An Interview with Niki Daly
The Process of Writing the Picture Book Pretty Salma
Writer and Illustrator Niki Daly talks about the process of writing his picture book Pretty Salma
Your story, Pretty Salma, is based on your interactions with a real refugee child who rang your doorbell every day on the way home from school. Can you say something about the way you took these real incidents and worked them into a text for a picture book? What process did you go through?
I bring together things that make a story in a very unclear and subconscious way. I felt I had a story after meeting Salma as though it was something she had just left with me by her presence. What enlivened me, I think, was coming into contact with a child who was totally intoxicated by her own imagination.
I have heard nurses and doctors who treat mad people say that they fear madness in the same way that one might fear a virus – something that can attach itself to you. I felt that way about Salma – that she could take me into her wild imagination - that in its most crude way was expressed in fibs.
What tales did her wild imagination tell you?
It was some time before I discovered that her family were actually Rwandan refugees. At one time she insisted she had an older sister at the University of Cape Town – another fib. So when she told me one day that a strange man had tried to pull her under the bridge down the road, I was really not sure if this was another way of getting attention - or the truth. As far as I know she has been kept safe and I like to think that she is a child who is cared for by angels.
How did you turn her story into a picture book text?
When it came to writing a cautionary tale, I had Little Red Riding Hood and a Tsonga tale – The Mbulumukhaza - to draw upon. Both are tales of interception by a villain who dresses up to deceive. The tactic used by Mr Dog to masquerade as Pretty Salma to gain her granny’s affection draws a bit more on the African tale than it does on Red Riding Hood. But there is a great deal of ‘Daly shenanigans’ that intercepts both stories.
So you wrote the book to warn children about stranger-danger? To warn children that they shouldn’t wander into the ‘wild side of town’ or ring stranger’s doorbells in case a bad person answered?’
Mainly, I wanted children to understand that people do bad things not because they are plain evil – but because they are damaged and unloved. And yes, I also wanted to warn them against such people.
Click here to read more about Pretty Salma by Niki Daly.
