Transcript
Fiona Bartholomaeus
You're listening to Between Our Pages, a Premier's Reading Challenge WA podcast.
This episode was recorded on Wadjak Noongar land. We acknowledge the traditional custodians and pay respects to their elders past, present and emerging.
My name is Fiona Bartholomeus and we're back for 2024, exploring more of the wonderful world of books and reading right here in WA.
Today we're chatting with award-winning children’s author Norman Jorgensen about his pirate adventure book, The Wrecker's Revenge. Let's go.
The Wrecker's Revenge is a thrilling story of danger and adventure as it follows Red Read as he and the crew of the Black Dragon hunt down a great lost treasure.
It's a recent publication from award-winning children's author Norman Jorgensen and is the sequel to The Smuggler's Curse. Norman, thanks so much for joining me.
Norman Jorgensen
It's an absolute pleasure, Fiona.
Fiona Bartholomaeus
So you fell in love with reading and books at a young age. What was it about reading that grabbed your attention and made you want to be a writer?
Norman Jorgensen
I think it was, I discovered books in grade one of course, but they're actually particularly boring because they're readers.
But by the time I got to grade 2, I found Enid Blyton, my town librarian suggested to my dad I might like Enid Blyton.
And I absolutely loved it. They were funny. They were funny and they were adventurous and they took place in England, which they're very hardly even heard of at that age.
And I just wanted to be a Secret Seven more than anything in the world and I was absolutely hooked.
And then as I got a bit older, I realised I wasn't any good at sport, and I lived in Narrogin, a country town, and if you don't do sport in a country town then you might as well lock yourself in your room forever.
But it didn't bother me one little bit because I always had had a book with me.
I became really friendly with the town librarian and on my way home from school every day, I would drop in and she'd started to save all the best books for me.
Fiona Bartholomaeus
Oh, awesome. Great relationship to have.
And I read that you had a story of yours read on radio when you were younger on ABC. Did that help much with the passion of writing?
Norman Jorgensen
It sure did.
There's a program called the Argonauts Club and it was on ABC radio every afternoon at 5 o'clock and it was before television.
So every kid in Australia listened to this and it was an hour and they put on poems and stories and special songs just for kids and the announcers were almost like kids, but they weren't.
And you can send in stories and poems. And I sent in a story about my rotten school and my rotten teacher and my rotten headmaster and it got read on six weeks later. It got read out on the radio at 5 o'clock in the afternoon.
I was beside myself with happiness and pride, and I think then I thought, ‘I'm going to be a writer and I'm going to get rich and I'm going to buy a sports car’. I was about nine.
Fiona Bartholomaeus
And since then you've written quite a number of books and the most recent one was The Wrecker's Revenge. Can you tell us a bit about that book?
Norman Jorgensen
Sure.
One of the joys of being a children's book writer in WA is you get invited to schools for book week and I scored Cocos Island.
And so my wife and I went to Cocos Island, had a week of working at the school and then we stayed on for another week because it's Cocos Island, it's a tropical paradise.
And one day I was just sitting on the beach and there's a little island off the beach where we were, and the place had deserted.
And I thought, I wonder what it would be like to be shipwrecked here. Would it be tropical and perfect, or would you starve to death, or would you die?
And what if people were trying to come after you? And so I started answering those questions, and that led me to writing The Wrecker's Revenge. It's about a shipwreck.
These guys go looking for the lost gold of William Dampier, and on the way they're being chased by the other people who want the lost gold of William Dampier.
It's worth about $50 million in today's money. It actually did exist. It does exist.
Fiona Bartholomaeus
That’s incredible.
Norman Jorgensen
And they get shipwrecked and have to make the most of it. I think it was a bit inspired by Swiss family Robinson too.
Do you know that?
Fiona Bartholomaeus
I do not.
Norman Jorgensen
Ah, that was an old, old book set in the 1800s but Walt Disney made a movie of it when I was a kid and it was fantastic, absolutely.
And they build a tree house. They have all the amenities that you can make on a tropical island but then the pirates come to try and have to attack to fight the pirates off.
Fiona Bartholomaeus
So was it very much that Cocos Island trip that blended the Australian landscape and Australian places with the pirate genre?
Norman Jorgensen
Landscape it's really important in my books and part of the reason is I go to places and I sit under a tree and wait for imaginary characters to arrive and then I just describe it, but I have to describe the landscape first and I think all Australian writers the landscapes are an extra character in their books.
Fiona Bartholomaeus
I feel like when we think about pirate genres, we don't really think about Australia being a great setting for those kinds of books. But it's perfect once you actually sit down and read the books. It absolutely makes sense.
Norman Jorgensen
When I wrote The Smuggler's Curse, the first in the series, I originally set it in England. It was a smuggler's story set in England.
And my editor at Fremantle Press, Kate Sutherland, said to me, why don't you move to Australia? You know more about Australian history than most people I know. And I said, I couldn't do that.
She said, ‘no, no all you've got to do, move it to Broome, the wildest place on earth back in the 1900s’.
So I shifted to Broome and said, all you've got to do is change the weather and landscape.
