Literary success shared by Teesside University academic

A new children’s novel penned by a Teesside University academic has been ranked as book of the week by The Times.

Rani Reports on the Missing Millions is a collaboration between games animation lecturer Dr Satish Shewhorak and his wife, full-time author Gabrielle Shewhorak, who also writes using the name Gabrielle Kent.

Their book follows the story of budding journalist Rani Ramgoolam, the novel’s British born Mauritian protagonist, as she teams up with her Nani, who is visiting from Mauritius, to follow a series of mysterious clues in her search for a winning story for the local newspaper’s junior journalist competition.

Profiled by The Times as its Children’s Book of the Week, Rani Reports on the Missing Millions is described as a “zippy caper that warns of the danger of fake news”.

Satish said: “Growing up, I rarely saw anyone who looked like me in books, film and television, and never anyone from Mauritius, where my parents were born. It was important for us to write a children's book with a British South Asian main character as we want our daughter to see families like hers represented in the books she reads. We’ve even shared a special family recipe in the back of the book, as well as a Mauritian creole glossary.”

“Statistics show that in recent years, almost ten percent of schoolchildren were defined as being South Asian, yet they are represented in less than one percent of children’s literature.”

Satish is a member of the POC in Play organisation which aims to improve representation within the games industry and is also currently researching the level of minority ethnic representation within videogames over the previous decade period.

He added: “With the journalism angle of the story, we hope to encourage children to think about the stories that they consume and question the facts and their sources.”

Gabrielle added: “We were thrilled to see Rani named as Book of the Week in The Times, where it was heralded for its messages about truth seeking and not believing everything you read on the internet. With so many ways that children absorb news today, it can be hard for them to know what to trust. Hopefully Rani’s love of story hunting will raise an army of truth-hunting junior journalists, while teaching them about the importance of fact checking as Rani explores print, online and video journalism over the three book series.”

Gabrielle, who is both a graduate and former member of academic staff at Teesside University, is no stranger to literary success, having previously published two successful children’s books series, Alfie Bloom and Knights and Bikes.

More recently Gabrielle also collaborated with Teesside University Honorary Graduate Rhianna Pratchett on upcoming Discworld book Tiffany Aching’s Guide To Being A Witch. It marks the 20th Anniversary of Terry Pratchett’s first Tiffany Aching novel The Wee Free Men and the first time Rhianna has contributed to her father’s body of literary work for children.

Rhianna, an award-winning writer for games, comics, film and television, has also been a guest speaker at Teesside University’s annual Animex festival. She received an Honorary Doctor of Arts from Teesside University in 2017.

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