Jenny Scheffers: Now, we’re going to have our questions and answers session. Our special guests Lisa and Emma will answer our questions about their Bear and Chook books. Who would like to ask the first question?

Lisa Shanahan: Yes.

Student: Did any of the ideas for the story come from real life?

Lisa: That’s a great question. Do you know, I think that when I think about the Bear and Chook books I think that really when I was thinking about where that story came from I was remembering what I was like when I was in Year 2 and I can remember thinking, ‘I really want to have a best friend, someone who you can tell your secrets to, someone who you can laugh with. Someone who will follow you on any journey you go on, real ones, imaginary ones’. I wanted that very special best friend. And I think that when I wrote that story about I was thinking about those feelings that I had when I was seven or eight, just how much I wanted that special close friend and that’s really the heart of where those stories come from.

Emma Quay: Yes, I too put lots of bits of my life in my pictures and there is one particular picture in this book when Bear and Chook go to the rock pool. Do you remember that?

Students: Yes.

Emma: Just before Bear goes in the sea. Now, when I was drawing this picture I was thinking about all my holidays with my family when I was young and we used to go to the beach and I remembered the times with my Dad clambering over the rocks and crouching down to look in the rock pools. Do you ever do that when you go to the beach?

Students: No.

Emma: And I remember touching the jelly like anemones and feeling their little tentacles and the limpets. I used to try and pull them off the rock, try and surprise them but you never managed to pull them off because they always grab on too quickly. And lifting rocks to look under them at crabs. So, that has all gone into this picture and made it perhaps more real. And also I remember in England, I grew up in England and when we went to the beach it was often a surprise when the sun came out. So, people often hadn’t brought their hat and I thought perhaps Chook would forget to bring a hat and so he would have taken out his hanky which he would have in his pocket if he had one, in the backpack and notch the corners and put it on his head instead of a hat. I remember when I was young you’d look down the beach and there’d be all these Dads and Uncles and Grandads with knotted handkerchiefs on their heads because they’d forgotten their hats.

Lisa: Isn’t that funny?