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Gisela (Gigi) Sedlmayer was born on 19 May 1944 in Potsdam, a suburb of Berlin in Germany.
Her family escaped to the West just before the infamous wall went up. They moved around in Germany until finally settling in Munich where Gigi studied architectural drafting and met Albert in 1965, marrying in December 1967. She worked as a civil drafts person in various private consultancies in Munich.
Since her uncle was a writer, she tried to write short animal stories herself. Nothing further came of it, but she developed a love for the written word and started to consume books.
In May 1975, Gigi and her husband moved to New Zealand. Because of language challenges, she started a handcraft business. As a specialty, she made colourful parrots of which she sold thousands in a few years.
In 1988, they decided to adopt and became adoptive parents of twin girls the year after. They lived in New Zealand for eighteen years and moved to Australia in September 1992.
Two years later Gigi was diagnosed with cancer. After operations and radiation, she withdrew, thinking that she would probably soon be dead, like her friend who died of cancer, but her two little girls gave her the courage to keep going. After two years, her brain started to work again, so she thought, ‘do something good with your life’.
Albert taught her how to use a computer and she wrote many short stories, one of them was the Talon series.
Reviewed by Sefina Hawke for Readers' Favorite
Talon: On the Wing by Gigi Sedlmayer is the second book in the children’s adventure series Talon. This is a book that would appeal most to an audience of children who enjoy animal adventure stories or stories where the main character has a disability. Matica is a young girl who is trapped in the body of a two-year-old; however, her disability is transformed from a curse into a gift when she realizes that her size allows her to fly on the back of Talon. Talon is a condor and the offspring of Tamo and Tima, who were rescued by Matica and her father from poachers. Will Matica come to embrace her disability or will she only ever see it as a curse?
Talon: On the Wing by Gigi Sedlmayer is a very sweet children’s book that would be perfect for children with disabilities or special needs as it teaches the valuable lesson of not allowing a disability to define a person. I found the adventure aspects of the story to be perfectly geared for young children and it reminded me a bit of the cartoons I used to watch as a child. I personally liked the way that the author not only created her own characters and plots, but also worked in real information about South American culture. The blend of fiction and non-fiction works perfectly in creating an attention-grabbing story that not only entertains, but also teaches! Overall, I found the book to be very well-written and while I found the story enjoyable as an adult, I feel that I would have enjoyed it much more as a child.
