Meet the Author: Jackie French

by Mia Macrossan

Jackie French AM is an Australian author, historian, ecologist and honourary wombat (part time); 2014–15 Australian Children’ Laureate; and 2015 Senior Australian of the Year.

Instead of hobbies she has written over 200 books which have sold millions of copies and won over 60 awards in Australia and internationally. Others were eaten by the wombats. Jackie writes for adults, young adults, and even younger humans, on history, ecology, and her award-winning historical fiction for all ages. Do explore her website where you will find a fascinating glimpse into her life, her writing, her books and great tips for your own writing.

Her book about WW2, The Mushroom in the Sky is one of the three titles shortlisted for the  2026 Book Links Historical Fiction Award. Jackie kindly agreed to answer some of our questions which she did with her usual generosity.

Why do you write for young people? They are the most honest audience: they will never say they love a book if they  hate it. They are the most important audience: a book can change a child’s life. A book can change the world.

They are the most needy audience: few young people get much conversation at home, just remarks while everyone looks at a screen. They don’t get the stories or the poems of my childhood, the time Uncle Harry didn’t catch a fish or the dog fell out of the car. They don’t know their family history or values; they often haven’t even had enough long meandering talks to learn how to concentrate. A book can be the family and the neighbourhood contact they have never had. One book will give them the experience and wisdom of half a dozen characters.

They are the most enthusiastic audience. If you want to feel like a rock star, write a book for 10 – 14 year olds then walk into a classroom.

They are the most discerning audience. Adults need to focus on paying the mortgage. The job of a kid is to work out how and why the world works. So often reluctant readers are given short funny books – and read them, if they have to, but don’t become passionate readers. The magic book is the one that speaks to a child, often a longer book filled with ideas and new worlds.

But I really write for people, not just an age group. The worst sin is to write down to a child, with a cliched plot and characters and nothing much to say – and simple language.

If a five-year-old can read ‘velociraptor’ they can read almost any word – and understand text even if it has unknown words in it. If they book grips them, they’ll keep reading…and by chapter four will have added twenty-six words to their vocabulary, increased their empathy and understanding of the world, and had more fun than anything they’ll find on the screen, because in a book they are truly in the world on the page.

You are remarkable in always finding something new to say about a familiar subject. Why did you choose to write about this aspect of WW2? I grew up in the shadow of World War two. Nearly every adult male I knew had been damaged in some way, often irrevocably, and in most cases, in the war with Japan. Yet as I grew older I met other POW’s who spoke of extraordinary kindness and friendships  that lasted lifetimes. I also loved the true story of the old woman who took in dogs left by servicemen.

But the real impetus came when I read a book of oral history. Like most people, and despite all my research, I had never come across the ‘100 million Glorious Dead Campaign’; never knew the military had kidnapped Emperor Hirohito to stop him surrendering, or of his rescue by palace guards – that was why the two bombs were necessary. The military had issued cyanide tablets for every school child, to be administered in the factories where most were now working. Civilians were also given tablets or had to say how they would suicide once the first US foot stepped onto Honshu.

Hundreds of thousands of ‘suicides’ – more likely murders- had already occurred at Okinawa. How could this have been kept secret for so many years? For the Japanese, liberated from military dictatorship, it was dishonour. The US wished to keep Japanese bases. The first use of atomic bombs in warfare is one of histories vital turning points, and yet even most historians have no idea of the context. I hope this generation of young people will know the facts, given in story form so they can visualise the time, but just read the facts. They can then judge not just the past, but the decide the future.

I can’t say I am a fan of the title, The Mushroom in the Sky, although I can’t think of a better one. Why was this one chosen? The book is based on oral histories of those who were there. Two witnesses described the ’mushroom’ but it also has sentimental value. The first poem I wrote, at seven, used that phrase:

Nagasaki

You lie there somehow little girl:

Did you suffer, did you cry

Was there time to wonder why?

Was Heaven in that mushroomed sky

When you died, little girl?’

Hopefully my writing has improved since I was seven, but the image has stayed with me. There is also a  deeper reason. The myths of those events have grown from various interest groups, from the numbers injured to the reasons why they occurred. Almost no one knows the context of the bombing: it was kept top  secret at the time by both the Japanese and US governments. We cannot judge the past – and our own humanity – if we don’t know the truth.

