A story within a story...

A while back I was chatting to my friend, Denise from Freshlyfound, who mentioned she had a friend, Rebecca, who had written a children's story and was possibly looking for an illustrator. I'm always on the look out for new stories to illustrate, even though this is sometimes a tricky process. Writing for children is actually WAY harder than one would imagine and I've been sent many stories that for various reasons proved unsuitable. This wasn't the case with Rebecca's story though. The moment I read it I fell in love with it and knew I wanted to work with her to illustrate it.

I love a story that has a message to it, and this one is about Self Acceptance - something I think most people really battle with. I loved the idea of putting this message into a children's book and hopefully teaching children from an early age that it is ok to just be yourself, no matter who that is.

And so Fumbling Feet was born!



I later found out that there is actually another amazing story behind this story. Rebecca wrote Fumbling Feet for her little boy, Elijah, who suffers from a rare form of muscular dystrophy known as central core myopathy. This condition causes weakness to Elijah's lower limbs as well as throughout his whole body. To help him accept this aspect of himself and hopefully create awareness and empathy for children like Elijah, Rebecca created a fun story about a little boy who has trouble using his own feet. He stumbles through the story always wishing he could be something different. Through all these adventures, he comes to a surprising realisation about himself.

While Rebecca wrote this story to fill a gap in the market where there are little to no children's story books focused on people with disabilities, I feel it is also a book all children should read - able bodied or disabled...and I'm not just saying that because I illustrated it!

Fumbling Feet is available directly from the publisher here and the Afrikaans version Tuimel Tone here.

It's also available on Loot.

If you don't do the online shopping thing, never fear, it is also available in good book stores such as Exclusive Books.

Fumbling Feet ISBN 978-1-928211-47-1
Tuimel Tone ISBN 978-1-928211-60-0
















2 comments:

  1. I found this blog title in 'ideas' magazine, and thoroughly enjoyed scrolling through it. Good to have a local writing, I am in Pietermaritzburg. Shall keep an eye open for it in future!

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    1. Welcome Diane! It's great to 'meet' a fellow Natalian. Thank you for reading, I'm so glad you have enjoyed my little blog :) I have lots of exciting and fun projects that I'm looking forward to sharing this year!

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