ABOUT SUSANNAH
Susannah Crispe is an Australian children’s book author and illustrator. Her first two books as illustrator were published in 2021, and first as author-illustrator published in 2022. Susannah has lived overseas and travelled extensively – highlights include polar bear spotting in Svalbard, canoeing in the Amazon and getting chased through a Patagonian bog in the dark by some sort of vigilante plover. She studied art history and zoology at university and volunteered with native wildlife throughout Australia. She worked in museums and bookstores for about 15 years, until discovering her true passion for creating books. 

Susannah works from her glorious home studio in Canberra; drawing inspiration and support from her rambunctious four year old son, step daughters, super-husband and the cutest dog in the world.

ABOUT THE BOOK
Under the Moonlight is Susannah’s first book as both author and illustrator. It is a gentle story about showing bravery in the face of your fears. Set in a snowy, Scandinavian forest, an enormous, brave and solitary moose settles down to rest. Unfortunately for Moose, his tranquil sleep is about to be shattered by a fright in the night. The story follows Moose as he shows great bravery in facing his fear of the unknown and investigating the source of the night-time fright.

THE HARDEST THING ABOUT WRITING UNDER THE MOONLIGHT
The hardest thing in writing this book was working out how to turn a nonsense monorhyme poem into story. Monorhyme is a poem where all the lines end in the same rhyme. You would be surprised how many words rhyme with the word ‘night’. Once I worked out a plot, I mapped it out in little drawings. In the finished book, the story is told in rhyme, not monorhyme – although I still snuck a few ‘nights’, ‘lights’ and ‘frights’ into the text.

THE MOST FUN THING ABOUT CREATING THIS BOOK
The funnest part of creating Under the Moonlight was illustrating it. Once the writing and editing were complete I could build the beautiful snowy, autumn scenes in the forest and paint Moose’s expressive face and awkward body. I loved filling the pages with little details like squirrels and owls for kids to spot. My absolute favourite part of the whole book are the endpapers, which add a little something more to the story and were a joy to work on.

WRITING PROMPT
Try creating your own monorhyme poem. Choose one word (it can be anything, eg. ‘cheese’, ‘moon’, ‘car’ or ‘head’) and write a sentence ending in that word. Next, use that sentence to start telling a story, but remember, each line must end with a word that rhymes with the last word of your first sentence. You can use real words, or have fun making up your own rhyming words.

ILLUSTRATING PROMPT
Look at the endpapers (page attached to the inside of the cover, front and back) of a picture book (hardbacks work best). Create an illustration about something entirely different, but using the endpaper pattern or part of the illustration in your own illustration. (eg. perhaps the pattern on the endpapers becomes a picnic rug or cape, or an animal from the endpaper design might run off with a string of sausages or a crown).