Julia Johnson: I want people to learn about the real Dubai

The story offers an in-depth study into local culture through her protagonist Hessa, a 10-year- old Emirati girl who expresses an enduring passion for the sea and the environment and who dreams of becoming a marine biologist when she grows up.

As an expat, Johnson, originally from Yorkshire, England, admits she was mindful not to “step on any cultural toes” in her quest for authenticity during the development of Hessa’s character. When working out the details of the little girl’s home life – delving into her relationship with her father, uncle and older sister after the death of her mother, and the impact of that loss on the family – Johnson took her research seriously.

“I had a lovely conversation session with some girls at the Latifa School for Girls in Dubai,” she says. “I wanted to discuss their family relationships, particularly with their parents and what their ambitions are, and how they see their future.”

Johnson’s books are targeted at a young audience (eight to 12 years old), but her stories cross the boundaries between young and old and have proved entertaining to the occasional adult reader keen on enriching their knowledge of the UAE.

The Turtle Secret has already initiated dialogue about conservation of the natural environment and the role of women in the Gulf – thanks to Hessa’s ambitious spirit. “Women here are becoming all sorts of things – pilots, doctors, etc. Things have changed over the years,” Johnson says. She also feels strongly about not patronising younger readers. “It’s totally unnecessary to talk down to children,” she says. “How is their vocabulary going to get richer if you do? If I use a word a reader hasn’t used before I’d expect the reader to understand it because of the context. I believe the teachers call them wow words nowadays.”

Travelling around the UAE conducting workshops and talks in English language schools, Johnson has seen her books (and ‘wow words’) become an integral part of the curriculum to help expose expatriate students to UAE culture and history. But she insists this was never intentional: “The fact that my stories may have an educational content is incidental,” she says. “Yes, I want readers to know more about the UAE. But I don’t write to teach people a lesson. It’s a subliminal thing that happens because you’re trying to make a story and the setting real.”

“When we first came here it was just an adventure,” she recalls. “We thought we’d stick around for a year or two, explore, discover and then something went wrong, or in our case right, and we ended up staying!”

Johnson has a son and a daughter, who are both in their mid-30s.

Her eldest, Emily, settled in the UK with her husband and three children and illustrated Johnson’s rhyme books A is for Arabia (2012) and One Humpy Grump Camel (2005).

Johnson’s son Alexander, 35, currently lives in Abu Dhabi. “I’ve been lucky enough to be a part of old Dubai and see it evolve and bring up my children here,” she says.

Johnson’s love of drama led her into a creative field of work on first moving to the UAE.

“A friend suggested I read children’s stories on the radio,” she says. “I did and also started reading bedtime stories for children on TV on Dubai Channel 33.”

While her first love is “dressing up and acting out stories”, she’s kept writing close. “Writing was always there, even when researching stories I’d read on the radio or compiling the odd article,” she says. “I’ve always jotted down notes on how to improve stories or ideas for new ones, even before I actually wrote my first book.”

Shortly afterwards, events took Johnson back to the UK where she stayed, enrolling her children in school there, until her husband’s work brought them back to the UAE in 2001. She then got to work on her first novel, The Pearl Diver (2001).

Six-year-old Saeed’s experiences in The Pearl Diver echo Johnson’s feelings of her first scuba dive and she admits finding it easier to write from personal experience.

Johnson, now in her 60s, grew up on a mini-menagerie at home in the north of England surrounded by enough animals to fill a pet shop. She had a dog, rabbit and guinea pigs, donkey, a crow and a ram, to name but a few. Johnson credits her mother Barbara for inspiring the long-standing animal themes in her work. “My mother was a very thoughtful animal lover, so I’ve always had that and my love of animals has always transferred into my storytelling”.

The likes of the Saluki Hound of the Bedouin (2005) and her popular novel The Leopard Boy (2011) followed – the latter dealing with little goatherder Khalid, who lives in the mountains of Oman. The boy meets an old man who teaches him about respecting and protecting the beauty of a leopard they encounter.

The Leopard Boy successfully raised awareness around the world about the endangered Arabian leopard. Johnson explains: “In the Eighties there were still Arabian leopards here in the mountains of Ras Al Khaimah but, unfortunately, people in the villages didn’t realise how endangered they were and if they saw one they’d shoot it. You can’t blame them as their livestock was at risk and they probably didn’t realise what a valued tourist attraction they could become.”

Johnson feels she is doing her bit to help spread awareness on environmental issues. “We all think ‘what can I do to save the planet?’ But everybody can do something and for me it’s writing stories.”

Now she looks for ways of channelling her love of adventure into her stories instead. “I like writing an exciting story, reaching a climax,” she says. “I like to think of my readers as detectives piecing together the pieces of information as a character like Hessa gradually pieces together the same puzzle.”

She does, however, regret not learning Arabic herself. “If you go to the mountains here there are still some people who have interesting stories to tell me. But the language barrier plays havoc,” she says. “You have to get out and talk to people.