Corinne Fenton writes under her childhood name to thank her parents for giving her a lifetime love of books and words. “My favorite thing is to sit with a manuscript searching for the most perfect words.” She started writing poetry at age ten, but was too embarrassed to show anyone, so she hid it under her bed!
She lives in Melbourne, Australia, and is a children’s author with a passion for picture books, especially those about social history. She writes the kinds of stories that tell us who we are and make us remember where we came from. Her books are enjoyed by readers ages four to ninety-four.
She loves to go on long walks, which she believes helps with the jumble of words often bouncing about in her head. When she goes walking, Corinne has a habit of rescuing lost animals — anything from dogs to chickens. There has even been a pony and a goat!
Most of her books are about animals, and she really can't explain how that happens.
Under the name Corinne King, she served for almost eight years as the Assistant Regional Adviser of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators in Australia.
In 2014–2015, she was the judge for the primary school category of Australia’s Dorothea Mackellar Poetry Awards, reading and judging 6,000 poems.
The most exciting thing to happen to Corinne in her writing career was when her book Little Dog and the Christmas Wish was chosen as the theme for the Myer Department Store Windows for their sixtieth anniversary Christmas display in 2015. The windows were awarded second place at the Global Department Store Summit 2016 in the World’s Best Store Window Campaign at a Department Store.
Bob the Railway Dog is Corinne's second book with Candlewick Press. “Mum, I hope Bob the Railway Dog comes to visit me in my dreams tonight,” a young boy recently said to his mum following her reading of the book. Bob the Railway Dog follows her much loved Queenie: One Elephant's Story, the true story of an elephant who gave rides at the Melbourne Zoo for almost forty years, also published by Candlewick Press.
|