WHEN I WAS eight, I wrote a story about a little girl running away to live on an island. When I became a grown-up author, that became the seed for Nim’s Island. It’s grown into three books and two movies, given me amazing experiences – and connected me to wonderful people all around the world.
Readers encouraged me to write the sequels. A brother and sister in Los Angeles asked their mother – who happened to be a film producer – to make a movie of it. A famous actress wanted to be in the movie because Nim’s Island was the book that started her son reading. So the little story became a big Hollywood movie, and I had the amazing fun of watching it come to life in front of me, in a real rain forest, with real sea lions (with real fishy breath)!
It’s taken me to the red carpet at Hollywood’s most famous cinema, to reading to a crowd under an ancient tree in India, to giving a baby rhinoceros a mudbath at the Australia Zoo …
It’s inspired readers in ways I’d never thought of. A school in Queensland wrote a Nim’s Island cookbook. Girls Scouts in New York created a Nim’s Island badge. Kids in Vancouver marched in the street with banners about how Nim cares for her environment. Schools across the USA and Canada give it to every family in their community to read together.
But what I love best is seeing the drawings, photos or videos of how readers have made the story their own. Or when they write to me, from across Australia or Canada, Lithuania or Turkey, and say, ‘I’m just like Nim.’
Thank you to all the readers who have loved Nim and kept her alive for these past twenty-one years. And never forget that no matter how young or old you are, wonderful things happen when you play with stories.