Grace Darney holds up her new flip-book for children. It’s about a boy and a girl who only turn left and right, respectively. Photo by Trevor Nichols
Most adults who pick up Grace Darney’s newest book can’t instantly figure out how to read it properly: when they see the “flip me” prompt in the middle they spin it around, turn it upside down or just generally look confused.
The kids, though, always seem to get it.
Darney seems mostly amused by this, which makes sense considering she wrote The Girl Who Only Turned Right/The Boy Who Only Turned Left for kids in the first place.
The charmingly illustrated flip-book features the parallel stories of Jesse and Oliver encountering fluffy dogs and scary parrots as they walk along their street. One half follows Jesse as she turns right around her block, the second half (which you read by flipping the book around and starting from the other side) follows Oliver as he turns left.
Darney said the idea for the book came to her as a surprise, when she was working for Statistics Canada confirming street addresses. Going through a neighbourhood she had to continuously turn right to ensure she hit every house. Her husband joked that she should write a book a girl that always turns right, “and that’s where that little germ came from,” she said.
Once she decided to make it a flip-book, she had to scrounge the only flip-book she could find from the library’s children’s section, just to make sure she got it right.
From there it was a year-long process to get the book completed, which Darney said was a “very interesting” experience for a writer new still new to the publishing game.
For years Darney worked as a technical manual writer for a software company. Although she always had an interest in creative writing, it wasn’t until she retired that she finally found herself putting pen to paper.
“It took some doing to change over from bulleted lists to being creative. It was there, but it wasn’t something I found I could do easily,” she said, calling technical writing a “totally different ball of wool” from creative writing.
But even when she was up to her ears writing Lynux manuals, Darney said she was always writing poems or taking creative writing classes at night.
“The interest was always there, but I just didn’t do it,” she said.
Now that she is doing it, Darney said her grandchildren are one of the main reasons she keeps writing. Her book is dedicated to her “wonderful grandchildren,” and she said it’s because of them that she writes primarily children’s books: she writes the books for them.
“I just like telling stories for kids, and getting into that mindset of theirs,” she said, talking about the voices and performances she likes to put on when she reads for children. Her face lit up as she talked about the kids she recently read to at her grandson’s school
“They just sat on the floor and they were just watching, watching and listening, listening,” she said, smiling.
Darney’s book is now in circulation at the Okanagan Regional Library. To buy a copy email [email protected].
By Trevor Nichols
