Today we talk about A Christmas Woof – A Christmas Story, a book by Mark Appleyard published with our publishing house Europe Books.
Europe Books had the pleasure of interviewing the author Mark Appleyard to get to know him better, where he found the inspiration to write his children’s book A Christmas Woof – A Christmas Story, as well as how illustrations are important for children.
Below you can find our interview. Take a seat and enjoy your reading!!!
- Where did you find the inspiration to write a children’s book?
I was doing some very arduous work in my house which involved going upstairs and downstairs about fifty times with buckets full of gravel. At one point, a neighbour of mine rang the doorbell to ask if I had seen his dog that had escaped. Unfortunately, I had not but then as I continued making the trips up and down, I wondered how his daughter would be feeling as she was very young at the time. While the work was very strenuous, it left my mind free to wander and bit by bit the story of Molly and Spot came into my head. By the end of the day, I had pretty much all the story planned out and that evening while everything was fresh in my head, I sat down and typed the first draft of the book. After that it was just a case of fine tuning the story and then finding an illustrator, and fortunately one of my students at the time, Eva Fernández, was working in graphic design and she was very enthusiastic to illustrate the story.
- How important do you think illustrations are in a children’s book?
I cannot stress the importance of illustrations in a children’s book enough. With the words you can have a beautiful story, but with the illustrations you add magic to the tale. Especially when an adult is reading the story to a young child. They can show the child the images and then that child can link each image to each part of the story. If they hear the story on two or three occasions, then by themselves just looking at the images, they can play the story over in their head. Besides, I think that when a child gets a book, they more or less instinctively flick through it to see if it is illustrated or not. If it is, the book normally strikes a chord with them straight away. When Eva agreed to do the illustrations, it was great news for me because I knew she would do an outstanding job and to pitch the book to a publisher without them would have been much more difficult, I think.
- What would you like to hear from your young readers?
I suppose the same that any author would like to hear. That the readers really, really enjoyed the book and that they found it either funny or touching or dramatic, whatever feeling the author was aiming to provoke in the reader. Also, that the story evoked some unexpected emotions in them and that they found the characters to be just right for the story. In particular with a short story, I truly hope that the young readers want to read it over and over again, and that they want to share the story with their parents. And in the case where parents read it to their children, I hope the parents see how their kids respond to the different parts in the book and that they want to read it to them again and relive such special moments. Some people have certain traditions at Christmas that they watch certain films or read certain books, well I would like it to become a tradition in many families that they sit down together and read A Christmas Woof every year.
- What will parents understand through your stories?
I think that through this story, parents will understand just how much a child loves their pet. I have two dogs and two cats, one of the dogs has been with us since my son was only 3 years old so he cannot really remember a time when we did not have a dog. Children bond with animals in a different way, it is often the parents that have to walk the dog or feed the pets, but children have a deep feeling with animals and it is a beautiful thing. The other point that I tried to put over in the story is the magic of Christmas. It is easy to get wrapped up in our hectic lives these days, to be with technological devices or streaming platforms and forget what is really important. I hope that through the story, the parents take the time to sit down and to spend a special moment with their children, not just once, but over and over again.
- Are you working on new writing projects that you can tell us about?
I have an idea for a series of children’s books completely different to this one, but it is just an idea and I am not sure how to take it forward at the moment. However, the good news for those that like A Christmas Woof is that there will be a sequel. On Wednesday 18th December 2024 we did a book signing event in the Toy Library at AIJU, it is a Technological Toy Institute in Ibi, Spain, where Eva and I were interviewed by the local radio station. During the interview we joked a bit about the possible success of the book and then the next day while walking my dogs, I played the interview over in my head and thought that if the book is well received by children and adults, well they deserve to know what happens next to Spot and Molly, and I am very happy to say that another story came flashing into my mind.
Europe Books thanks the author Mark Appleyard once again for taking the time and answering our questions. We are really pleased to have walked alongside him on the editorial path that led to the publication of his book A Christmas Woof – A Christmas Story. We wish him the best of luck for his book and for his future works.
To you, my readers, may this book be a great source of inspiration for everyone and may it bring you a great experience to enjoy. And remember that, no matter how adult you are, books for children have a lot to teach us all! Written in simple and clear concepts, illustrated children’s book have the ability to give us important life lessons or they put us back in touch with our forgotten child side which just needs to be awakened.
So, my dear reader, all I have to say is to enjoy your reading!
Your Editor!