Isa Pearl Ritchie drew on her own childhood experiences and got some help from her daughter to write Awa and the Dreamrealm – a book about a 13-year-old girl who doesn't know that what she's struggling with is anxiety.
Photo: supplied
Ritchie tells Jesse Mulligan that the idea for the book came to her in a dream.
“I was going to sleep one night, and I had this sort of strange semi-lucid dream, I think I was still half-awake.
“It was about this dream creature that came and visited people while they slept and whispered all sorts of inspiration to help them evolve and help the evolution of consciousness.
"[The idea for the book] was quite unusual, and it just brought together a whole lot of ideas that I'd had a whole lot of experiences that I'd had.
“As a young person, I really struggled with English literacy going into English-speaking schooling from kura kaupapa [(Māori-language immersion schooling] quite abruptly. And one of the things that really helped me to develop was reading fantastical stories.”
Isa Pearl Ritchie Photo: supplied
Awa and the Dreamrealm revolves around 13-year-old Awa Bryant, who is struggling with anxiety.
“She has to move and has to deal with all these life situations and she starts having lucid dreams and they become quite fantastical. So it's both fantasy and real-life and kind of pushing the boundaries of reality.”
Ritchie drew on her own childhood experiences to bring authenticity to Awa’s life.
“I think I was just quite prone to anxiety as a child but had no idea what it was because nobody talked about that when I was growing up.
“I just had such awful experiences with it, but from the outside, it just looks like shyness or you’re seen as a bit withdrawn or you're sort of trying to avoid things, but internally it's quite an acute experience.”
Awa struggles with her feelings and doesn’t understand she's experiencing anxiety, Ritchie says.
“This is something that Awa deals with in her everyday life, in her waking life and going to school. And I wanted that to be something that children who read the story might be able to identify with, if that's something that they've experienced, even if it isn't something that they've named.”
Ritchie’s own daughter provided invaluable insights for the book, too, she says.
“I started giving her little things that I was writing, and she would go through them. She put them on a clipboard. and highlighted all sorts of things that she didn't think sounded right … I really wanted to capture an authentic voice of a young person.”
Awa and the Dreamrealm can be found in independent bookshops. Ritchie says a second book is on the way.
