Junior School pupils were today amazed by a visit from Mo O’Hara, author of the My Big Fat Zombie Goldfish series.
Mo spoke with the children about her creation, Frankie the Zombie goldfish of the title, and about being an author. She said the idea came from a childhood incident when she had won a goldfish in a faiground contest. When the time came that the goldfish “went belly up”, she and her brother decided to see if they could revive him. They set up a battery with wires and touched the wires to the fishtank. “Basically, we defibrilated the goldfish,” she explains. The pet revived, to the delight of Mo and her brother.
Years later, Mo wondered about that incident, “What if he came back, but he came back somehow “wrong”?” And from there, Frankie came to life. She said he is “more of a Caribbean zombie instead of a scary flesh-eating zombie.” O’Hara’s accessible storylines help young readers to deal with bullying, with varying levels of humour that will appeal to a range of age groups.
The children had the opportunity to ask Mo all kinds of questions about her books, and what it’s like to be an author.