J: Hello and welcome to UWA interviews.

My name is Jade, and today I have the honour to be interviewing famous children's author Leslie Brandt, who has created quite a stir with her latest release: a re-imagining of the Greek myths for children, mainly focusing on the journey of Odysseus but also including some other famous myths like that of Orpheus.

Leslie, thank you for being here today

 

L: No problem

 

J: I had the pleasure of reading a copy of your latest book, and it certainly takes a different path from that of the original myths.

To start with, the introduction of morals to the stories. What made you decide to add morals?

 

L: Well, all good children's stories have morals, they teach very important lessons in early life.

It did mean I had to take some creative liberties with some of the myths. Take the Orpheus tale, I had to tweak it a bit so that the moral 'You can do anything if you try hard enough' would fit, but I don't think I went too far from the original myth.

 

J: The changes to the Orpheus myth is something that seems to have generated some controversy among your fans. The tale of Orpheus as it is known today is considered a classic tragedy, and your version deviates from this significantly.

What do you think about the backlash you have received?

 

L: Well, like I said, I don't think I deviate very far from the original version of the myth. If these people want to complain about me writing an educational and safe for children version of the Greek myths, well then it's quite clear they don't care about preserving childhood innocence!

 

J: I see... the "safe for children" aspect has also caused some... mixed reviews. For example, in the main Odysseus story, the cyclopes has been depicted as a lonely kind soul who just needs some company. These sort of changes have caused some complaints that the stories have been "overly sanitised"-

 

L: Well that's just ridiculous! My re-imagining is not meant for adults, it's meant for little children who should be protected from stories that would give them nightmares and traumatise them! A monster that eats humans has no place in a children's story!

 

J: Okay... what made you decide to re-imagine the Greek myths in particular?

 

L: Two reasons. Firstly, there's hardly any child friendly versions of them out there. Secondly, to be quite frank, I had a publishing deadline coming up, and I was suffering from writer's block. I figured it would be easiest to re-imagine existing stories than to create new ones

 

J: That makes sense. Last question: Do you have any idea what you might write next?

 

L: Not really. Maybe some more Greek myth re-imaginings, although I have been considering writing some history books for schools, the history books they have there at the moment contain content that really is not suitable for children of such a tender age, and they should contain clear and simple morals to learn from

 

J: I see. Well, thank you for your time, and have a nice day

 

L: You too

 

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