Photo: Hex Work Productions
Although children's picture books contain few words, it is no easy feat getting all of them just right, best-selling author Dame Lynley Dodd says.
The 83-year-old Hairy Maclary creator told Susana Lei'ataua she was frequently "driven up the wall" by people casually telling her their plans to dash one out themselves.
"I want to wave my 20-plus drafts at them to show how much work it is to actually get those few words right and to make them good enough for children."
Listen to many of Lynley Dodd's stories, including Hairy MacLary from Donaldson's Dairy, in RNZ's Storytime collection.
Born in Rotorua in 1941, Dodd studied sculpture at Elam Fine Arts School and worked as an art teacher and freelance illustrator before publishing her first children's book My Cat Likes To Hide In Boxes in 1974.
Since then she has published 34 books, including 10 in the best-selling Hairy Maclary and Friends series about a gang of suburban dogs and their cat enemies.
Aware that children love learning new and interesting words, Dodd worked "incredibly hard" to get the text for each of her books as good as she could possibly make it.
"[Children] deserve the very best in words, really. You've got to get the language right to make it sing for them.
"When they're little, they're very ready for it - ready to learn, ready to say things, repeat things.
"It's very satisfying and very nice to be able to write for an audience that's so enthusiastic."
Because she is "crackers enough to write in rhyme", Dodd's storytelling had an even higher degree of difficulty.
Recently, she realised that to get the rhythm of the words she is writing just right, she "conducts" the lines with her spare arm as if they were music.
"I actually wave my arms about while I'm preparing the text in order to get the good rhythm."
At 83, beloved children’s author Dame Lynley Dodd has only recently begun to view her own carefully crafted stories as ‘literature’. Photo: Kate Hursthouse
In 1983, Dodd introduced the iconic canine character of Hairy Maclary - based on her friend's very spoiled and naughty terrier - in Hairy Maclary from Donaldson's Dairy,
She still marvels at how small dogs can be the most bossy and cheeky 41 years on.
"They think they can run underneath other dogs and just take them on which is amazing."
In the past, Dodd had always lived with cats and dogs, including a dachshund who inspired her character Schnitzel von Crumb and a mischievous black cat who inspired Slinky Malinky. Currently, for the first time in her adult life, the "very animal-minded" author does not have her own pet.
- Listen to Miranda Harcourt read Hairy MacLary from Donaldson's Dairy here.
Photo: Lynley Dodd / Penguin Books New Zealand
Growing up as an only child in the Kaingaroa Forest near Taupō, Dodd was a "book-minded" child who learned early on from her parents how much fun words could be.
Although her own books have won over generations around the world with their clever wordplay, she never thought of them as 'literature' before being awarded the Prime Minister's Award for Literary Achievement in Fiction in 2024.
Dodd now believes that, when carefully crafted, children's books can serve as "an early introduction to literature".
"Children deserve the very best in words. You've got to get the language right to make it sing for them."
Although she seems to spend more time emailing than writing these days, Dodd is still committed to exploring story ideas at her desk.
"I like to think there are a few more books in me yet before I finally pop off."
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