When I was studying professional writing back in my younger days, I enrolled in an incredibly fun subject called ‘Children’s Writing’. Naturally, one of the major assignments was to produce a children’s book. As in… write one and put it in a book format, including illustrations… just like I used to do when I was 8 writing my Lucky Series.
Now, you think that writing a kid’s book is simple. And it kind of is… but it’s also kind of not. I remember spending a lot of time thinking… and not coming up with much.
And then one day I was on a bus trip from Melbourne to Sydney for band camp, and in the space of 10 minutes, I scrawled the story of Henry has Hiccups out on a piece of paper.
That became my assignment.
And if I don’t say so myself, it’s pretty good children’s book. Though, not good enough to be published (I did half try).
And so… my proud mum… published it herself.
She knew someone who liked to dabble in art and drawing, and after a conversation they agreed that he would draw some pictures for the book.
Admittedly, I was a little embarrassed. Drawing images for an entire children’s book was a kind of a mammoth task, of which there was likely to be little reimbursement. And let’s not forget this is a book that I’d spent a total of 10 minutes coming up with text.
I figured the project might just die in the water. Surely, he would lose interest when he realised all the work that was involved.
And then my proud mum presented me with an actual book, complete with title, illustrations and my name on the cover! She’d scanned in the drawn images and added text using one of those ‘online make your own photo book’ type things.
So, then I became the proud mum of a book.
It feels silly, but it also felt good. And even though I told my mum at the time not to do it (because it really wasn’t worth any of the time and effort), I’m glad she did. And a big thanks to Bernard for the great illustrations!
It’s only had one print run. And it’s been distributed freely amongst my mum’s friends. Sam owns a copy, of which he has little interest in. But maybe he’ll grow into it.
an aussie in austria 