Celia Berrell
A regular contributor of verse to the Commonwealth Scientific Industrial and Research Organisation (CSIRO) children’s science magazine, Double Helix, and Australian Children’s Poetry, Celia Berrell artfully combines science and rhyme. The poems from The Science Rhymes Book have been shared around the world, through school textbooks (in Australia, Canada, Ireland, India and Malaysia) and via the Science Rhymes website (www.sciencerhymes.com.au).
Born in Cambridge, England, Celia spent her school days in Yorkshire, later gaining a Certificate in Education from University of Oxford Delegacy for Educational Studies. After four years as a Mathematics and Science teacher, she left cloudy England to sky-dive in the sunshine. Arriving in Australia on a work visa in 1978, she later became an Australian citizen and considers life in Queensland as the perfect working holiday!
Childhood poetry icons include AA Milne, the author of Winnie-the-Pooh, and Edward Lear, the author of The Jumblies. She created her first poem, The Moon, at the age of four and has used poetry as a way of capturing snapshots of her world ever since. In 2008 she started combining snippets of science with poems as an educational resource. By 2010, with help from her alter ego, The Alien Queen of Science Poetry, she was encouraging young writers to create their own poems about science, for publication on the Science Rhymes website.