It was incredibly difficult for us to write the children’s book. I chose to write Possum Magic. In fact, it wasn’t called Possum Magic; it was called Hush, the Invisible Mouse. And it was a story about a mouse whose grandmother was magic and had made the mouse invisible because — and this wasn’t in the text, but it was in my head that the parents of this mouse had been killed by a cat.
So the grandmother had made this little mouse invisible so that it was safe from cats. And then one day, the mouse says, “I’d like to know what I look like.” “Can you make me visible again, please?” And by this time, the grandma’s so old she can’t remember how to do it. And they’re living in England
and this was all because my husband was English and we were living in Australia and I wanted him to settle and feel happy as an Australian.
So this little mouse and its grandmother
they knew it was food that would make them visible again — make the child visible — and they ate snails in France and spaghetti in Italy and so on.
And they traveled the world. Nothing worked until they got to Australia when they ate three iconic Australian foods and a vegemite sandwich, a Pavlova and lemingtons, or I just three foods that I won’t explain. My professor said it was fantastic. She loved it.
It was four and a half pages. The final draft which was published was a page and a quarter. It was far too long for a picture book. It was rejected nine times over five years. And the final publisher who took it, the 10th publisher who took it said, “You know, there’s a story here somewhere. And we can see that there’s a story and we can see what the story is, but it needs to be cut by two-thirds and could you make it only an Australian story and could you not have mice because they’re in plague proportions in children’s literature?”
So I said, “Fine.” And we had possums on our roof and they’re prettier possums than your possums in America. They’re absolutely adorable. Much softer fur and very, very cute. So I wrote the story over the weekend, rewrote it. They said, “Make it lyrical,” you know, “and come back on Monday.”
