About the Author
Why I Became An Author
Born in 1949, I spent my childhood roaming free in the countryside learning from Nature, about Nature. There is little I have learned since from humans that goes deeper or wiser.
During my student days I learned about biology and ecology, giving structure to my understanding and deep love of Nature.
I'm now in my seventies. I have seen in my lifetime the catastrophic destruction of Nature that is only recently being acknowledged by politicians and industry.
Climate breakdown and ecological collapse are already so far advanced as to constitute the sixth mass extinction event, caused by human activity in this new geological era, spookily called the Anthropocene.
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Here I am, showing Mowzl his first book. I am aware that young people today face a future more challenging than anything I can imagine. This trilogy of books is for all children everywhere; Mowzl speaks his heart-thoughts to the hearts of children, looking the future in the eye.
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Paul
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Thank you, Mya-Rose, Birdgirl, for interviewing me!
Mya-Rose Craig, a young naturalist, has a mission. By means of her writing, talks and use of social media (to mention just a few of her many activities) she strives to – “do everything that I can to save the environment from damage, and to persuade people to do the same. I want everybody to be involved in this world-saving campaign.”
Greatly impressed by her achievements I got in touch to ask her if she would be willing to write a blog about Mowzl. She agreed, and the link below will take you to her blogsite where you can see her article about Mowzl and her other wonderful writing.
A few more thoughts
Being outdoors in Wild Nature has been essential to me since childhood. As a student in the 1970s studying biological sciences and ecology, it was clear to me even then that Wild Nature is in big trouble. Habitat loss and species decline has escalated since that time to become the industrial scale destruction of the natural world that we now see happening all over the world.
Human beings, and particularly children, have less and less access to Wild Nature. There are ever more sophisticated means by which children are enclosed and separated from Wild Nature, including the increase of technological substitutes. As successive generations benefit less from contact with Wild Nature, they know less about it and hence care less for it. The continued degradation of the natural world goes mostly unchallenged, even unnoticed.
Nature conservation may not, at first glance, seem an exciting subject for a children’s story, but when the wilding of the natural world is extended to include the wilding of children’s hearts and lives, anything can happen.
This novel, to be published in three volumes, is devoted to bringing these issues into the children’s domain, inviting children to ask the questions and to see for themselves – see what is missing that their hearts yearn for – and to support and encourage them in creating a platform for rebellion.
I wrote the above in October 2017 when preparing the Mowzl manuscripts for publication. Since then there have been many dramatic changes in public awareness of, and attitudes to, the climate and ecological emergency.
Young people are now becoming aware of the chaos escalating all around us, and it is they who will suffer the consequences of ecological breakdown. People with the power to change things are trapped by outdated values and beliefs; they are paralysed into inaction. But children are not limited by the idea that humans are more important than any other life forms. It is the young who are making the leap that is needed, and in so doing awakening the rest of us.
The Mowzl trilogy is a contribution to the growing call for us to open our hearts and listen once again to Nature herself, listen for the wisdom of life itself – rather than merely the mind of mankind.
Paul
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Nothing in the cry
of cicadas suggests they
are about to die
Haiku attributed to Basho 1644 – 1694