Awesome Animals Blog Tour

I’m proud to present children’s author, Di Bates new book series Awesome Animals and her blog tour.

Di has been writing books for over 30 years and has published over 120 titles. Living near Wollongong NSW, she has the great fortune to live and work with her prize-winning husband YA author Bill Condon. They share the website http://www.enterprisingwords.com.au

I interviewed Di to find out about Awesome Animal book series…

What is your book about?

Awesome Animals (Big Sky Publishing) is an entertaining new non-fiction animal series for kids – a Guinness Book of Records meets Ripley’s Believe It or Not!

Awesome Cats and Awesome Dogs, the first two books in the series, are each an entertaining new read — a Guinness Book of Records meets Ripley’s Believe It or Not! which features fascinating stories about animals from all over the world. As well, there are relevant book lists, jokes and even humorous animal verses. Each beautifully styled book contains true stories and amazing photographs and quirky, illustrated break-out boxes, introduced by funny cartoon animal characters. The book is best suited for Children aged 8 to 11 years, but there’s no doubt older readers will love the books, too.

What does Awesome Animals offer the reader that differently to similar animal books?

Before writing these books I searched all over the market for something similar, but found nothing. Yes, there are books about cats and dogs, but certainly nothing presented in this way. Take cats, for example: in Awesome Cats there are hundreds of short stories about cats in history, cat adventures, famous cats and famous people’s cats, working cats, spoilt cats, and cats in fiction and in TV, on stage and in movies. Here’s just a little ‘teaser’ from the book: In 1976 a mystery cat in Hong Kong killed more than 20 dogs. According to local people it was about four feet long and black or gray in color. It was never caught. Imagine that, a dog-killing cat; certainly not a lap cat!

How did the idea for this book evolve?

As a full-time, professional children’s author, I am always searching around for an idea which will result in a book that any child would love to read. The three books in the Awesome Animals series are dogs, cats and horses: it would be impossible, I’m sure, to find one of these animals that any child didn’t love, much less cherish. My quest for unusual animal stories began when I found the story of Old Shep, a dog that maintained a five year vigil at the train station in Fort Benton, Montana, America after seeing the coffin of his master loaded onto a train. How faithful is that?

Next thing I was finding amazing dog stories everywhere! (I just love dogs and really miss our last beloved dog, Sassy; she has been irreplaceable since she died two years ago of old age.)