Jodie Brownlee
Jodie Brownlee is the author of the Ruby series – Ruby Rosemount and the Magic Carpet, Ruby Rosemount and the Travellers Telescope, and Ruby Rosemount and the Doomsday Curse - a fantasy trilogy for upper primary ages and older.
Ruby Rosemount and the Magic Carpet was nominated for the CBCA Book Awards, was Dymocks Critic's Choice and Angus and Robertson’s book of the month. Ruby Rosemount and the Travellers Telescope was nominated by young readers for the W.A. Young Readers Book Award. The books are published in Australia, New Zealand and Italy.
Each book follows Ruby and her two friends Jaffa and Avalon on some exciting, even dangerous adventures where genies, villains, sand sprites, charms, dungeons and an underground maze test all of their powers - including the ones Ruby still doesn't know she has.
Jodie spent her childhood in a rural suburb with her family and motley band of pets which included Cohuna the one-eyed horse, Bruce a water loving spaniel, and Toto a blue budgie who never shut up.
Originally Jodie wanted to be something exotic and magical like a genie. After a while she realised this was never going to happen so she set her sights on becoming an elephant rider in a circus, a movie star, a musician, an artist, an architect, an interior designer, a zoologist, a vet, a travel guide in far flung places such as Bhutan, an air hostess, and a photographer for National Geographic.
What she actually became was a hairdresser, a bar tender, an art student, and a backpacker travelling around California in a rusty VW beetle, across India in a red double-decker bus, and through the desert on a camel. She tootled around Europe in a small van with a dodgy fan belt and no spare tyre, beach-hopped the Mexican Baja picking up two stray Aussies, several Californian banjo players and a crusty old hippy in need of a beard trim. She partied in Vegas, relaxed in Jamaica, cleaned houses, painted fences, catered for dinner parties and waitressed. She became a photo researcher in Sydney, and a Greenpeace photographer ending up in helicopters, on the Rainbow Warrior, and zooming about in inflatables. Her skills turned to web design and teaching before she decided (at age 34) that writing was the career for her.
Jodie loves to show young people how they can write their own stories because having a little know-how is the first important step to bigger things.
Feedback from school visits
'Jodie is lovely and so very honest with the children.' - Sue Gough, Teacher Librarian St Luke's Grammar School
'We all enjoyed your talk and I know you inspired the teachers who were there, as well as the children.' - Claire Weiden, Teacher Librarian, Malanda Primary School
'Your visit will live long in the memory of my three daughters who all thoroughly enjoyed your visit.' - Frances Dall'Alba, Parent.
'Awesome!' - Emma, Student at Malanda Primary School.
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