Diana Neild

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

NEILD, Diana (1961 - ) is a children’s author and was born in Hamilton, attending Te Akau Primary School, followed by Waikato Diocesan School for Girls as a boarder. Her occupations have included flute teacher, mother, musician and ‘maker of rhyme’.

Neild writes about her book, ‘One of my aims in writing Piggity-Wiggity was to create a set of characters with credibility. I don’t know the formula of how to do this, my only tool is patience, and to know when I’ve got it right. I’m very happy that the Jig family turned out as they did.’

Of Piggity-Wiggity’s popularity with children and adult readers, Gillian Vine says, ‘Diana Neild doesn’t use baby language; the Jigs' family home is ‘30s construction with only one story,’ and has ‘a surplus of playthings and marginal space’. It makes a pleasant change from baby-talk vocabularies.’

Piggity-Wiggity Jiggity Jig was chosen for the LIANZA National read-aloud book for Library Week in 2008. Piggity Wiggity Jiggity Jig won an Honour Award at the 2009 New Zealand Post Book Awards for Children and Young Adults, and was listed as a 2009 Storylines Notable Picture Book.

Piggity-Wiggity Jiggity Jig Goes to Dad’s Café (Scholastic, 2009), illustrated by Philip Webb, is a follow-up to Neild’s first book. ‘Complemented beautifully by Webb’s humours illustrations, Neild’s faultless rhyme and imaginative text just trip off the tongue and begs to be read aloud to ages 3-7.’(The Children’s Bookshop, March 2009, Kilbirnie). The work was a finalist in the picture book category of the 2010 New Zealand Post Book Awards for Children and Young Adults.

Diana Neild lives in Palmerston North, and is available to visit schools as part of our Writers in Schools programme.

MEDIA LINKS AND CLIPS

• Videos of Diana reading her books