My toes wiggled as I giggled, listening to Larissa Thompson narrate my Puffin Explorers series audiobook (available on Audible). Another fun part of being an author is listening to the characters come to life in a whole new way. Making sure each word from the audiobook matched the new eBook version of Iceland: The Puffin Explorers Series before giving the book my blessing for launch.
“Slip, slide, jerk, jolt, and ’round and ’round we’ve spun.
Carefree and out of control, we’re having so much fun!
Skidding on ice we tumble and roll,
Over this glacier that is more than two thousand years old!”
When I wrote these books, one of my goals was for each line to be true to the facts. In this section, Árni and Birta have “slipped” onto something very old, and out of breath with laughter, the two pufflings (young puffins) found themselves being compared to penguins.
“We can’t get to our feet, or even our side.
This ancient ice has gotten the best of our pride.
We are not penguins, it’s totally true,
We admitted as we flapped our swift wings—and flew.”
Laughing at my characters as I pictured them fumbling on the ice, even today I can envision the puffin colony on those glorious cliffs in Iceland. They entertained us all day long, and how easy it was to imagine them sliding down a glacier’s frozen river, crash landing on the tongue, then shaking it off and flying away swiftly as if nothing happened!
Finding a balance between story and facts, the book was a slippery slope of its own, but now reading the eBook along with the Audible is a whole new adventure. Looking back on the process and the finished products, I enjoy knowing that young children can enjoy the story and older can explore into the lines, while learning interesting facts about a country and all of Iceland’s magnificent resources.
eBook and Audiobook sold separately.
RA Anderson 