Hi. My name is Emily Gravett. I’m an author and an illustrator and I come from Brighton in England, which is quite near London, but on the south coast where we have great weather and peppy beaches. And I’ve written and illustrated a number of books. My first book was called Wolves and it was about a rabbit that went to the library and borrowed a book about wolves and got a bit more than he bargained for.
And I’ve also written a book called Orange Pear, Apple Bear, which is a play on words and for younger children, and a book called Monkey and Me, which is a sort of sing-along — not sing-along, shout-along book.
When books are published in England, obviously when they come over to America, they have to be slightly different because even though we both speak in the same language, there’s lots and lots of words that are really different. I’ve been here this week and I’ve learned loads and loads of words that I’ve never heard before.
I realized I’ve been saying some quite rude words without meaning to. But one example is at the end of Monkey and Me in the English version, the little girl, she goes home for tea which is not just a cup of tea, but it means a meal that we have at the end of the day. But in America, here in the U.S., I don’t think that maybe you understand what that means. So it ends with the girl going to sleep and lots of, I’m going to say the English word, “zeds” which you say “zzz.”