Background
When her son was born doctors said he would not survive the week and later said he would never walk.
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The Burying Beetle (Gussie) by Ann Kelley (2005-07-01)
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01FEPJSVC/?tag=2022091-20
(The Burying Beetle ) Author: Ann Kelley Aug-2005
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0108DAC9W/?tag=2022091-20
The Burying Beetle (Gussie)
(It was after I ate King that everything started to go wro...)
It was after I ate King that everything started to go wrong in our entire family, as if someone had put an evil spell onto us, a hex - like a bad fairy godmother had said at my birth, when you are eleven you are going to be struck by a sorrow so big it will be like a lightning bolt. There will be grief like a sharp rock in your throat. Twelve-year-old Gussie was born with a rare, life-threatening heart disease, but it hasn't hampered her curiosity. When she reads about the Burying Beetle, which has the unusual habit of burying dead birds, mice, and other small animals by digging away the earth beneath them, it becomes her mission to find one. As she searches the Cornish coast for the elusive insect, Gussie learns be like the Burying Beetle, to bury things past and to live.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1905222084/?tag=2022091-20
Ann Kelley
Edit ProfileCareer
The Burying Beetle made the Branford Boase Award shortlist and The Bower Bird was Costa Children"s Book of the Year. Several collections of her poetry and photographs were published before she wrote the novels that are the first two in a trilogy. The Burying Beetle and The Bower Bird chronicle the story of Gussie, a 12-year-old girl who suffers from pulmonary atresia, a rare heart disease.
Gussie is marked by her vivacity and thirst for knowledge, living every day to the full.
The character is modelled on Ann’s late son, Nathan Kelley, who suffered from the same congenital heart condition. He had a passion for marine life and discovered two new fish cancers at the age of 16 (both registered with the United States Smithsonian Institution).
Nathan went on to study biology and space sciences at Reading University and University College London. He died at age 24, a week after receiving a heart and lung transplant in December 1985.
Ann began writing poetry years after Nathan"s death and published The Remedy in 1999 and then Paper Whites in 2001.
Ann"s first novel, The Burying Beetle, was published in 2005 by Luath Press Limited and Because We Have Reached That Place (poetry) was published by Oversteps Books in 2006. Ann has said about her books: ‘Gussie just came to medical I don’t write for children, I write for a reader.
My son knew that even with a successful transplant, in those days he would only have had a few more years.
But he was so happy to have been given that chance. I think that is why I write about Gussie – to make people see the importance of being an organ donor.
Please be an Organ Donor.’ She also conducts special study units in poetry writing for medical students and speaks about her work with patients at medical conferences. She is an honorary teaching fellow at Peninsula College of Medicine and Dentistry, University of Exeter and Plymouth.
Her collected photographic works are Born and Bred (1988) and Sea Front (2005).
Achievements
Works
book
-
The Burying Beetle (Gussie)
(It was after I ate King that everything started to go wro...)
- Sea Front
- The Burying Beetle (Gussie) by Ann Kelley (2005-07-01)
- (The Burying Beetle ) Author: Ann Kelley Aug-2005
-
The Burying Beetle (Gussie)
