I have a new kids book!

Released 1st December!

It’s called ‘The Elephant in the Room’ and it’s about an elephant being ignored in each room of the house, until she isn’t!

It’s also about idioms, and there is an idiom drawn into each illustration (eg the one above is ‘put your foot in your mouth’)

Younger kids will love the story (2-6 years). Older kids will enjoy finding the idioms. My daughter Alice learned about idioms in Grade 5 when she was 10 years old. I think English teachers and librarians will find it a useful teaching aid.

I love this rhyming text, and I think you will too! Laura and I had previous successes with ‘The Cow Tripped Over the Moon’ and ‘Hickory Dickory Dash’. Each sold more than 50,000 copies and were National Simultaneous Storytime titles. We also did ‘Baa Baa Blue Sheep’ and ‘Humpty Dumpty Sat on the Slide’ together, all through Scholastic.

I have decided to release this one myself, because I’m tired of the structure of picture book contracts. Authors and Illustrators are lucky to get 5% of RRP, and often get as little as 2% when the title is discounted. We received less than 30c per paperback copy for many of the above mentioned 100,000 sales. This is my attempt at trying something different.

If you know an independent bookshop or a school librarian who might like a book about the world’s biggest idiom, let them (or me) know!

I collected names for pre-orders and thanked ‘baby elephants and their keepers’ on the back page of the first edition. It was very successful and presold 260 copies. If Elephant goes to reprint, you can add kids’ names in box opposite and I’ll print their names in the second edition!

Many thanks!

Tony