Yesterday was World Read Aloud Day and, on impulse, I offered to read to my colleagues at Curtin’s School of Education following our first whole school meeting of the year. It was especially lovely to introduce them to Head Hog, which continues to be my favourite picture book to read aloud during appearances and school visits.
You can see (and hear) the enthusiasm of my lovely colleagues – you are never too old to enjoy a picture book.
Enjoy!
My post about the origins of Queen Narelle has left me thinking about where the ideas for my other stories came from. So I thought I’d share perhaps the most ridiculous origin story.
The first two trade books I had accepted for publication were Doggy Duo, which
Doggie Duo
included two stories about dogs, and The Floatingest Frog, a picture book about, you guessed it, frogs.
One day I was talking to someone about my writing and they asked “what are you going to write next.?’ I don’t know what inspired me, but I said flippantly ‘Well, I’ve written about dogs and frogs, so I guess the next one will be hogs.’ I don’t remember if the person laughed, groaned or just smiled politely at that response, but the idea to write a book about a hog remained in my brain as a tiny seed.
It wasn’t the next book I wrote, but the desire to write a book about a hog didn’t go away. Eventually I brainstormed some ideas, and came up with the idea of a Head Hog. It reminded me a little of hedgehog, but also of Boss Hogg, a character in a 70s TV show.
I started asking myself what would a head hog be like. I decided that my hog would take
the role of being Head Hog very seriously – too seriously – so that it would take a much younger hog to show him how to have fun. And, eventually, I wrote the story that, after much revision and rewriting, became Head Hog, and was published by Koala Books with wonderful illustrations by Ben Wood.
Unfortunately, it is no longer in print, but I do still regularly read it at school and library visits, and it is a lot of fun. – and a reminder of how little ideas can grow into fun, complex stories.
Much much later I wondered if, having written about dogs, frogs and hogs, if I could perhaps write about logs. You can be the judge of the success of that: this poem is my very quick attempt:
Logs
There are many poems about frogs
There are many poems about dogs
There are many poems about hogs
But not many about logs
So let’s write about a log
And see if it’s such a hard slog.
A frog sat on a log
A dog sat on a log
A hog sat on a log
And that was the end of the log.
Proof that not all my ideas (or all my poems) are good ones.!
I still smile whenever I see the cover of Head Hog which, if you haven’t been following here, was released late last year. Illustrator Ben Wood did a fabulous job of the illustrations and the finished product is very cute.
If you’ve not yet had a chance to read the book, this could your lucky week, because all this week, Kids Book Review (KBR) are running a giveaway. All you have to do is visit their site and explain why it’s important to have fun.
Go on, enter. You know you want to!
