Newspaper article 2015 – Slippery tails win sisters more success

Slippery tails win sisters more success

By Nicki Harper

The creators of a series of books based on their real childhood adventures, including on the family dairy farm near Takapau in the 1960s and ’70s, have won more awards for their latest title.

The Eel Hunt is the third instalment in the picture-book series, Tales from the Farm, written by Jennifer Somervell and illustrated by her sister, Margery Fern.

It recently scooped three first-place awards in the United States-based Purple Dragonfly Book Awards for cultural diversity, best cover design and interior design. It also achieved second place in the historical fiction category. The Eel Hunt is based on a real eeling expedition in the early 1970s on the Manawatu River, where things did not go according to plan, said Somervell.

“While the story is true, the New Zealand longfin eel is the only species in the world and is now ‘at risk’ so we included an educational section about its life cycle and how to protect it.”

The first book, The Day Dad Blew Up the Cowshed, has sold out twice and is under revision for a reprint. “This is a true story about our Dad blowing up the old walk-through cowshed to make way for the latest and greatest (back then) – a rotary turnstyle,” Somervell said.

Their second title, The New Old Truck, about the rescue of the family’s 1921 Republic truck at the family farm, Silodale, at Otawhao, also won two first~place awards in the same competition last year.

A new book is in the pipeline for publication later this year.

Drawn from Somervell’s childhood experiences raising pigs, it features Josephine and Napoleon, two naughty pigs that keep charging electric fences with hilarious consequences.

“This could be my favourite,” she said. “. . . Josephine and Napoleon are such characters and Margery has captured them beautifully.”

The Eel Hunt is available at Take Note, Paper Plus and independent bookstores, and from [www].talesfromthefarm.co.nz

Photo caption – TOP TITLE: Margery Fern (left) and Jennifer Somervell with their latest award-winning book, The Eel Hunt.