Video transcript
2019 NSW PRC author interview – Megan McDonald

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TAMARA RODGERS: Hi. I'm Tamara Rodgers from the Premier's Reading Challenge. We're here at the Riverside Theatre at Parramatta for the Sydney Writers' Festival Primary Schools Day. We're really excited to be bringing you some author interviews, where we'll have the authors from the primary schools' programme in conversation with some students from Galston High School. We really hope you enjoy hearing them have a chat about what they love about their work.

Thank you so much to the Sydney Writers' Festival for having us along. We'd also like to thank the PRC programme sponsors, our media partner, NewsLocal, and Dymocks Children's Charities, who are our supporting partner. We really appreciate all of their support for the programme.

ASHLEY TACKS: Hi. I'm Ashley Tacks from Galston High School. And today I'm joined with the wonderful Megan McDonald, who has written many books, including the 'Judy Moody' series, 'Stink' series, and many more. How are you today?

MEGAN MCDONALD: I'm well. How are you?

ASHLEY TACKS: I'm good, thanks.

MEGAN MCDONALD: Thanks.

ASHLEY TACKS: Were you an avid reader when you were a child? And what books did you enjoy the most?

MEGAN MCDONALD: How did you guess? I love to read. So growing up, I was very lucky because I have four older sisters. Don't you feel for me? With four sisters, everybody loved to read. My mum and dad were readers. So we had a house with a lot of books.

And we didn't really have a branch of a library near us. So we just had like a bookmobile. I don't know if you guys have those here. But it's just a big green truck, and they fill it with books and come to your neighbourhood. So we would all pile on the bookmobile and get our armloads of books.

And then one summer my sisters and I, because we were all readers, had this brilliant idea. We were like, let's try to read all the books on the bookmobile. So we would just take armloads because we thought we could, between the five of us, or among the five of us, read them all.

We didn't realise that, of course, the bookmobile goes back to the big city library at night and puts more books on the truck. So we were never going to read all the books on the bookmobile.

But we grew up really reading. The only rule was that we couldn't read at the dinner table. So we would always, of course, try to sneak the books and get them under the tablecloth and read our books at the dinner table anyway.

ASHLEY TACKS: Is there a specific author that influenced your writing?

MEGAN MCDONALD: Probably the most inspirational author for me has been Katherine Patterson. She's the author of a book called 'Bridge to Terabithia.' And a book-- one of my favourites of hers that I love is called 'The Great Gilly Hopkins.' And her books are-- she's such a good storyteller. But at the same time, her characters are so real that you feel you know them. And that really inspired me.

So when I was a young writer I got to meet her. And it was just a funny thing where my sister who's a photographer was taking her picture for the newspaper. And she kept saying, my sister loves you. My sister loves you. Oh, she would die if she got to meet you. And Katherine just said, well, why don't you bring her over for dinner?

So my sister called me up and she said, we're having dinner at Katherine Patterson's house. And I said, ha ha. Very funny. My idol. Like, she's going to invite me to dinner, right?

Well, she really had. So that was so memorable to me. And we've remained friends over the years. But she's probably the person who inspired me the most.

ASHLEY TACKS: Wow. When did you first realise that you really wanted to be an author?

MEGAN MCDONALD: Oh, I'm not sure. I think I always kind of had that dream because I love to write. So even from the time I was in about fifth grade, I was always scribbling stories in notebooks.

And my teacher noticed this. And he said, you know, we're going to-- we had a school paper then. And he said, we're going to give you a little corner of the school paper, where we'll save that corner just for one of your stories each month. So I was always scribbling stories to get in the school paper.

So I think I always, from way back of being a child, knew I loved to write. But I didn't really probably think about it till after I was out of college. I went to college to study literature and writing. But I still really, probably until I met Katherine, didn't really have that sense of wow, this is something you can really do and get published and do for a living.

ASHLEY TACKS: What would you want to be if you weren't an author?

MEGAN MCDONALD: Oh, gosh. I would probably still be something connected with books, like maybe work at a publishing house or be an editor or probably something, since that's my passion and my love, probably something to do with books and reading.

ASHLEY TACKS: Interesting. So your 'Judy Moody' series was turned into a film.

MEGAN MCDONALD: Yes.

ASHLEY TACKS: What is it like to have your book turned into a film?

MEGAN MCDONALD: Well, for me, it was really exciting. Some authors don't get to have that much to do with the film. But I got to work on the script. So I had a lot to do with the story of the film.

And then, my husband and I got to go-- for three months we went to Hollywood and lived there. And we got to go every day on set when they were filming. And, of course, there's lots of kids in the movie. So we got to know all the kids.

