By Melissa Grant
You could say storytelling runs in the family for children’s author Clair Hume.
As the daughter of popular author and illustrator Alison Lester, Clair was constantly listening to stories and telling her own from a young age.
However, her path to published author was a bit of a long and windy one.
Clair has just released her first children’s picture book, The Bad Bassinis, and jokes that she feels somewhat embarrassed about following in her mother’s footsteps.
“I guess she leaves quite massive shoes to fill, so the bar feels unattainably high!” she says.
“But at the same time, my brothers and I grew up around stories – telling them, listening to them and giving mum feedback on them as soon as we could talk – so maybe a natural direction was always going to be in storytelling and writing and shaping stories.”
Clair says it’s only through her job as a book editor that she has come to truly appreciate the work of her mother, who has authored more than 25 children’s books including The Quicksand Pony, Magic Beach and Noni the Pony.
“I was reading her books to my daughter a few years ago and had to call her to say, ‘Wow, these stories are really good, mum!’ because I’d always just taken them for granted I guess.”
Clair’s younger brother Lachie has written and illustrated two picture books and older brother Will is also a writer.
Clair and her brothers grew up in Nar Nar Goon where they filled their days mucking around outside with a multitude of family pets. A lot of weekends were spent playing netball and football, and going to pony club.
They attended Nar Nar Goon Kindergarten, the old Pakenham Consolidated School and Beaconhills before being shipped off to boarding college for the last two years of high school.
After school, Clair worked on a vineyard in Pakenham Upper and did some apple picking during the uni holidays. She even worked as a Santa’s elf during her Christmas break.
She completed a visual arts degree before moving to North Queensland where she learned dive photography and did filming for a while.
It was only when she returned to Melbourne and did a professional writing and editing degree at RMIT that she started to write more.
“Having some tools and understanding of the process was like a missing piece of the puzzle for me,” Clair explains.
“Picture books look deceptively easy, but they are quite the opposite.”
While Clair has dabbled in drawing, she collaborated with illustrator Tom Jellett when penning The Bad Bassinis. Characters, Tina and Sid Bassini, were inspired by Clair’s fondness of people who like to dance to the beat of their own drum. Subconsciously, however, the mother of two believes she was inspired by the transformative nature of becoming a parent.
Before having kids, Clair and partner Troy got a dog called Dave. The red heeler and Pomeranian cross inspired Clair’s first book, non-fiction title Do You Love Dogs.
The couple and their children (and Dave) last year relocated to Brisbane where Clair commissions the kids book list at the University of Queensland Press.
However, she loves returning to where her own story started.
“I’m lucky mum and dad still live in the house we grew up in. It’s such a lovely gift to have your childhood home to return to,” she said.
