In this blog post, I share how the idea of the Doodle Dozen was made into an inspired picture book series.
One day, as we were having a spring clear out, we were talking about those little ‘pencil books’ and the scrapbook.
I mentioned to the boys that I was thinking of writing a children’s book, inspired by them all about pencils.
Bewildered with concern for their “utterly crazy mummy”, they eventually saw my vision, bought into the idea and gave me their full support.
As a family, we talked about it further and brainstormed at the kitchen table, where I was able to share my ideas for titles, characters and story lines in return for highly valuable feedback from the boys.
I got to writing the series and began to put things in place to get the first book in the series published.
Although the boys didn’t explicitly say it, I am sure there was a tiny part of them that could not imagine how this would even be possible!
After all, mummy was no children’s book author!
None of the many books in their home collection, the local library or book shops were written by anyone they even knew, let alone their mother!
I wanted to change that.
As an Afro-Caribbean mother, it was also important to my husband and I that the boys saw characters in print that looked like them and who they could relate to.
So, I published this book series to show them both that anything is possible if they put their minds to it and have faith.
Who would have thought that those little pencil books and those gifted colouring pencils would eventually inspire a picture book series!
So now that I have shared how the Doodle Dozen came to be and the idea behind these inspired stories, now it’s your turn!
Who or what inspires you and why?
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