Book set for lift off

By Tania Martin
AN AUTHOR from The Patch is riding a wave of success after her book Helicopter Man was awarded the Children’s Book of the Year award.
Elizabeth Fensham, an English teacher at Mountain District Christian School, has been writing children’s books for the past 20 years.
However, she only cracked the publishing world last year when Bloomsbury agreed to publish her book The Helicopter Man.
Ms Fensham said she was both shocked and elated when she found out her book had been short-listed for the Children’s Book of the Year awards and she never expected to win.
“When I was told that I had won I felt like an old maid who had been proposed to at the last moment just before it was too late,” she said.
Ms Fensham said her school students were instrumental in helping her finish the book, especially as they helped with the editing process.
“I would read it to them and they would tell me if they didn’t understanding something and I would go home and change things,” she said.
Helicopter Man is about a boy and his mentally ill father who had a fear of helicopters and thought they were spying on him.
Ms Fensham said the inspiration for the story came from her personal experience with people suffering from mental illness.
She has written many books over the past 20 years but Helicopter Man was the first to be picked up by a publishing company.
However she said it wasn’t easy to find a publisher.
Ms Fensham said she had many disappointments before Bloomsbury agreed to publish her book.
But, she said she felt one of the reasons why the publisher was attracted to the book was because mental illness was now being more widely recognised as an important issue.
Ms Fensham said while she was grateful the book was being published, she said the whole experience had shown her how difficult it was to break into the publishing industry.
Although she has won the Children’s Book of the Year award, Ms Fensham said it wouldn’t necessarily open the door for her to have other books published.
Ms Fensham is now hoping to write a children’s fictional book on Australian history because she said people are always saying how young people don’t know anything about the nation’s past.
She has also urged budding writers to seize the moment and sit down and write that book that they have always been planning to write.
“You often hear people saying ‘I am going to sit down and write some time, but now isn’t the right time’, but there is never a correct time to write,” she said.