OUR CLIENTS
Kim Caraher
Children’s Fiction Author
Sadly, Kim Caraher passed away in 2007 after a long battle wth cancer. Kim was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland. She moved to Africa when she was seven, and lived in three countries before she came to Australia. The characters in her books often start at new schools, since she has plenty of experience of that! She eventually settled in the Top End of Australia – Crocodile Dundee country. Kim loved being with children, and reading to them as well as writing for them. She spent her time writing and working in schools and libraries – and doing a million other activities with her own three kids. In a child-centred world, every day there is something new, something unexpected, something hilarious. Kim captured some of that sparkle in her stories. For her, reading was about fun and excitement and that is what she brought to children in her books.
The Cockroach Cup was published by Random House in 1998. It was a Children’s Book Council (CBC) Notable Book in 1998 and short listed for the 2000 West Australian Young Readers’ Book Award. Everyone is looking for a top cockroach to win the Cockroach Cup. From the moment that Cool scuttles out into torchlight, he – or is it she? – is obviously a champion. But Cup Day brings more than a few surprises. My Teacher Turns into a Tyrannosaurus was published as an Addison Wesley Longman Supa Dooper in 1996 and is about a small child’s school fears and how they are overcome. Over 50,000 copies have been sold in the USA and Australia. Up a Gum Tree was published in the second series of Supa Doopers in 1997. Yucky Poo, a Macmillan ‘Cracker’, was published in 1998. Young readers will love the revolting things the baby of the family eats.
Kim wrote two stories for older readers in the Pearson Education “Trend” series. Goanna Anna (1999) is about a girl who moves with her hippy mother from Melbourne to Humpty Doo, where she has to cope with camping, nude beaches, touring around market stalls and crocodiles. In Kakadu Nightmare (2001) a group of teenagers are trapped in a resort in Kakadu with a wierd man who is obsessed with knives and horror movies. Will they make it out alive? In 2003 Kim wrote Clinging to the Edge for Pearson’s second “Awesome” series, also for older readers.
Random House published Kim’s final book for younger readers, Zip Zap, in 2001. This special tale, illustrated by Geoff Kelly, is about a computer game with a difference. Zip, the frill-necked lizard who is the star of the game, gives Jerome three wishes. However, they don’t work out the way he expects!
As well as writing for children, Kim helped children and adults develop their creative and business writing skills, through workshops and presentations to schools, businesses and at the Northern Territory Writers’ Centre. She presented workshops for the Nestlé Write Around Australia and the Literacy Picture Conference in Darwin. In 2005, Kim went to the ‘Remote Area Literacy Festival’. Some authors, artists and performers camped at a bush race track with a few hundred Aboriginal children, their families and teachers. There were workshops under trees and tarpaulins, while the desert wind whipped around, and the temperature climbed (with the sun) from below freezing to T-shirt weather. She also reviewed books for the journal, Magpies, was a Children’s Book Council Judge and was on the planning committee for the ReViews Conference held in Adelaide, Australia, in 2005.
GOLVAN ARTS MANAGEMENT • PO Box 766, Kew, Victoria 3101 Australia • golvan@ozemail.com.au