Angela Oliver

I have always loved animal-protagonist books, but have been somewhat disappointed by the lack of birds, and more-so - the lack of female animals as main characters. It appers that in most of this style novel (with semi realistic animal behaviour), the females exist solely to be mothers or mates. Therefore, Aroha the weka was born. Or rather, hatched.

You may not have heard of a weka before - they are a flightless bird about the size of a small chicken and actually belong to the Rail family. Due to their brown colouration and flightless nature they are sometimes mistaken for kiwis (despite being diurnal and inquistive and looking almost entirely different) by naive tourists. At various points in my life we have had them raid our garden and uproot plants, steal things from our tent while camping, screeching behind the tent in the middle of the night and trying to slip into our car whilst we stopped at a rest spot along the West Coast. Overall, they're birds with a whole lot of character, and also a species that is becoming increasingly rarer.

Like her real world kin, Aroha is cheeky, curious and prone to getting herself into a whole lot of trouble. She's also greedy and a little bit selfish. This story is essentially a "road" trip across the central part of New Zealand's South Island. There's danger, fun and a fair amount of humour.

At around 46k words, this is a somewhat lengthy tome for the young reader, but is intended for dedicated bibliophiles aged 7 . Every chapter is illustrated and the book also contains several educational appendices, a short story and a 4-page comic.… (meer)

In the spirit of Redwall (but with a higher body count, less singing and less cordial)and the earlier works of Paul Kidd, I bring you the first book in "Lemurs: A Saga". "Fellowship of the Ringtails" was first conceived several years ago, after I saw the movie "Madagascar" and was thoroughly disappointed by the fact that in a movie called "Madagascar" the main characters were all large African charismatic mega-vertebrates.

What the world needed, I decided, was a novel set in Madagascar that was actually true to the spirit of this extraordinary and beautiful, but tarnished, country. Thus the character of Aurelia (a silky sifaka was born, and put into the care of Fiantrana, a ringtailed lemur. This story has been a labour of love, sweat and tears and is intended to be the first of a trilogy, following the tale of Aurelia, an orphaned heir, and based somewhat on my own experiences and knowledge of Madagascar and lemurs, along with a healthy dose of imagination and fantasy.

I hope you enjoy it!

I know it's cheesy to rate your own novel, but I'm going to anyway.… (meer)