AS A LOCAL AUTHOR of children's literature, Karmel Schreyer has a growing international reputation. Her latest book, A Singing Bird Will Come, is the second of a planned trilogy featuring Naomi, a teenage girl not only struggling with adolescence but also the stresses of living in Hong Kong, thousands of kilometres from her native Canada. The first in the series, Naomi, The Strawberry Blonde Of Pippu Town, was set in Japan when the main character was 12, and was the subject of some active interest at the recent Frankfurt Book Fair.
Schreyer lives with her family in Discovery Bay and is a firm believer in using personal experience for inspiration. 'I think you should write about what you know,' she says. 'I was married here and my daughters were born here: Hong Kong is our home.'
She may have recently acquired a permanent Hong Kong identity card, but she knows how it feels to spend time away from home. Schreyer has not lived in her home town of Winnipeg since she was 14, or full-time in Canada since she was 21. She spent three years teaching English in Japan after graduating with a degree in political science and history in Australia. In plying her writing craft, one of her main aims is to empathise and sympathise with youngsters coping with similar displacement.
'Students from [international schools in particular] can relate to these feelings,' she says. 'A message I like to put into these books is that even if you are just a kid and you have to follow your parents around the world, you still can take a situation and turn it around and make it your own. It's all a matter of attitude.'
For Schreyer, Chinese proverbs don't just provide background material and form the basis of chapter headings, they also offer valuable advice. 'Expats wonder where their roots are. Chinese [people] will say things like 'A wise man will give their child roots and wings' and 'my destiny is right in front of me'. But though there are proverbs in every culture that say the same thing, we need to be reminded of them and to see them in print. This is very reassuring.'
Another part of her mission is to educate compatriots about the lives of people in Asia. 'People I know in Winnipeg are sheltered people,' she comments. 'They don't know about Asia really.'