Q&A: Children's Author Sally Sutton

Hī Hā StoryDance writer Sally Sutton creates award-winning books adored by kids all over the world. Let's peek inside her life of words!   

What’s the secret of good children’s writing?

Energy! And music! You need words that sing, words that boing off the page! Not so different from dancing…

What’s your favourite type of writing?

I get bored easily, so I love variety! Picture books, chapter books, plays: I enjoy them all. Hī Hā has opened up a whole new way of writing for me: I’m crafting stories kids can physically move to. It’s so exiting!

How does that work in practice?

My stories have a lot of movement in them anyway - I've never been one for the quiet bedtime story, I've always preferred verbs to adjectives! - so it’s a natural progression. I'm learning to ‘move’ even the most ordinary sentences. So now, instead of saying: ‘He was cold and tired so he had a nap’, I’ll say: ‘He shook and shivered and quivered. He yawned and stretched out his arms high, high, higher. He lay down, curled up tight into a ball… and slept.” Better, right?!

What about in Hī Hā’s school productions?

We replace singing with dancing, and add movement wherever we can. Even the audience is invited to move. The energy is awesome!

Any tips for boosting kids' literacy?

Reconnect tamariki with the joy of story. If we only focus on the mechanics of reading and writing, we forget why kids are motivated to read and write in the first place. Kids love being read to! Hī Hā’s interactive stories and Māori myths aim to move tamariki in more ways than one. I love that!