Early influences for the Uncommon Animals of the Alphabet

Sometimes you can spend years creating something before realising the seeds were planted decades earlier.

Looking back, I think the biggest influence was probably the Mr. Men and Little Miss books. Small square books. Bold simple illustrations. Unusual characters with strong personalities. Nothing overly complicated. Just memorable characters and simple stories that stuck with you.

Do you remember your favorite book from childhood?

What fascinated me most was often not even the story itself.

It was the back cover.

I would spend ages staring at that grid of characters. Mr. Tickle. Mr. Bump. Little Miss Sunshine. Character after character lined up in neat rows. Each one different. Each one with their own world. Their own identity. Their own story.

I remember thinking that one day I was going to collect them all.

When I look at my Uncommon Animals books that I am creating today, I can see that same pattern at work. One unusual creature leads to another. Uncommon Animals of the Alphabet becomes Uncommon Sea Creatures of the Alphabet. Then Uncommon Australian Animals of the Alphabet. Then perhaps rainforest animals, desert animals, island animals and creatures most people have never heard of.

The collection itself becomes part of the experience.

The more time I spend learning about nature, the more I realise there is an endless supply of characters waiting to be discovered.

Nature is the greatest character designer of all time.

A shoebill that looks like it wandered out of prehistory. A water deer with vampire fangs. An axolotl that never grows up. A babirusa with tusks that curve through its own face.

No writer could invent half of this stuff and be taken seriously.

What excites me is that every one of these creatures is real.

Children are naturally drawn to the unusual. They have not yet learned to ignore wonder. Give them a strange animal with a funny name and they will happily spend ten minutes asking questions about it.

Curiosity becomes knowledge. Knowledge becomes appreciation. Appreciation hopefully becomes awareness and protection.

If a child falls in love with a shoebill or a thorny devil, they are far more likely to care whether that animal still exists in the future.

That is the deeper purpose beneath my books.

They are not really about the alphabet.

They are about introducing children to a world that is far stranger, more beautiful and more fascinating than most of us realise.

And perhaps they are also about that kid sitting on the floor decades ago, staring at the back cover of a Mr. Men book, dreaming of discovering every strange character in the collection.

Only now the characters are real.

They have feathers, scales, fur, fangs and fins.

And there are hundreds more waiting to be introduced.