We did a project about
the author Jill Tomlinson
with Ms. O’C last week.
We thought you might like to read
about what we found out:
The Hen Who Wouldn’t Give Up
The Aardvark Who Wasn’t Sure
The Gorilla Who Wanted To Grow Up
The Owl Who Was Afraid Of The Dark
The Penguin Who Wanted To Find Out
The Otter Who Wanted To Know
The Cat Who Wanted To Go Home
These books were all written by this author.
The ones we have read, we have highlighted in blue.
but our favourite was ‘The Aardvark Who Wasn’t Sure’.
In all of them the animals are on a journey,
and making discoveries.
However Jill Tomlinson became an author
who could not
Read on and you will find out why.
We learned that Jill Tomlinson was born in 1931.
She could sing and so she trained as an opera singer.
She didn’t plan to be a writer.
Then she took some time out to have a family.
But then she became ill which made her weak.
She did a course in journalism.
Very quickly found out
what she really wanted to do with her life;
Lucky for us, she found
she wanted to write for children.
The next part of her story is a good example of
if you don’t first succeed try and try again.
She wrote her very first story,
a picture book called
‘The Bus who went to Church’.
The first publisher she sent it to
didn’t want to publish it.
She sent it to fifteen more, before
luckily for children everywhere
it was accepted for publication.
Jill Tomlinson wrote a number of
other simple picture books.
Then she felt ready for
more of a challenge
so she wrote the book now known as
‘The Hen Who Wouldn’t Give Up’.
This was followed by’ The Cat Who Wanted to Go Home’.
Her illness made it more and more difficult for her to work.
By now it had been diagnosed as MS.
MS (Multiple Schlerosis can make it hard to walk or talk)
The next book she wrote was
‘ The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark’.
This is her most successful and well known book.
As time went on, her illness made working more and more difficult.
Again she persevered. She didn’t give up.
The details for each of her books was carefully researched .
This was done by her family in response to the questions she asked.
She used say that, as an author she was one of a kind
because she was one who was not able to read or write.