It is full of happy memories of holidays with my children. I go there to rest and unwind and sometimes to work in peace because there is no telephone. It is small and snug and I can watch the blue-green sea and the little harbour from my window. We don't know how old it is, but it had to have a new roof after some marauding Spaniards set fire to it in 1590. My cottage in the little Cornish fishing village of Mousehole.

This makes it easier to see mistakes and to put them right.Ī sailing holiday in the Greek Islands with my children and my husband, the summer before he was killed in a road accident. Then go back to your story and try to read it as if someone else had written it. Write your story, then put it aside and do something different. Read lots of books by good writers and try to see what it is that makes you enjoy them.ģ. To create good characters, you have to be able to imagine yourself in someone else's shoes and know how they would feel.Ģ. You must be interested in people and all ages. For the Dancing Shoes series I had help from my daughter Gemma, who did ballet lessons from the age of three until she was fifteen.Ĭan you give your top three tips to becoming a successful author?ġ. The Ghosts was inspired by a visit to an old house The Ring in the Rough Stuff by going sailing with friends on an old Thames Barge and The Mousehole Cat by a song I found in Cornwall. Often from my own life or other peoples'. Most recently I wrote Tales from the Ballet and then, for Puffin, the Dancing Shoes series about Lucy Lambert who wants to be a ballerina. My picture books for younger children include The Mousehole Cat about a fisherman and a cat who live in my Cornish cottage (see Favourite Place). Now a new film version is planned, as well as a stage musical version.

My second, The Ghosts, written two years later, was a best-seller and was filmed as The Amazing Mr Blunden in 1972. I wrote my first children's novel in 1966. The African Queen with Katherine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart 'Every Time You Say Goodbye' by Ella Fitzgerald Her novel, The Amazing Mr Blunden, was runner-up for the Carnegie Medal. Antonia is well-known for such best-selling picture books as The Mousehole Cat (with Nicola Bailey) and Catkin (with J P Lynch). Antonia Barber really knows about ballet - her daughter studied ballet from the age of three and attended the Royal Ballet School junior associate classes at Sadler's Wells.

The Mousehole Cat by Antonia Barber