Mammoths & me
I LOVE mammoths! They're huge, furry and cute - like dinosaurs but not scary. And they can teach us so much, and spark our imagination.
They were absolutely massive, could have giant tusks bigger than a small car and guess what? They had a flap to protect their bottom from extreme cold! (Think Mammoth underpants!)
I write under the name SJ Poyton, but you can call me Sally. I've always loved writing and drawing, and I'm so grateful to create amazing stories for a living.
Some fun facts about me...
I have a four-foot-tall dinosaur in my hallway. He's bright green and was a present from my dad!
I wrote nine novels, one novella, one chapter book and 14 picture books before Mammoth Rider was published, so never give up as you never know when you might make it!
I once had a fully grown lion in my garden. My parents didn't believe me until the newspaper wrote about it!
I have dyslexia, dyscalculia, and dyspraxia — so words, numbers, and even shoelaces can be wobbly!
Bonus fact - I carry a tiny mammoth in my handbag everywhere I go, just in case, as you never know when you might need one :-)
Visiting museums is one of my favourite things to do. I love checking out the fossils, and natural history - mammoths, naturally, but really I love all kinds. Dinosaurs, dodos and passenger pigeons are favourites. But really, any kind of fossil or fauna and I'm there!
I've visited museums all over the world - this one's in Leiden, Netherlands - the Naturalis Biodiversity Center. It's a really fantastic museum. And look at how big those tusks are!
This is Tuskforce! It's a huge palaeontological dig at Cerney Wick (near Cirencester). It's hard to put into words how exciting it was to be involved in unearthing these amazing finds - it really was a dream come true. I've always wanted to hold a mammoth fossil in my hands, and to be part of the team discovering them was unbelievably exciting.
The site hosted over 200 volunteers in total, and some truly amazing things were excavated, including ice age giant horses, bison, rhino and of course - mammoths! So far there have been mammoth skulls, teeth and my favourite of all - tusks. Seeing a tusk in the ground for the first time was something I'll never forget. Carefully scraping away the sediment to reveal it was nerve-wracking but so much fun!
So how did I come to write Mammoth Rider? Well, some of the best advice you will ever hear about writing is to write what you know. And there is nothing in the world I know more about than mammoths! I think they were truly incredible creatures. They walked the earth for 5 millions years evolving into different species to suit the changing climate. These giant creatures weren’t just survivors—they were nature’s helpers, keeping the eco-system in balance.
Writing about them meant learning even more about their world and how complex and vulnerable it was. In most parts of the northern hemisphere, mammoths died out at the end of the ice age around 10,000 years ago (although some small populations survived for a few thousand years after that). They would have lived alongside our human ancestors, and were hunted for their meat and fur. To write a story bringing them back to life was an enormous privilege, and I loved every minute of it.