‘The Mouse Who Wasn’t Scared’ is published!

The day has come. ‘ The Mouse Who Wasn’t Scared’ is published.

It is the fourth book with the character of Little Mouse.

Four books is quite a lot considering that I had no ambition to do a series of books.

I wrote the second book ‘The Mouse Who Ate the Moon’ on holiday just sitting on the beach and looking at the moon. I think it was the time when I fell in love with the character of the dippy, child-like mouse, who makes me smile.

I was looking through the published books and I knew that the fourth book should be somehow different. It wasn’t worried about the story , but I wanted the artwork to stand out and to make the book look different from the others. I love woods. I like drawing and painting them as much as I like walking in them.

The inspiration for the book I found by going through my sketches and paintings from woods.

There is something appealing about the monochrome colour of the tree trunks and occasional colour of the leaves on the ground, the mushrooms, or even the colour of the Mouse’s stripy socks as a matter of fact.

Here are some of the first sketches for the illustrations.Painting the big animals was fun.I loved painting the moose.

The book is about the fact, that we all are sometimes scared of something and often different people are scared of different things.

Is the fluffy pussycat REALLY the most scary thing in the woods, or is it the wolf, or is it the bear…?

It usually takes at least a year from finishing working on the book to the moment when the book is published.

Looking at these sketches brings back memories.

I had a good time and enjoyed enormously illustrating ’The Mouse Who Wasn’t Scared’.  The book took me to the woods although it was at the time just in my imagination.

When I finally received the advance copy of the book I was thrilled. The colours were right, the book felt good in my hand and it smelled nice too. Nothing less than I would expect from my publisher, so thank you Walker Books! And thank you to my editors Louise and Denise for their hard work and support.I hope you will enjoy reading the book!