Introducing my first non-fiction book for children – DREAM ADVENTURES. It’s a book of true-life stories from my travels in India, Peru, Bolivia, Spain, Egypt and the UK.
It’s not all me, me me! I also introduce the extraordinary explorers, archaeologists, treasure hunters, scientists and visionaries behind the wonders I am seeing: architect Antoni Gaudi, high altitude anthropologist Johan Reinhard, plant hunter Ernest H Wilson, Egyptologist Howard Carter…
There are bold girls too: Maria Reiche, who dedicated her life to studying and preserving the mysterious Nazca lines in Peru. Kitty Loyd, who was one of the first women to study horticulture at university before launching a career as a freelance garden designer in the 1930s. Diane Leather, who broke the Five Minute Mile for women just a few weeks after Roger Bannister ran the first Four Minute Mile. But unlike Bannister, she was not given a world record because the distance was not recognised as a suitable distance for women by the International Amateur Athletic Federation.
I also talk about the power of dreaming and the joy of reading, talking about my own childhood in Liverpool.
The book has the look of a travel journal, thanks to my lovely illustrator Alicia Walker.