Writing historical fiction requires a lot of research. Is this a pleasure or a burden? Can you tell us a bit about your process? Research varies with each book. Much of this one comes from the stories of my youth of first hand accounts of POW’s in Japan. Part comes from Cinesound Australia, where I found the story of the dogs. I also read several hundred oral history reports taken in 1946-7 in Japan; the diary of a Jesuit priest who saw the Nagasaki bombing and helped, and who also knew the social background of the time; old newspapers to see what the immediate reaction as in Australia and much more. It was a delight, taking secrets from so long ago, so many stories, substantiating claims, till they became a pattern: history, then turning that history into a story.

Our reviewer Jenny Ruge, notes ‘Readers expecting a warm and fuzzy dog story may be disconcerted by the depth of war detail’. How do you decide what to put in and what to leave out? How do you shape the story? Hopefully the cover and title tell readers this is a story about what led up to the two atomic bombs, and their aftermath. But I had to leave out most of the horror – the voyage on the ship was limited to Ossie’s friends, with no reference to cannibalism. Ossie is also sent to a factory POW camp, where there was less cruelty, often kindness, and an attempt to make food and health as good as possible under the starvation of all of Japan at the time. I also added the dogs, as a relief from both the fear and boredom of the POWs. Both can co exist, and Ossie’s routine once in the camp was almost unvarying.

Your stories are well known for their wealth of domestic detail, the clothes, manners, customs and particularly the food of the time is always lovingly described. Is this because you know that children are greedy little creatures always interested in food, or for some other reason? Tell me what you have for breakfast and I’ll tell you about your life! Food is a useful and easily understood index to a society as well as individuals.

You cleverly manage to give equal importance and value to both Kat and Ossie’s stories, thus showing the experience of war at home and at the frontline. I assume this contrast was intentional. Were you ever tempted to just tell one person’s story? And, if so, whose? Why have this split focus? (Although it does provide a beautiful touching ending). I intended two books, but as I researched I could find too little about Kat’s story, and Ossie’s needed the relief of dogs and love. I finally realised both should go together. But I also knew that one of the hardest aspects of war is that only those who have been there understand. I wanted Ossie to have someone in his life who understood what he’d been through, but who hadn’t suffered it, so could hear his stories and comfort inevitable nightmares without anguish and memories of her own.

Our reviewer Jenny Ruge, says at the novel’s core, you issue an invitation: to ask, was it worth it? Were the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians and the destruction of whole cities worth it to stop the war in its tracks, to prevent the deaths of many millions more? Why do you think it is important for young readers to confront these sorts of questions, difficult for adults, let alone children aged 12+? The book shows that there were only two choices: 100 million Japanese dead – or more likely 10 million, which was the official estimate of those who would suicide without choice – and the dead of 200,000. We have been given a myth: a choice between kill no one, or kill 200,000 to stop the war. Those bombs were the fault of the Japanese military dictators, who preferred a nation of dead rather than ‘dishonour’ and who kidnapped the Emperor to stop him surrendering even when loss was inevitable with the Soviets invading at the Nort and the US at the South.

Kids these days know about genocide: they see it almost every night on tv. A book is a gentler way for  them to see what humanity can do. A book gives the how and the why, so young people can make up their minds about good and evil, and how dictatorship arise and whole populations be subjected to them, instead of the superficial horrors they see on the media.

I wish these matters could be left till children are older. But they are already grappling with (unfounded) fear that ‘the world may be under water by the time I am 30’. Almost every child surveyed is scared of the future. This book is an antidote: we can survive. We can work together to stop evil, or at least soften its effects. This is why it happened. What can we do to stop it happening again?

Kids see the horrors, but not the context. This book has a ‘happily ever after’. It has people helping each other and finding joy, love and fulfilment in doing so. A book is filtered by children’s imaginations, not the graphic horrors on a screen. We can’t ignore that more than nearly 50% of young people feel that preparing for adulthood may be futile; that the horrors of war are inevitable, or worse, fun to play on graphic video games. I wish I could protect these kids. I can’t. But I can give them tools to cope, to survive and to thrive.

What do you hope people take away with them after reading The Mushroom in the Sky? The droppings of those bombs wasn’t a simple ‘good versus evil’. It was a choice of evils. Sometimes there is no ‘good’ choice, and you must make a very hard one. Don’t blame yourself when this happens to you: do your best. That is enough, and more.

