Rosi Ngwenya's childhood fascination in ants leads to her debut picture book, BrilliANT, a quirky 16-word tale with words only ending in 'ant'.

What do you love about writing?

Over the years, writing has been such a constant for me. It helps me to make sense of my world and my poor memory relies on it too. I soon discovered the power of storytelling with children and I love retelling nature’s own stories by capturing the wonder than already exists in the world around us.

BrilliANT is your debut picture book. What inspired you to write it?

I always thought my debut children’s book would be inspired by my background in dentistry and be related to bacteria. But, after really leaning in to picture book writing and exploring my own voice, I was lead to this quirky little story about another small and often overlooked creature.

Did you have any personal experiences that contributed to this book?

I’ve always been so fascinated by ants. When I was about 6 years old, I watched two ants working together to save another from the edge of the kitchen bench and I was so captivated by the scene. So ever since then I never miss an opportunity to peer into an ant nest, watch them carrying their food through the grass or to follow an ant trail to see where it leads.

This is a unique 16-word picture book, narrated by words that end in ‘ant’. What was your writing process for this book?

BrilliANT came to me in a dream after I had been thinking about how formidable ants would be if they were giANT. After realising that many other words that describe their qualities were suffixed with ‘ant’, I started compiling a list. I didn’t want to forget any of the words while I was in bed, so I used the same technique I use for remembering my grocery list - creating a little story. I thought it was pretty funny, so I wrote it down and there was the first draft.

Were there any things that surprised you about the editing and publishing process?

As a new author, I was so surprised about how collaborative the entire process was! It was also surprising at how much time, effort and investment from the publisher goes into the creation of a single picture book. Riveted Press have the most welcoming community of creators and have been so wonderful to work with.

What was the biggest hurdle in writing BrilliANT?

There are too many words that end in ‘ant’ and plenty didn’t make the final story! But, personally I was actually very nervous that the quirkiness of the book and its minimalist storytelling may not appeal to many. I’m so happy to have been proven wrong!

What do you hope your readers will take away from BrilliANT?

With it’s minimal words, there is so much space for a reader’s imagination with this story. BrilliANT also offers an opportunity to introduce words into vocabulary and provides a fun visual tool to help distinguish between -ent vs -ant suffixes. How great to be able to remember how to spell a word like ‘militant’ by recalling the image of an ant in a soldier’s uniform! I also hope that readers will be more curious about ants and their world beneath our surface.

What was it like to work with an illustrator on this story? Were there particular images or experiences that you were excited to see?

For a manuscript with more illustration notes than text, there was a lot of pressure on the illustrations to hold the narrative. However, I didn’t have any expectation for the story’s visual concept, so there was a lot of excitement for the reveal. Sandy Flett’s incredible hand-drawn illustrations have animated this story so perfectly, but the obvious standout are the end pages - Sandy has taken ant puns to a whole new hilarious level!

Do you have any other projects in the works?

I have plenty of characters yet to be brought to life and I’m enjoying experimenting writing for different age-groups. I still want to publish a dentistry-inspired picture book, so my current project is a humorous story about the microscopic sugar-bugs that create dental cavities.