Sidney, B.C. author Diana Schaffter says she travelled to track and observe animals featured in her children’s novel, Armando and the Amazing Animal Race.
The Story
Sidney, B.C. author Diana Schaffter used extensive travel to research the animals at the centre of her award-winning children’s adventure book, Armando and the Amazing Animal Race.
Schaffter travelled to the countries where her novel’s protagonist searches for seven endangered animals during a 70-day race, including southern India to track wild cobras, Vladivostok, Russia, to observe Siberian tigers, and Israel to seek desert leopards.
The book, written for students in grades 4 to 8, has won numerous awards, including the Green Earth Book Award for Environmental Literature.
In describing the premise, Schaffter said the story follows a 12-year-old boy from Vancouver who has never travelled before and ends up joining the race around the world with his “wacky British grandmother” to photograph endangered animals and solve a family mystery.
Schaffter also spoke about trying to make the story realistic by researching animal habitats through travel, describing a trip to the Brazilian Amazon in search of the pied tamarin monkey that included two weeks of attempts to locate the animal, followed by an apparent breakthrough on the final day.
She said she chose the animals before her research trips, selecting them to represent different ecosystems and cultures so the book would broaden kids’ “global vision.”
Schaffter added that her husband worked with UNICEF and that, through her own work in international schools and time abroad, she learned from observing how people live in different places.
She said she wants children to be fascinated by real animals, pointing to how she sometimes found kids could share more facts about video games than about animals such as polar bears.
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