My first children's book

My first children's book.


I'm not sure why it hasn't occurred to me before. This whole wonderful business of writing can spark off so may ideas, thoughts and images that to quote Forest Gump. You never know what you're going to get!

My three books have given me a healthy appetite for the written word, the descriptive phrase and a whole confection of sweet sentences. I've written three books that have taken me by complete surprise but were nonetheless wonderfully therapeutic, liberating and good for the soul.

Now though I face my latest challenge. In a sense it's probably the easiest assignment I've ever presented myself with. I'm going to write a children's book and it is in theory not only the most rewarding of challenges but one that reminds me of how much pleasure it was to bring up our two wonderful children.

All being well my children's book will be both amusing and heart- warming. It is my guilty pleasure and at the moment I'd like to keep it under wraps. But I hope you'll like it's gentle flow and rhythms, its sweet innocence, its feelgood factor, and its re-assuring light heartedness.

I can still remember reading one of JK Rowling's Harry Potter's classics to our son as a child and wondering at the time whether I could ever aspire to reaching that very exalted level of literature. I can't rightly remember which Harry Potter book it was. But subconsciously I think it must have resonated with me, galvanising me into getting something down on our PC.

It's hard to believe how dramatically different my childhood was compared to that of our daughter and son. I come from the pen, pencil, A4 paper, ink blotter age where school desks were completely defaced by smudges and pen stained desk lids.

My childhood was dominated by Enid Blyton's Famous Five, Kenneth Graham's Wind in the Willows, Rudyard Kipling's charming Jungle Book and a whole variety of schoolboy and girl adventure stories. If you'd told me what a children's book would look like in the 21st century I would have roared with laughter and scepticism.

What was a Kindle? What was an E-book? Childhood literature couldn't possibly translate into the modern electronic age. How could you possibly read Enid Blyton on a Tablet or an I- Pad. And yet it does look an attractive proposition. I'm probably an old fashioned fuddy duddy who cherishes the good old days but hey why not? All books are there to be remembered and never forgotten.


So it is that, very slowly and surely that I piece together my first childrens's story. It is like a jig saw puzzle but a perfectly straightforward jig saw puzzle, In a way I feel like the child who excitedly rips open the wrapping of his birthday present and finding something that will bring an enduring smile.