My friend and I have decided to attempt writing a children’s book… let me rephrase that… she is going to write it and I’m going to illustrate it.

I suppose this is another of my harebrained ideas but there’s certainly potential to see this through to completion. We’re lucky to have a useful contact who works in the children section of a large publishing company. We hope the tips and advice will put us in good stead to become then next Sisters Grimm!

My friend also has a 17 month old baby, so the market research side is pretty well covered. We spent a good portion of the weekend flicking through children’s books, reading to the baby and each other, testing rhymes and story lines, and discussing books my friend likes vs. the books her baby likes.

Babies and their parents are always great fun to watch, all you need is a box of popcorn, a soda and ‘TA DA’, you have a whole day of entertainment in 3-D! At 17 months, my friends’ baby is a great babbler and has a pretty good grip on the words Mummy and Daddy. Her parents however, swear she has a much larger vocabulary but to the untrained ear it is difficult to distinguish between ‘cat’ and ‘dog’. We were, of course, very lucky to have her parents there to interpret for us –she’s very advanced you know:

Dadadaaaadddaada waaahah eeeeee = daddy look at the beautiful golden retriever over there
ababadabada, = I’m really looking forward to a our trip to Abu Dhabi in December
idddty dididdi mummy = I would love a large plate of your delicious, home-made roast dinner mummy

I was extremely lucky to be the first person to hear her say ‘Zebra’ – she did say it! And to prove it, I made her say it over and over again like a parrot. I’m going to teach her to say ‘Uzbekistan’ next time I visit!