Ms Harkin told BBC News NI that she wanted to write a book specifically for children.<\/p>\n
“My family and I know so many people this affects, and I understand how difficult that conversation with kids can be,” she said.<\/p>\n
She graduated last summer from Queen’s University Belfast’s broadcast production programme, and her final project was a documentary about defective concrete blocks. <\/p>\n
“Working on that inspired me to explore other creative projects around this issue,” she said.<\/p>\n
“After graduating, I worked as a special needs assistant in a primary school, where I was in contact with so many children in affected communities, which sparked the idea for the story.”<\/p>\n
She said she wanted to keep the book “melodic and light for young ears, but without downplaying such a huge issue”. <\/p>\n
“It took a number of rewrites to balance the harsh reality some children face with a positive, child-friendly outlook,” she added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ms Harkin told BBC News NI that she wanted to write a book specifically for children. “My family…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":160401,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[64,63,457,134],"class_list":["post-160400","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-books","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-books","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160400","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=160400"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160400\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/160401"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=160400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=160400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=160400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}