Castle Crashing written by Andrea Rowe, illustrated by Hannah Sommerville
Published by Hardie Grant
Andrea Rowe speaks to Paperbark Words blog about Castle Crashing, her exquisite quintessential Australian beach holiday picture book, illustrated by Hannah Sommerville.
Castle Crashing is a 2026 Notable Book.
My inspiration
I have vivid memories of making sandcastles on one of my favourite childhood beaches, Pea Soup, at Victoria’s historic town of Port Fairy. While I am sure there were other families there, I always recall that my brothers and cousins and I had this entire sweep of sheltered shoreline to ourselves. It’s where we served our sandcastle building apprenticeships. And where I often felt all the feels too of sharing, compromising, being listened to, keeping up with others and creating sandcastles my way.
We had endless school holidays of packing hard wet sand, digging trenches, dragging driftwood and outdoing ourselves with sandcastle designs, while sometimes taking out each other’s creations with some sneaky sibling tactics.
So many of us have sandcastle memories like these – it’s one of the most accessible ways kids ‘beach’ across our coastline in Australia. And I’d always thought that the topic of sandcastle creating deserved a deep dive into building strategies in a children’s book.
Castle Crashing is the third book in the Jetty Jumping, Sunday Skating series that I’ve created with talented illustrator and my dear friend Hannah Sommerville, and our publisher Hardie Grant.
My writing process
The series has become well regarded in schools and with families, who often snare back with us how they connect with the settings and our wild bunch of outdoor kids. Writing the 3rd book in the series called for me to tap into our readers’ connections, while delivering a new storyline and character evolution.
I walk towards a new book in the series each time with grateful appreciation that there’s a tribe of people invested in our Aussie outdoor kids. This one felt personal as I was able to mine my own childhood for plot concepts.
And who doesn’t love a sandcastle? They’ve provided generations of kids with a canvas for architecture and adornment. Sandcastle building is a glorious mix of industry and creativity, and collaboration and compromise.
When it came to writing the third book in the series for Jetty Jumping, it took some time to land on Castle Crashing as the focus. Hardie Grant, Hannah and I shared a few ideas around, but as soon as we settled on the setting and focus, I was straight back to my childhood beach and all the feelings and memories that evoked. I could feel the expectation of the protagonists of our previous books, Milla and Clancy, peering over my shoulders with excitement too. Three books in and this series feels as much a document of their friendship evolution in the outdoors as it is my own creative writing, so I didn’t want to let the characters down.
Castle Crashing is Bonnie’s story and she’s that kid who likes to be in charge, and be heard. But Bonnie boils over when things don’t quite go to plan.It’s a book about crashing emotions, self-forgiveness, re-setting, finding our way back to friends … and making sandcastles!
I have always approached the coastline with eyes wide open for its treasures. Which is where my joyful knowledge of the adornments of sandcastles come in handy. But I have ears open too for conversations that families and educators share. Issues around emotional regulation and re-setting when friends fall out are frequent conversations, and one that I wanted to tap into to explore how Bonnie would move through these challenges.
Character driven picture books that have always appealed to me. I’m drawn to writing characters with that balance of familiarity and vulnerability so that young readers can identify themselves in stories.
I love writing from a lyrical space in storytelling and playing with alliteration. It’s a soothing and exciting way for me to write. I spend a lot of time creating word banks and playfully writing my way around descriptions of actions, setting and moods. It involves a lot of read aloud attempts to find the flow. When I find that lyricism in a sentence, it’s so satisfying – like it was there all along just waiting to have its moment on the page.
I’m thinking about my young readers too, and their grown-ups. Hoping that I might help them fall in love with words and how they sound aloud and silently in their heads as they follow along.
I’ve been told that my previous books Jetty Jumping and Sunday Skating have been such helpful tools for emotional regulation conversations, and I’ve heard that Castle Crashing is already doing the same. That makes me feel so useful as an author, while having fun being creative.
The wonder of illustrations and collaborating
And how lucky I am to create with Hannah Sommerville. She is a marvel!
Hannah and I have been collaborating on books together since Jetty Jumping came out in 2021, over that last 5 years and through 6 books (with several others currently in various stages of production). I find that I keep Hannah’s creative style front and centre for much of my writing. I’m acutely mindful of keeping that space for an illustrator to bring their unique skills and insights to a story.
In creating the manuscript for Castle Crashing, I thought about Hannah’s unique visual narrative style and all the details she’ll bring to the story. That helps me with the flow of my text and allows me to focus on my love of language and alliteration, while trusting that Hannah will complete the story with all the tiny noticing’s around our characters.
It really is a partnership, I may have started us off, but this book would never land as well if it wasn’t for the skilled hands of Hannah! My work’s done once the manuscript is finished, and aside from a few edit tweaks here and there, Hannah takes over with flair. I get incredibly excited seeing how Hanah sees a story and draws it on to the page.
Pages I love
There are so many spreads in Castle Crashing that I love and one is the opening pages ‘In the town with sleepy streets and tilting, sagging shacks, a twisty track spills on to sand’ as it gets me excited for the story to come. I love how the opening line of a book are like the curtains drawing back on a stage production.
When Hannah drew the accompanying image it’s so very similar to a town in NSW called Scott’s Head where I have watched my own kids build sandcastles in school holidays alongside my best friends’ kids when we escape Victoria’s winter each year.
And I’ve stood in Hannah’s own sandcastle childhood and motherhood territory too in NSW so I feel we have nailed both our landscapes and merged them so well together.
My other favourite page is the aerial perspective that Hannah created is where Bonnie is building the sandcastles by herself on one page, with all the kids on the opposite page captured from an aerial perspective. The accompanying text is ‘Sifting. Sculpting. Digging. Dumping. Raising castles one by one.’ I love how Hannah captures the focus and energy of the kids, each building by themselves but in close proximity to each other, and all those creative details that kids opportunistically create when given access to nature and its treasures.
Hannah really sees the space children occupy and I adore how she brings that to our stories.
I love reading that page to children and sharing the illustrations – I can see them carefully taking in all the sandcastle building.
Hope for our book
Making picture books with talented folks is so satisfying.
The Hardie Grant team are so supportive and committed to the high production standard of our series. It’s truly a team approach and I like to think that my Castle Crashing sentence ‘Special places matter when you make, them side by side’ also applies to us all creating quality children’s books for our readers.
It was especially lovely to have Castle Crashing recognised for its contribution to early childhood literacy as a recent Children’s Book Council of Australia Notable book for 2026, a terrific circle back to Jetty Jumping winning the same award a few years ago.
I have just toured with Castle Crashing this summer and so many multi generations of families have once again shared their stories of sandcastle building together, entering competitions, and annual traditions on the coast. I’m reminded that we are not just creating books about 5 kids we have come to know in the series, we’re creating books about the shared childhoods of so many people.
Along the way we’re inspiring conversations, creativity and new ways of exploring the outdoors along the way too. Watch this space, as we have more news about our adventuring outdoor kids to share soon too.
Castle Crashing at Hardie Grant
Review by Joy Lawn of In the Rockpool by Andrea Rowe and Hannah Sommerville for Books + Publishing https://www.booksandpublishing.com.au/articles/2023/10/17/238226/in-the-rockpool-andrea-rowe-illus-hannah-sommerville-little-hare/
Review by Joy Lawn of A Bigger Book by Hannah Sommerville for Books + Publishing coming soon.
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