Wise Eyes and the Wild Things

Published Categorized as Books, What I have been up to

I am very excited to tell you about the creation story of my brand new book: Wise Eyes and the Wild Things –  created in collaboration with an amazing illustrator…

About two years ago, local artist and friend: Jane Stuart approached me with a partially-hatched idea. Full of enthusiasm (as she tends to be), she described this idea: one that was inspired by an oil painting she had recently completed of a stuffed barn owl.

‘Let’s create a book of the journey that explains how the owl became wise!’ I responded with equal enthusiasm, ‘Great idea but It will have to be full of metaphor if I am writing it!’

I love projects like this – part puzzle, part creativity. I am also a complete fan of allegory and stories delivering wise and thought-provoking messages. Aesop’s fables and Native American parables were always a hit with me – as a child and a teacher.

 In deciding how to approach this book I set myself the following rules:

  • Each page needs to ‘teach’ a wise lesson by providing a prompt for philosophical exploration.
  • The owl will visit ten countries and witness a situation unfolding in each one. Jane will paint this scene.
  • The ‘lessons’ will be taught solely through the speech (and sometimes implied behaviour) of different animals and there will be plenty of metaphor within each scene!
  • The animals must obviously be indigenous to the country each scene is set in and there must be somewhere within that country where all of the animals could be found in the same environment. We think we have managed this but someone might find an error if they looked hard enough!
  • The behaviours the creatures demonstrate need to align with how each creature actually behaves. E.g. I wouldn’t have an animal climb to the top of a tree if it wasn’t a climber! (This was a little hard in some places and both Jane and I ended up researching many creatures in this process). Often, Jane would suggest an animal that was beautiful to paint and I would be horrified if they didn’t fit the metaphor! This became a humorous process: Jane pushing for beautiful animals and me protecting the metaphor!
  • While each page could trigger much discussion, there will be a question at the bottom of each page to help readers explore the ‘main’ lesson.
  • The teacher in me could not resist the idea of using a different word for ‘said’ every time a different creature spoke.

After toying with the idea of starting the book with Jane’s original painting of the barn owl (which illustrated a child looking out of the window at the owl) our considerations eventually added the rule:

  • There are to be no humans in the book – or no obvious visual clue alluding to humans’ existence. This felt like it would make it a real celebration of nature getting on without us!

Once the self-imposed rules were established, I set about deciding which life lessons to include and how to portray them. Mostly I started with the idea of a lesson and found the animals and situations that would ‘fit’, but on a couple of occasions, a particular animals’ behaviour intrigued me enough to want to include them in the book. For example, brown European hares chasing white mountain hares off their territory. There had to be a lesson in that! Jane then expressed a wish to paint the northern lights and this took the lesson to Norway where the hares can co-exist.

I created too many lessons initially and whittling them down was mostly a process of respecting what would be visually interesting and what Jane showed most enthusiasm about painting. I still have several lessons that could be painted, so they might have to be put into a teaching resource for children to compose, complete or illustrate. We also had an idea that each page could be developed into further books, showing what happened before and/or after each scene and exploring each lesson in greater depth.

Before each painting, Jane and I would do further considerations of animals, behaviours, and composition and it was then that I would be fussy about the metaphor – ensuring it still worked! I’d often share a (very) rough sketch of how I saw the composition so it represented the lesson effectively and Jane would put together a ‘rough’ that we would then communicate frantically about until we were both happy. Each painting took between a month and two months to complete. Throughout the process, I would regularly rewrite, reconsider or redevelop the ‘lessons’, the animals included, the way the animals spoke or shift things around so the painting composition would be better.

Some of the art found inside the book

Once I had tweaked (and tweaked) each page securely enough to be sure of the picture that would represent it, Jane set about creating the oil-painted illustration. I was captivated by the process and would keenly await updates. Watching Jane’s progress was so interesting and impressive. When I praised her work, she’d say she didn’t know where ‘it’ came from, ‘It just feels like I am channelling something,’ she said. I decided upon a medieval nun – as good as anyone to be channelling. Thank you Sacrist Maerwynn Isolda of Shrewsbury!

I absolutely love the final result. I wish my children were young again so it could be the bedtime favourite it would have been. The teacher-in-me can see it is also a fantastic educational resource, easily lending itself to lessons in geography, PSHE, English, natural history, drama, and loads of opportunities for philosophical discussion! I will produce educational – and probably also more frivolous – activity support packs before long too! I think simply getting children to recreate each scene and get in role as one of the animals, adopting the personality and voice they think each animal would have, would be highly entertaining!

The creation of Wise Eyes and the Wild Things has been an incredible journey and I have learned loads from Jane; she is a very smart, unusual and expansive-thinking person – making the process enjoyable and fascinating from start to finish. An added bonus is our friendship has blossomed further and we communicate most days about just about everything and anything.

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I asked Jane to describe her (much more intense) journey with the book and here is what she had to say...

Ever since I was a child I wanted to write and illustrate children’s books. Indeed, once I started at art school, I had a nagging feeling I was on the wrong course. I was studying Fine Art and I should have been studying Illustration. I shrugged my shoulders and got on with it. “Too late”, I told myself.

Many years later and the desire to illustrate was still going strong – so strong – I nervously suggested to Molly that we make a children’s book together, with her writing and me illustrating. I felt out of my league to even suggest such a thing. Molly was at the top of her game as an author, I was an unknown as an illustrator. I thought she’d say no. But I’ve since learnt Molly is a very unusual person – open to life, enthusiastic and excited by possibilities. That author from Norwich said yes! I was thrilled and so began one of the most fun and intense collaborations of my life.

Molly and I both push ourselves to do things well – and I was rusty in the painting department. The learning curve was steep and there were many times I would grab a cloth and wipe away several hours’ worth of painting, in seconds, because it wasn’t as good as I needed it to be. “Get on with it girl,” I would firmly tell myself, wagging an imaginary finger. “Next time it will be BETTER and you’ll be glad you bothered”.

Molly’s priority was the metaphors, mine was indulging in the aesthetics of creating every kind of beautiful. I discovered Molly had an – unfortunate in my opinion – fondness of scruffy brown animals but I preferred exotic fabulousness. Sometimes we had extended tussles over our different priorities; we allowed each other little wins and moved on. We both knew we had the best interests of the book at heart and you’ll see scruffy critters and beautiful creatures are both included in the book!

The last part of the book’s process involved handing our creations over to Ginette East, our graphic designer extraordinaire. Seeing Ginette put the words and images together with the design needed to produce an actual book, was exhilarating. I had been so focused on the paintings that I hadn’t really taken the time to appreciate the cleverness of what Molly had been doing. And then with Ginette’s magic touch, suddenly I could see it all beautifully weaving itself together and it was brilliant. 

I don’t know that I will ever illustrate another book like Wise Eyes and the Wild Things again. Over two intense years were spent on its creation and life feels shorter all the time. There are so many other things I still want to do. What I do know is that it was absolutely worth it. Collaborating with someone like Molly made me grow in too many ways to describe here. I will be forever grateful that she took a chance on me. The result is a book the likes of which does not come along very often – a wonderful creation of which we will both always be immensely proud.

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And finally, I’ll share one example of a two-page spread to give you more of an idea of the book. Let’s visit Canada – a beautifully illustrated page that explores how we develop our opinions and how our opinions should change when we learn more information.

Further questions are included in the back of the book for each page. Here are Canada’s further questions:

  • What actual fact or facts does each animal have about the moose from where they are positioned? 
  • Can you think of a time when you changed your opinion because you learned more information?
  • Is it wise to give an opinion when you know very little about something?

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Buy: Wise Eyes and the Wild things

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