And the actress who played Judy Moody, she was maybe about 12 years old then. But she's actually from Sydney. And she goes to Uni now. So we'll get to visit her when we're here, which is great.

But she had to come maybe-- it was unusual to hire somebody from Australia to come play an American role. So she had to come a few months early and have a dialect coach to help her-- to help coach her to learn to speak with an American accent. But she said really, the best part was she came and just hung out with American kids. And then, she had such a good ear she was able to just pick up the accent that way.

ASHLEY TACKS: Wow. So the 'Judy Moody' series is filled with amazing illustrations. What was it like to actually work with an Illustrator? And was it hard to try to get your images into the pictures that were in the books?

MEGAN MCDONALD: OK. So that's a good question. The way it works is you don't really at the beginning get to sit down in the same room and collaborate because I would probably be bossing the illustrator around and telling him what to do.

So Peter Reynolds is the wonderful illustrator of 'Judy Moody' and 'Stink.' And he now has many, many books he's drawn. But I think this was one of the very first books he had ever done. So he had the task of taking the whole novel, and, of course, he had clues, like Judy had messy hair and she was eight years old and, you know.

But he had to really come up with, who is Judy Moody? What is that image of Judy Moody? And he went through many draughts. I was showing the kids today some of the different sketches that I got to see. But when the book was all done, I finally got to meet him.

So we worked through an editor the whole time. So if I have input, I'm telling my editor. And then my editor works with him, rather than us speaking directly. So we didn't know each other at all.

And when the book was done, we got to meet. And I said, Peter, I'm so sorry you had to draw Judy Moody like four or five times because we're trying to get the cover right of that first book.

And he said, that was nothing. He said, I drew Judy Moody probably about 200 times just to get that very first image on the first cover. And the design and the image were just so striking. I think that had a lot to do with kids really being drawn to the book.

ASHLEY TACKS: Yeah. It's a very eye-catching cover.

MEGAN MCDONALD: Yes. Yes.

ASHLEY TACKS: Out of all the characters, who do you relate to the most?

MEGAN MCDONALD: Well, that's hard. I think I relate to Judy because of her moods, because I'm a very moody person. So don't come around me in the morning. I like to stay up late, but not good in the early morning.

But I really have probably a very special feeling for Stink, her little brother because he's the youngest. And I know what that's like, you know, when the older one is getting all the attention and gets to stay up later than you and gets to do all this fun stuff, and you're kind of left behind. So I have a very special warm spot for Stink in my heart.

ASHLEY TACKS: You've written a wide range of genres and different books, including historical fiction. Do you plan to write any more historical fiction?

MEGAN MCDONALD: I love historical fiction. One of the things about historical fiction is you can get so lost in the research and the reading about it, it's really hard to start writing because you just want to keep learning more and immersing yourself in a certain period of time.

But-- and even non-fiction, I love to take nonfiction and have that-- like a lot of the 'Stink' books have a science theme. So I do a lot of research. And I'd like to incorporate that into books as well.

I probably would like to do some more historical fiction. But right now, I'm writing the hardest book I've ever written, and it's fantasy. So that's something really different for me. But probably my favourite novels would be mysteries or historical fiction.

ASHLEY TACKS: OK. And are there any books in the 'Stink' or 'Judy Moody' series that are coming out soon?

MEGAN MCDONALD: Yes. There's a book. The next 'Judy Moody' book is called 'Judy Moody Book Quiz Whiz.' And I think you have them here as well. But we have like National Book Competitions where kids form teams. And they read a whole bunch of books, and then answer rapid-fire questions about the books.

So Judy and Stink and their friends form a team at Virginia Dare School where they go. And they're trying to read massive amounts of books. And they are trying to-- Judy's trying to learn to speed read so she can read more books. And they're trying to remember more. And they're pretty good at it. So they get all the way up to this major competition.

And then, when they learn what team for the final competition that they're going to be up against-- it's like the Wizard's Cup that they'll win. And the team they'll be up against they learn has a fourth grader on the team. And they're all in second or third grade.

And her name his Mighty Fantaski, and she is a Harry Potter-reading fourth grader. So they're like, eek. How are we going to win against this team?

ASHLEY TACKS: I can't wait to read that.

MEGAN MCDONALD: Yeah. So that will be next up, probably coming this fall.

ASHLEY TACKS: OK. Well, thank you for taking out time to talk to me today.

MEGAN MCDONALD: Yeah. Thank you so much.

ASHLEY TACKS: And I hope you enjoy your time in Australia.

MEGAN MCDONALD: I already am. I got to pet a koala. And I'm sure it'll be great. Yeah, thanks.

ASHLEY TACKS: Thank you.