Goodreads asked Shelley Sackier:

Where did you get the idea for your most recent book?

Shelley Sackier Dear Opl was born in front of the white polar bear tank in the middle of the Sydney Zoo. My son, at the time, was about six or seven, and had a million questions where the answers required either an encyclopedia-sized brain or the ability to creatively lie because you didn't have a clue, but didn't want him to realize it. I was forced to go with option two.
He was a character that was desperate to be within the pages of a book, and so I began keeping a notebook of all his queries. Everyone else simply fell into place around this precocious younger sibling. He is the glue that holds the story pages together.

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