Fiona Bartholomaeus
And there you go.
Norman Jorgensen
Yeah, two years later.
Fiona Bartholomaeus
So for those who pick up your book Wreckers Revenge, what do you hope they take away from it at the end?
Norman Jorgensen
A sense of excitement, a sense of freedom. I feel sorry for a lot of modern kids they don't have any freedom whatsoever, they get driven to school they get driven home they get taken to music lessons they get taken to sport lessons, the whole life's controlled and when I was a kid in the generations before me, we were left alone our parents expected us to die I think.
We went out when the sun came up and we came home when it got dark unless you hurt yourself we got really really hungry and so there's a sense of freedom that the kids have in my stories is.
In Jack's Island, which is set on Rottnest in World War II, and a lot of kids have studied it in school, huge numbers.
And that's the overwhelming sense that I get from them, is they want to be like the two kids who can do whatever they like, and they build canoes and go out into the ocean.
And can you imagine any parents now letting their kids build a canoe out of tin and go out into the middle of Thompson Bay where there are sharks?
Fiona Bartholomaeus
And speaking of Jack's Island, it's very recently been re-released. Can you tell us a bit more about that process of re-releasing a book?
Norman Jorgensen
It doesn't have a lot to do with me. The publishing company decided that – well, it's 15 years old, 2008 that I wrote it and as I said, kids in grade 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 have been studying it.
So every year they sell a whole load for the whole new generation moving to school and I think they had a new cover designer at Fremantle Press, Rebecca Mills, and they got her to give it a go and I love it.
She's read the book closely and put all the elements on the cover and made it dramatic. Stands out on the shelves.
Fiona Bartholomaeus
How does it feel for you for one of your books that's very, very popular being even more put back into the spotlight?
Norman Jorgensen
I had a rejection just before, a new one. So it came along at the perfect minute. I'm feeling quite low, so I put a year's worth of effort into a book and it got rejected.
So when Kate decided she was going to redo it and give it a whole new lease of life, and it gave me a huge boost as well because my names out there, I'm getting more bookings for Book Week and school talks. So I did that without having to do any extra work. So that was cool.
Fiona Bartholomaeus
One of the things I love about your books, and I wish I grew up with a bit more Australian settings in books, how important is it for you to write books that either feature or have reference to Australian or Western Australian locations?
Norman Jorgensen
I made a point with my very first book that was called Ashe of the Outback.
It was a long time ago. It's set in Outback, Australia, about a pilot flying around the Outback.
I made a point that all my books will be set in Australia, without exception, because when I was growing up, you know I said I discovered Enid Blyton? They were set in Devon and Cornwall, which I'd never been to.
Every other book I got from the town library was set in England or America. There was hardly any Australian books back then.
And so I decided I don't want that to happen to my readers, I'm going to always set them in Australia or about Australians.
The only – after 10 books, I decided I would set The Smugglers Curse in England, and my editor made me change it anyhow.
So of all of them, 16, I think, they're all Australian.
Fiona Bartholomaeus
Now you're stuck into Australia. You can't leave.
Norman Jorgensen
No. And I love Australian history, so it's not hard for me to find a time or a place, a story, a location.
Fiona Bartholomaeus
So your books vary quite differently in topics. Why is it important for children and students to have books in such a wide variety?
Norman Jorgensen
It wasn't deliberate in my case. What I did each time is try and write something I'd never done before.
So the first very main one was Flanders Field, which is a picture book set in World War I, then I wrote Call of the Osprey, which is about a boy and his granddad building a boat in Fremantle. Yeah, completely opposite sort of story.
Jack's Island came along, that was about my dad growing up on Rottnest.
The Smuggler’s Curse and the Wreckers Revenge are just straight-out adventures because I wanted to have fun writing them and exploring, which I did.
Yeah, so it's about me having fun mostly. It wasn't set out to any pattern or preconceived idea of what I'm going to write about.
Fiona Bartholomaeus
And a couple of your books, you've worked with local illustrators to create it.
Norman Jorgensen
God, I hate illustrators. Just kidding. I don't at all. James Foley, who did The Last Viking, is one of my best friends.
Fiona Bartholomaeus
He's a lovely guy as well. We've had him on the podcast. It's very great to chat to him.
Norman Jorgensen
Yeah, he's great, isn't he?
Fiona Bartholomaeus
How do you approach writing for books that will be accompanied by illustration as opposed to Jack's Island and The Smuggler's Curse, which is just purely text.
Norman Jorgensen
Yeah. It's tough doing picture books, much harder than writing novels because the industry standards, it's 32 pages, 600 words and if you go above that, your text starts to overtake the illustrations, which are quite important.
But then also your text gets cut because when the illustrator, if I said you were wearing a pink top and the illustrator draws you wearing a pink top, you don't need to say it. It's obvious.
Yeah so the book is told using the words and the pictures, not the words or the pictures.
Fiona Bartholomaeus
So it's sort of finding the balance between.
Norman Jorgensen
Yes, it is. Absolutely. And, yeah, you write a fabulous manuscript, you think, and then you sit down and you're losing half of it just because it gets turned into pictures.
