starrynight17 asked Hester Velmans:

How did you come up with the idea of Isabel of the Whales?

Hester Velmans My daughter, around 8 or 10 at the time, was often frustrated that people didn't take her seriously just because she was little. I thought, what would it be like for her to suddenly find herself the largest, most powerful animal in the world? My first idea was to make it about elephants, but then I remembered my own childhood fascination with cetaceans, those fascinating and elegant creatures of the deep, and of course whales are the largest animals in the world, far bigger than elephants.

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