‘They don’t think it’s cool that I’m an author,’ says Albury’s Eleanor Pearson of her sons Henry, 13, and Louis, 10, ahead of the launch of her second children’s book. Photo: Briony Hardinge.
It took a bout of illness for Eleanor Pearson to truly stop and appreciate the wonder of the world around her.
The Albury teacher and author recalls that in 2023, when she became unwell for a time, she wasn’t able to walk as quickly or as far along the bush track next to her home.
But in slowing her steps, suddenly Eleanor started noticing more of “the wonderful things around me” – the sights, sounds and smells of her surroundings.
“It was seeing the world once again through the eyes of a child, when we dawdle … it felt like a gift and was a real tonic for my recovery,” she says.
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Eleanor found the experience so profound she wanted to share it – and thus the inspiration for her second children’s book was born.
On Saturday 29 March, she will officially launch The Girl With A Feather In Her Hair, at Trinity Anglican College, Thurgoona from 3 to 4 pm, with the book’s illustrator Julie Spencer.
The book invites the reader to take a walk in nature with a little girl who wears a feather in her hair and approaches the world with curiosity and wonder, Eleanor explains.
Along the way she rescues a beetle, carefully ducks under a spider’s web and feels the exquisite joy of pressing her cheek up against a tree trunk – in equal parts bold and brave, innocent and inquisitive, she says.
The reader is invited to take a walk in nature with a little girl who approaches the world with curiosity and wonder. Photo: Supplied.
Eleanor, a teacher at Trinity and mum to two boys, Henry, 13, and Louis, 10, says the longing to write has always been in her.
But it wasn’t until she had her own young children that she felt compelled to consider writing her first book about, well, books.
“I thought that there was a book missing that hadn’t been written, and I was noticing more and more children on devices to pass the time,” she says.
While reading books is considered a treasured childhood ritual, Eleanor wanted to foster the idea that books are great companions no matter where you are.
Her debut children’s book, Books Are Not Just For Bedtime, was launched in 2024 after a two-year journey from concept to publisher. It went on to win Best Children’s Book (Illustrated) in the ABLE Golden Book awards that same year.
“I was so excited to win that award,” she reflects.
“I didn’t know if people were just being polite, like my family and friends who said they loved it.”
Now Eleanor happily reads the book to her Year 3 students and says it’s a pleasure to share her words with “children who get so excited that their teacher is the author”.
Although, she laughingly admits, her own boys (including her husband) are not quite as thrilled about her publishing success.
“They definitely do not think it’s cool that I’m an author or that I’m having a book launch,” Eleanor says.
Still, she says, it has been a thoroughly enjoyable experience to put onto the pages the simple pleasures of life: “the joy of going for a bush walk, the joy of reading a book”.
The pages of the new book are brought to life by the exquisite water colour illustrations of Julie Spencer, Eleanor says.
“I’m originally from the UK and she’s a French national so we found working together really interesting,” she adds.
“While the bush walk represents the walk I do next to my house, it is easily translatable to other places thanks to Julie’s drawings.”
As for the girl with the feather in her hair?
“I’m that girl with a feather in her hair … you’re the girl with the feather in her hair … it’s any of us,” she says.
Eleanor Pearson and Julie Spencer will be available to sign book plates (with books available for pre-order) at the Saturday 29 March launch at Trinity Anglican College. To find out more or book an author talk go to the author’s website.
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