Fiona Bartholomaeus
Do you ever have to, when you have written books that are illustrated, do you have to then go back to the text and add some more in there?
Norman Jorgensen
Sometimes. Yeah, it's flowing all the time because you never know what the illustrator's going to do next, and I had one illustrator, she just wouldn't draw stuff. She didn't like it.
So then I had to replace that with my words, of course.
Fiona Bartholomaeus
And now you mentioned before that you spend a lot of time at schools during book weeks. How is it for you to visit the students and spread the word of local writing to them?
Norman Jorgensen
I love it because what I also do is take along current manuscripts, the things I'm working on, and I'll run them past the kids and see what they think.
Fiona Bartholomaeus
Really?
Norman Jorgensen
And I've got a new one, a new manuscript at the moment called Secret Agent School about a kid who gets selected to go to secret agent school.
And I've been reading chapters to the kids and I think it might be some of the best stuff I've ever done because they sit there in absolute silence.
Fiona Bartholomaeus
I was going to ask, are they harsh critics or?
Norman Jorgensen
No, they tend to be kind and get some out of maths or something for an hour while I'm here, doesn't it? I think they appreciate that.
Fiona Bartholomaeus
Why do you think it's important that students are able to connect with local writers like yourself?
Norman Jorgensen
When I first read a book set in Perth on the Swan River and I was about 12, it was a revelation to me that it could actually happen because I'd never seen a film set in West Australia. I never, as I said earlier, all my books I read were England or American.
And there was one, and I could identify the places the writer was talking about, and so I tried to do that. So, yeah, I write for a 12-year-old living in the middle of Perth.
Fiona Bartholomaeus
And I must admit, it always is nice reading a book or watching a movie and hearing them reference very local things and going, I went there the other week.
Norman Jorgensen
Yeah, that's great. Book set in Margaret River. I know where they are I've walked down that road.
Yeah so I think I want the kids to have an experience that I didn't have reading and I still got hooked on reading but I think having your local references I think that should be important to you.
Fiona Bartholomaeus
Now, do you have any more books in the works now that you've re-released Jack's Island, Wrecker’s Revenge came out a few years ago. Anything else on the cards coming up soon?
Norman Jorgensen
There's The Secret Agent School, which I talked about.
I've written a sequel to The Wreckers Revenge. It's set in China, no, it starts in Western Australia, but they go to China for an adventure.
I'm working on the sequel to Jack's Island, set a year later. And the two boys who lived on the island in World War II, war's over and they go back to the island on a camping trip and the place is derelict there's no one left. But they still have loads of adventures.
Fiona Bartholomaeus
Sounds like you've got lots in the works there.
Norman Jorgensen
Yeah, just got to get them polished up to a level where the kids want to read them.
Fiona Bartholomaeus
Now, the challenge has yet to start for 2024, but it's always important to keep reading. How important has reading been in your life?
Norman Jorgensen
It's the most important thing of all.
I've never once in my whole life been bored. I always carry a book with me and sometimes the books aren't that great, but they're certainly better than staring at the wall. Which if you're stuck on an aeroplane or waiting in a doctor's surgery or something like that, that can go on forever.
So I think reading is the most wonderful thing in my life and I pity kids, anyone who doesn't enjoy it, who doesn't like it, just won't do it.
For me it was a bit easier because I didn't have all the distractions that kids have now, we didn't have TV, as I said, no computer games, had the radio which I listened to but not too much and we're outside a lot.
So there wasn't reading wasn't been competing with all of the other distractions kids have now but I feel sad for anyone who hasn't got the reading bug.
Fiona Bartholomaeus
Now, before we let you go, I'm going to ask you a couple of rapid-fire questions.
Norman Jorgensen
Okay.
Fiona Bartholomaeus
And I just want the first answer that pops into your head. What is your favourite book?
Norman Jorgensen
Treasure Island.
Fiona Bartholomaeus
What are you reading at the moment?
Norman Jorgensen
David Mitchell's written a bit of a book about the kings and queens of England.
Fiona Bartholomaeus
Non-fiction or fiction?
Norman Jorgensen
Lately it's been non-fiction, a lot of history.
Fiona Bartholomaeus
Favourite genre?
Norman Jorgensen
History, definitely history. And I like American history as well, surprisingly. I like American Civil War. I'm a little cowboy at heart.
Fiona Bartholomaeus
And in the spirit of the Premier's Reading Challenge, how many books do you hope to read in 2024?
Norman Jorgensen
Oh, one a week would be good, wouldn't it? 50?
Fiona Bartholomaeus
I like that. Good, solid number.
Norman Jorgensen
Well, my wife's worse. She reads about one a day, so she's probably going to get out to 300.
Fiona Bartholomaeus
That is incredible, and I really hope she does reach 300 this year.
You've been listening to Between our pages a Premier’s Reading Challenge WA podcast.
Thanks to our guest Norman Jorgensen for joining me on this episode.
Stay tuned to your favourite podcast app for future episodes or keep an eye out on the Department of Education’s Facebook page.
Thanks for listening, happy reading, we'll see you next time.