnawed a hole in the back door. The diary in which these events are recorded has won numerous prizes and has been translated into many languages.

Hitler's daughter was named CBC Book of the Year for Younger Readers in 2000; it also won the Wow! Award and other prizes and has also been transformed into a stage play.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Jackie French, text on the genesis of the book, http://esvc000695.wic048u.server-web.com/wombat.html
personal data
SURNAME French, Jackie
ALTERNATIVE NAMES French, Jacqueline Anne
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Australian writer
DATE OF BIRTH November 29, 1953
PLACE OF BIRTH Sydney