By Casey Neill
Writing a new Nanny Piggins story was like returning to a second home for author RA Spratt.
“Their universe is in my brain,” the mother of two teenage daughters said of the characters.
“They were just waiting for me to come back to them.
“It’s a strange magic in my head. They’re like real people.”
Penguin Random House Australia published Nanny Piggins and the Origin Story late last year – about 10 years after the last book in the series was released.
“I’ve done so much since – I’ve written 18 other books since,” RA said.
“She was my first series of books and she was such a great character.”
So much so that Nanny Piggins narrates RA’s popular podcast Bedtime Stories with RA Spratt.
“She has such blisteringly confident views,” RA said.
“No matter what goes wrong, she’s never worried.
“She‘s so proactive and positive.
“She was such a great character to bring back for the Covid times.
“She solved everyone’s problems.”
After the world’s most glamorous flying pig came to life on the podcast, fans asked RA to write a prequel to the series following Nanny Piggins’ life after she left the circus. She delivered.
“She always eludes to things that happened before she landed at the Greens’ house,” she said.
“I got to unpack and revisit so many characters.
“You go back emotionally to when she’s a piglet and he’s unsure of herself.”
Nanny has 13 identical sisters – all of them evil.
“That was fun to revisit,” RA laughed.
“It was so hard to keep track of who was who and how they were evil.
“The ringmaster, when he appears, he’s such a fun character, short and fat-bottomed with an amazing moustache.
“Somehow the book ended up in Bolivia. I’ve never been to Bolivia!
“I listen to podcasts about history because I love history.
“I wanted to set it somewhere landlocked.”
So she travelled to South America – almost. She dived into a research rabbit hole and used Google Maps to ‘walk’ the streets.
“It makes it easier to explain the minutia of what a street would look like,” she said.
“That was fun, now I want to go to Bolivia.”
Nanny Piggins exposes readers to geography and science, expanding their ideas about the wonder of the world.
She also offers comfort to readers with anxiety, RA said. Parents often message her to say the stories have helped their children through tough times, from chemotherapy to Covid lockdowns.
“Nanny Piggins has this amazing talent for making people feel better,” she said.
“I’m proud of that and that’s wonderful feedback to get.
“I’m proud of how much I’ve been able to help kids with anxiety, especially through Covid.
“People talk about literacy all the time, but stories are very important to children’s emotional development.”
Her favourite feedback came in the form of a tweet from a parent about her Friday Barnes series.
It said they were cross with her because their daughter missed the bus that morning, engrossed in Friday’s world.
“That’s the highest compliment for a book,” RA laughed.
“My goal has always been to entertain children.
“I want them to enjoy sitting down and reading a book.
“It sounds like a small thing, but it’s actually a really big thing.
“When you tell a story to a child you can tell when you catch their imagination.
“There’s a moment where their eyes go a little bug and you can see you’ve captured their attention.
“You know it’s going to be a good book.”
RA finds it easy to tap into – and write for – her inner child.
“I think emotionally I’m pretty much frozen as an 11-year-old,” she said.
“I’m very good at remembering the way things felt when I was a kid.
“I was a difficult kid, probably.
“I didn’t smile a lot and that used to disturb people.
“When you’re young there’s so much emotion.
“I remember the horror of having Target jeans when everyone else had Levis.
“I used to go to the library a lot.
“All there was to do was ride your BMX around and go to the library or Coles.
“I read everything for my age group, and probably some things I shouldn’t have read.
“I listened to heaps of audiobooks on cassette.”
RA was a TV writer for 10 years before she became an author.
“My spelling and grammar is so bad it never occurred to me that I could have been an author,” she laughed.
Her TV journey began with work experience on Good News Week when she was 22. She was handed three news clippings from the week and wrote jokes about them.
“These jokes are frighteningly good!” was the response.
She explained that writing them was like haiku.
“Every word, every syllable matters,” she said.
“You need to twist it to surprise the audience and make them laugh out loud.
“I’m a comedy writer at heart.
“I could just come up with stories all day long.”
