Melbourne-based author Louise Fedele has loved reading and writing for as long as she can remember.

Her career took several turns, until being a parent in lockdown propelled her to become a children’s author.

Welcome Louise, thanks for spending some time talking with us.

First, let’s talk about you: do you read a lot?

I don’t get to read these days as much as I would like to, or as much as I used to.

On my holidays before having kids, I would always take a suitcase or a separate bag just with books. And my husband was the same. We would pile them in because that’s all we wanted to do when we were on holidays. That doesn’t happen anymore.

Most of my reading now is done before bed, that’s my wind-down time but it’s hard because I fall asleep. So it’s a few pages at a time rather than whole chapters or whole books.”

What are you reading now?

“I read pretty broadly. I get given a lot of books because people know I love to read. I generally will read anything I’m given, at least give it a go and see if I can get into it.

At the moment I am reading Trent Dalton’s Boy Swallows Universe – yes, I know I am pretty late to the party. I normally don’t read really dark subject matter, I like to read books that are quite light, entertaining, maybe suspenseful but not dark because I read it before bed.

But I just had to read this because so many people had recommended it to me and I’d heard so much about it. I’m about halfway through and I’m really enjoying it.

The only genre I don’t get into is fantasy. I haven’t read Lord of the Rings – well, I tried – but I just haven’t been able to get into that genre at all. I don’t think I’ve read a whole fantasy novel, ever.”

It suddenly feels important to ask this now: Do you think the Harry Potter series counts as ‘fantasy’?

“I think Harry Potter is broader than fantasy.

I read some of it when I was younger, but even then I never really got that into it. I guess it is unusual for someone who loves reading to say this, but I haven’t read the Harry Potter series. Which is probably something I shouldn’t admit.

For some reason I prefer novels that are set in the real world, I guess.

Looking back, what do you recall about your parents and carers reading to you as a child? How do you think that has shaped your life?

Reading has always been a huge part of my life – not just being read to, but seeing my parents reading.

They always had a book on the bedside table, there were books on the coffee table, there were just books everywhere and they would talk about the books they were reading. That had a really huge influence on me.

My parents had shelves lined floor to ceiling with books. They still do actually, there is a big, almost library or reading room at their house. From when I was little until now, it was always easy for us to just pull a book of a shelf and read a few pages – and I still do that now.

I also have really fond memories of visiting our local library. Once a week all the kids in my family would go down with Mum and we could choose however many books we wanted or however many we were allowed to borrow.

We could choose whatever we wanted – there was no vetting, except for age appropriateness of course – and I have very, very vivid memories of how exciting that was, for me to be able choose whatever I wanted and whatever I was interested in.

Libraries have always been really important. They have always felt like a really safe space for me as well, from when I was a kid.

When I was younger I was also always writing. I wrote stories all the time when I was little. No matter what we were doing, I always had a notebook and a pen and I was writing a lot.

Definitely the love of reading and love of writing co-existed for me, from a very young age, and they fed into each other. Whatever I was interested in at the time, I would be reading about it and I was often writing about things that are similar.

Usually the space and time to read as a child came at bedtime, and that has stuck with me now. I am very protective of the reading time that my kids’ have at bedtime.

That ritual of reading before bedtime actually led to your first children’s book, All the Love in the World. Can you tell us how this book came about?

We were reading so much during lockdown. I had so many kids’ books at my house and we must have read all of them about twenty times.

At night-time, after we had read the books, I decided to start my own story-telling with my children, and it was about how I loved them so much but I couldn’t tell them how much I loved them.

At that time in lockdowns, the world felt so far away, that one way I could tell them about it in these four walls was to tell them about different countries.

So my stories were about travelling to different countries to find ways to say I love them, and it always ended with me saying I don’t have enough words to say how much I love you.

And then I started to write that down, for them. I just jotted down little notes about what we had talked about in the stories.

Then I decided to actually develop it because it started to feel like a good story that others might connect with.

And that’s how I started my writing journey.

What came before that? Tell us about your path to becoming a children’s author.

My journey to being a children’s author has not been linear.

English and literature were always my favourite subjects and my strongest subjects at school, I’ve always had a keen interest in them. I probably could have pursued something in the writing space straight from school, but I went down a science path and became a physiotherapist.

I did that for a number of years in private hospitals and private practice, and there were aspects I really enjoyed. But it didn’t really fulfil my need to write. There was basically no writing at that time, and I really missed that.

Then I changed course and became a lawyer. After about five years being a physio, I went back and did another undergraduate degree to become a lawyer because I wanted to do something where I could write and I could utilise my skills and interest in writing. I was also really interested in a lot of the legal subjects.

A lot of people ask me why I made the change, it’s quite a drastic change, and it actually involved a health scare I had in my mid-20s and that changed my thinking at that time. I decided to leave physio, I took a year off, and I worked for a publishing company for a while and I wanted to pursue that interest.

But it really only arose because I was re-thinking my path following a health-scare – so that’s actually why I changed.

So then I worked a bit in private practice, I did some work for government, I worked for a court…I did a few different things with my law degree and really enjoyed it.

But I still was missing the creativity that comes from writing what you want to write.

Then when I had kids, I needed to stop doing something so stressful. So I stopped working as a lawyer for a period of time and my husband and I started a family. Then I decided to take some time away from law because it was very demanding, and I just wanted to spend more time with my family than that would have allowed.

I started to do little bits and pieces of writing at that time just to keep myself interested, and it wasn’t until COVID-19 struck and the lockdowns that I really pursued trying to write something that other people might read.”

What are your top 3 tips for parents and caregivers to enjoy reading to young children?

“Firstly, I suggest taking the child’s lead and letting them choose the story or the book. Even if they choose the same one a hundred times. There’s a reason they are choosing it, and if that means they are reading and engaging with story-telling, well that’s great.

The second thing, I think, is to expose kids to as many types of books as you can. You might be surprised at what interests them.

Libraries are an amazing resource for that reason, because the kids can really go wild and choose whatever interests them and that might be a range of topics or genres.

Even at pre-school age it could be they are interested in non-fiction. They might be keen to learn about bugs or space or something and so they might migrate to those topics.

Or it might be that they are really interested in stories about what you think is slightly older than them – so they might choose ‘early readers’ even if they’re not at that stage yet, because they like looking at the pictures and making up their own stories.

If you expose kids to a lot of books you might be surprised what they choose.

Third, and this is a big one for me, make reading a time for connection.

Let them ask questions, let them point things out in the story, take an interest. It will benefit both of you. Even if you’ve read the book a thousand times, and the actual reading is boring, that time with your child is a really important time for connection.

There’s so many benefits to connecting with your child while reading, I think.”

And I have a fourth tip actually, one that’s not really about reading to your kids, but it is so influential.

Let your kids see you read for enjoyment.

I’ve become a lot more aware of that recently, because I read at night and then I realised my kids weren’t seeing me read for enjoyment.

So I’ve started to try to model that a bit more throughout the day, even for short periods, to pick up my book and even read one page or two pages.

My children are always watching me, so they see me do it, and I think it’s more likely they will do it too.

Thank you so much Louise!

Discover more about Louise Fedele.

* The image on this blog title is sourced from Amazon.com