I wrote this book for many reasons. One was to give parents a good, fun book to sit down and read aloud with their children. The meter and rhyme scheme are catchy, and children will want to hear it again and again. I purposely wrote in rhyming verse because, as a parent and a teacher for many years, I know that children love and respond to stories in verse eg. Dr Seuss books. I also hope that children will love the story and will want to read it themselves, that it may even help children learn to read. They will hear the same words over and over again as others read the story aloud to them, and they will begin to recognize and remember word shapes and sounds, and begin to read themselves. I wrote the story as a Fairy Tale because children (and adults) have always, and will always, love a good Fairy Tale. I wrote this book to empower young girls. “The Girl on the Hill” tells the story of a young girl who is sought after, celebrated, and ultimately richly rewarded for her own special magic. I very puposefully changed the ending that concludes most Fairy Tales, where the girl marries the Prince, “and they all lived happily ever after”. Not in THIS story. The girl decides her own future and determines her own destiny in a literary twist at the end that will have girls laughing, and saying, “Yeah! I’m going to be like her!”
