Emma Quay: Do we have any more questions? Yes, here.

Student: How did you choose the sound words like ‘flomp’?

Lisa Shanahan: That’s a lovely question. Do you know with ‘Bear and Chook’ there were lots of sound words in that book and I thought to myself, well I knew that you know kids would love really love those words and they like to say them out loud themselves and I thought in ‘Bear & Chook by the Sea’, I wanted those words to be there as well, those sorts of sound words that sound delicious to say. But when I was thinking about it I was thinking ‘Well, Bear and Chook are going by the sea so they’re going on a journey and it would be really good to have the sound words that capture the journey to the sea and the journey back.’ And then I started to think, ‘What does a Bear sound like early in the morning walking around a pond?’ I was thinking ‘I think it would sound something like flomp, flomp, flomp, flomp, flomp.’

Emma: Did you sit around your office saying these words out loud?

Lisa: I did, I was saying them out loud. I’m sure my neighbours thought I was a very unusual person. And I might even say them when I was walking around on the street, just practicing trying to get the words exactly right. So, I would be going, ‘flomp, flomp, flomp, flomp’. And I was thinking ‘Well, that’s a really great sound for a bear but a Chook is not going to sound like a flomp, flomp.’ Because a Chook is much smaller and lighter and so what would that sound be like? And so I started to think ‘Squitch, squitch, scratch scratch, scratch scratch, flomp, flomp, scratch, scratch.’ And so then I had the sounds that you know would describe their journey to the sea but also there were the sounds of those very scary moments. And I had to try and think about catching those scary things that they could hear in the forest, hoo-hoo-hoooo and the frog in the pond, honky-tonk-tonk-tonk. And so what I did I sat in my study and I practiced saying words out loud until I got just the right selection in order to make them come alive.

Emma: And it makes the book much more fun to read, I think.

Lisa: Yeah, I think so. And these are the things I guess that when we read stories over and over again to children they also read along and those moments with us because they know those bits off by heart in a way. So, that’s how I chose those words.