The history we are given is often myth, mistakes, or lies, even in major events like the end of World War 1 or the abdication of the Duke of Windsor or what happened after the explosion on Apollo  three, what was Cleopatra like, who began Australia’s wool industry or who were the aviators who saved England in the Battle of Britian. None of the popular beliefs are correct, and yet movies are still made of the myths even though the truth is easy to find for all of them. How do we find out the truth? Look hard enough and long enough- and in archives or diaries and oral histories, not news media –  and you will eventually find it. If six sources who were there give the same answer, you probably have found it.

The most profound fulfillment is helping others – especially when times are hard for you, too. When you are sad, angry, lonely or hurt, try helping someone else. It can be magic. Ossie and his mates survive because they support each other: be there for your friends.

War is usually fought in stupid ways because of orders from high up from those who know little about tactics and sometimes don’t care who suffers . Both sides usually have leaders who are inept, which is why wars can drag on for a long time, and many, or most, have no true resolution. How can we stop this? Should we study ‘peace studies’ as well as studying wars?

I am reading your latest book, Cleopatra: The Girl Who Would Be King (Heroes in the Ancient World, #1) the first in a new series, which is both great fun and totally fascinating for all its historical detail.  What is your next project? Carrie and Caroline: Most of the stories for young people about Caroline Chisholm are often repeated myths – no bushranger ever ask her to find him a wife and she took only one party of girls inland- but her political lobbying changed Australia. The book is from the point of view of one of her pupils, to give scope for adventure, eccentricity and fun, but also to show the massive social change that lad us to become a nation.

Escape from Pompei: One 12 year old slave boy can’t escape Vesuvius. But one boy, a dog, a one armed gladiator and the elderly woman who makes the best snail soup in Stabiae have a chance …if they can work together.

Easter Wombat (With Danny Snell) (April 2027)

Tell us about your own reading: 

Your earliest reading memory – ‘Bobs’ ‘Seven o’clock! Time to get up said Bobs. Bobs jumped out of bed.’  It was the first book I ever read to myself, about a cat and a mouse who eventually become friends. I was three, living with my great grandmother, who hadn’t been a teacher, and married women weren’t allowed to be teachers, but who as a teacher’s wife has spent 40 years showing ‘the littlies’ how to read.

Your favourite book/author growing up – there were at least a hundred! At seven I loved The Famous Five, Huxley’s Brave New World, Mitchener’s Hawaii (and had nightmares about tsunamis and volcanos) Biggles defies the Swastika (an old book of my Uncle’s)  The Magic Pudding and The Great Dialogues of Socrates’. Socrates was my secret friend – he encouraged the youth of Athens to ask questions. Back then the adults of Brisbane didn’t think this was a good idea.

Is there a book that changed you? All of the above, except perhaps Biggles. ‘The unexamined life is not worth living’. And that I wanted to live in a market garden and orchard with lots of pudding, good conversation of an evening and all the fruit and veg I could eat. But Jane Eyre influenced me more. She is encouraged to live a wealthy immoral life ‘because no one cares about you.’ She declares ‘I care for myself.’ Her integrity didn’t depend on other people: she did what was right.  No one cared for me through much of my youth, beyond some of my magnificent teachers and my grandparents, too far away to help except in brief periods when they came to Brisbane to take me on holiday, but because of Jane Eyre I refused the offers that would have been wrong, even if they might have made life temporarily easier.

I need to emphasise that my youth coincided with a bad period for my parents. Life was different for my much younger brothers and sister. Neglect also gave me enormous freedom, in what I did, what I read, and the characters I met who were far removed from normal family life. At 12 I washed up at Mater Mother’s hospital and  learned how to make batches of 200 lamington. At 16 I worked for a private detective agency to  help pay the shortfall in my university scholarship. I learned how to survive but more importantly, how to find protectors and teachers like Kath Walker/Oodgeroo of the Noonuccal,Auntie Mug/Maureen Watson/  the women in a meat factory, none of women had English as a first language, and how you wash  a school uniform and even dry your hair for free at the wonderful Ladies room at the Town Hall. A unconventional childhood led to an unconventional and confident adulthood, willing to take risks – like being. full time writer and build a house. Both the house and the books became unconventional too.

The book you are reading now is Jo Walton’s Everybody’s Perfect. It is strangely brilliant, a superficially mundane account of an extraordinary and diverse society, seen by varied participants. It should be boring, and yet I read it once and am immediately reading it again.