Tasmanian author, Ann Morgan, shares her love of writing, verse, Tasmania and having fun as she introduces science and scientific concepts to young children through her fascinating and gloriously illustrated picture books.
My writing career began by writing poetry for adults and fiction for children in the late 1990s. By the early 2000s, publishers were encouraging me to write funny stories for reluctant readers. My Captain Clawbeak series of illustrated junior novels (Penguin Random House, illustrator, Wayne Harris), is the most successful of these comic adventures for early readers.
Years later, I remembered how, in late primary and early secondary school, my favourite Christmas or birthday presents were, thanks to my science-loving mum, a toy microscope and a chemistry set. So during the covid pandemic, I tried writing science-based picture books for kids.
The Way of the Weedy Seadragon, illustrated by Lois Bury, CSIRO Publishing, (2021)
My first picture book with CSIRO Publishing was inspired by a poem I had written, which had won a Fellowship of Tasmanian Writers award for nature poetry. I wrote Weedy Seadancers while working for the National Oceans Office, after taking my children snorkeling at the underwater discovery trail at Tinderbox. I am a genre-hopping writer after all!
Informed by her background in nursing, talented Tasmanian illustrator, Lois Bury, researched the biology of these weird and wonderful relatives of seahorses, and added gentle touches of quirkiness to the illlustrations, in a way that enhanced the book’s appeal to children and adults. Well done, Lois!
Ann and Lois at Kingston Market.
After reading about the astonishing survival talents of micro-organisms with the cute nicknames of ‘water bears’ and ‘moss piglets’, I decided to write about these tough little critters for five to nine year olds. Thanks to my partner for his subscription to New Scientist!
The more I researched the tiny tardigrades, the more awed I became of their talents. There are about 1300 known species of this creature, and each species has a ,set of survival mechanisms. Many species can be found in moss. Some in the gutters of our roofs. Others on plants in our gardens – don’t worry, they won’t hurt you if you accidentally swallow them! Tardigrades can also be found in hot springs. They have even been discovered living in damp spots under rocks in scorching deserts! Some have been found near the summit of a Himalayan mountain; others at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, the deepest part of the world’s oceans. They have even been found in a lake in Antarctica.
Tardigrades Book Week costume
Tardigrades have survived for ten days, exposed to the extreme radiation of space - this would tear a human body apart in minutes, unless that person was wearing a space suit!
Tardigrades have an uncanny knack of placing themselves in a kind of suspended animation, and when conditions become favourable again, they can bring themselves back from the brink of death and get on with their lives. Scientists from many different fields are researching them, hoping to discover how they can withstand critical threats to survival such as extreme high or low pressures, heat, cold and dehydration; chemical and radiation poisoning; and lack of oxygen.
Vibrantly illustrated by WA’s Jennifer Falkner, Tardigrades, nature’s toughest survivors could be the perfect book to fire up the curiosity of young children, but teachers, parents and grandparents should also prepare to be amazed!
The Bird Lovers’ Ball, illustrated by Lois Bury,
Forty-South, (2025)
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This quirky celebration of Tasmanian birds is a unique blend of scientific facts and light comic fantasy. It is also, without doubt, my most genre-bending children’s book.
A few years ago I was studying some greeting cards by Lois Bury, where people are shown dressed as birds. I knew there was a picture book in those images, but for a year or more, the ideal way of weaving those images into a story eluded me.
Then I had one of those moments when cartoon tweety birds start chirping in your head. Why not have Tasmanian children dressing as their favourite endemic birds (species that only live in Tasmania) and heading off to a Bird Lovers Ball? One page could show a child dressed as an endemic bird character, and another page could contain images and facts about the bird that is being represented.
It was Lois who suggested I write the book in rhyme. My first reaction was a groan – not because I don’t like rhyming text. I do. I love the music of language; the way rhythm and rhyme can introduce unexpected and often comic elements into a text while helping readers develop their literacy skills by predicting what comes next. But I have studied versification at an advanced level, and know how difficult it is to make a rhythmic, rhyming text flow easily. It was nonetheless an inspired suggestion from Lois! After months of grinding my teeth while trying to be playful with rhythmic and rhyming language, the text was complete at last.
I didn’t like our chances of selling this story to a mainland traditional publisher because the topic was so local. Tasmania has just 3% of the Australian population, and royalty-paying publishers need to turn a profit or they go out of business. So I pitched the concept to Lucinda Sharp at Tasmania’s biggest publishing company, Forty South. She loved it! In no time at all, a very talented team was working on the Bird Lovers’ Ball. Thanks, team!
Lois added her own quirky, surreal touches in the illustrations, and the Bird Lovers Ball was launched at Wild Island Tasmania by Mayor Anna Reynolds late in October 2025.
Birds have been singing in my head ever since!
Anne Morgan
Tasmanian children’s book author
Visit Anne’s website
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