Featured Interview With Adam Wallace
Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
Thanks so much for having me, I would love to tell you a little bit about myself. I was raised in a little town about 50kms (30 miles) out of Melbourne in Australia. My school only had 100 kids, and we lived on a mini farm with chickens and geese and ducks and goats and sheep! We also had dogs, including the largest one in Australia at the time, which we rode like a horse!
Now I live in Croydon, which is a little closer to Melbourne. It’s an awesome suburb, and when I sit on the back deck kookaburras come and sit on the fence and watch me! I don’t have any pets at the moment, but used to have an awesome dog called Krueger who was a Labrador-Kelpie-Italian Greyhound cross and the smartest dog ever!
At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
Oh I have loved books since before I was born! But the first time I can really remember was when my step-dad would read to us from books by Road Dahl and Bill Peet and Dr Seuss. I can’t actually visualise anything, but he really brought those stories to life with his voices and actions and enthusiasm.
I don’t know exactly when I started writing but do still have a book I wrote in the fourth grade, called Frogmen of the USA! It’s kinda horrific! I loved writing all through school, and would spend my spare time, when I wasn’t playing sport, writing my own stories. After I finished school I became an engineer and didn’t write for near on ten years, then, when I came back to it at age 28, I was totally hooked and haven’t stopped since and don’t plan to … ever!!!!
Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
Wow this is a really tricky one. Can I pass? No? Okay fine, I’ll answer. I will give anything a go, but I do love pretty much all Malcolm Gladwell’s books. I am also a big Jerry Spinelli fan, Stargirl is one of my all-time favourite books ever. I like horror, so Stephen King is up there, but as a teenager I read a lot of James Herbert (although Fluke, not a horror, is my favourite of his books). I also really like Oliver Jeffers (Stuck is a masterpiece), and I will stop there before we run out of space!
I will read any genre at all and like so many. I usually have a non-fiction or two on the go, as well as a fiction of whatever is in front of me or whatever my niece recommends. And I read a lot of children’s books. I can’t narrow this one down any more than that!
So many people inspire me! In the children’s book world it can be from authors who have done or are doing I want to do, to the kids who get super excited about books, to the kids who have never read a book before but read one of my books over and again, to my community of amazing kidlit authors and illustrators, to librarians and teachers instilling a love of reading in children, to myself for all I have done so far and to parents who read with their kids and really value that time.
I also get inspired by anyone who has overcome the odds, or people who have a dream and do what they have to do to make that dream a reality, or teams that find a way to work together so they are like one unit. I get inspired all the time!!!!!!
Tell us a little about your latest book?
I am super pumped for this one, as I was OBSESSED with dinosaurs as a kid. So writing A Very Dinosaur Birthday, about what would happen if dinosaurs came to my birthday party, was thrilling and such a flashback to my childhood, when I would dream of such things.
Basically this is a book I wrote to entertain children, and to kickstart their own imaginations, as the dinosaurs cause chaos at the party, before finding ways to help the birthday child have an amazing day. On that, it also has a big lesson I have learned in life that even when things seem at their lowest, they can turn around to become, if not just back to level ground, actually quite amazing!
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