Biodiversity
Book in a day with
The story behind the story
Uncle Brow Brows
Book in a day with
Coincidentally, through BookTrust Represents, I attended the RENEW x BookTrust Biodiversity Storytelling Summit. This special event brought fascinating scientists together with brilliant authors, illustrators, and publishers to create more biodiverse books for children.
It all started in August 2023 when Sandwell Libraries asked me to do a creative event for children. The idea of creating a book in a day was born.
RENEW x BookTrust
Biodiversity
Storytelling Summit
I now had a theme to apply to the book in a day event: Biodiversity.
On the 27th of March and the 3rd of August 2024, families from all
backgrounds joined me at Stone Cross and Wednesbury Libraries to learn about our local biodiversity and get creative.
We chose a hedgehog and a common green shield bug as our main characters and drew many fantastic designs of them. I chose this cute hedgehog sketch by Anayah as the concept character for Gerald, which was our favourite name from all the suggestions. I sketched the concept character of our shield bug using all the families' drawings as inspiration.
Then, at the Brow Cave, also known as the shed in the back of my garden, I began turning the concept work we did into a finished book. I edited and completed the manuscripts, developed the characters and the storyboards, and got creative with the full-colour illustrations. And just like that, we had a book ready to print. How exciting!
Next, the children
and I wrote the story and gave it the title, Home for a Hedgehog. For I am NOT a Stink Bug, I'd written part of the story and asked the families to brainstorm and draw ideas for costumes the shield bug could wear. Their many wonderfully inspiring ideas brought Gerald and the shield bug to life.
I hope I have done our story justice. The children should be very proud of this achievement. This book couldn't have happened without their creativity.
Watch videos of the events & me illustrating the book
Read the digital flipbook
Join me at the Book Launch events on Wednesday 30th October 2024 at
Wednesbury Library at 11:30 am
and
Stone Cross Library at 2:30 pm
To be continued