Announcing the due date of another book baby, published by Hachette!
A group of baby bilbies are on an Easter egg hunt. They find all kinds of eggs – a kookaburra’s egg, a turtle’s egg, a cassowary’s egg – before the little bilbies finally find what they’ve been looking for: Easter eggs to share with all their friends.
This colourfully illustrated picture book showcases the diversity of Australia’s egg-laying animals. Each spread reveals an egg in its natural environment and asks the question ‘Whose egg could this be?’ After turning the page, the egg is matched with the animal it belongs to.
I know, it is not even Christmas yet! Why do you want to know about an Easter story?! Because you can pre-order your copy of Little Bilby’s Aussie Easter Egg Hunt now and be assured it will be on your shelves before Easter.
How did this come about?
Well, first of all, I signed with an agent at the start of the year, the brilliant Justine Barker from Mayfair Literary Agency, the only Australian agency dedicated to authors and illustrators of children’s books. Being part of this agency has opened new doors. The agency may be new, but obviously it is going places! I can’t thank Justine enough for her support and wise words.
I pitched a couple of stories through Justine, this started the conversation going with Hachette and its marvelous commissioning editor Kate Stevens and here we are!
I’ve had a ‘thing’ for board books for a while, and when Kate suggested this story as a board books, I was over the moon! Board books are expensive to make. If you look at the board book shelves in your book shop, you’ll see that a majority are tried and true picture books revamped as board books. Having a story starting out as a board books is a dream come true for me.
Look at that cover, the illustrations are huggable, bright, cute, and the landscape is all Australian, and the books is chewable … because … board book!
But back to the illustrations, if you love the cover, you are going to be mesmerized by the illustrations within. Jody Pratt, is making her illustrator debut with Little Bilby’s Aussie Easter Egg Hunt in turn making me a very luck author! AND she is a librarian!
Little Bilby, the hand puppet, is already meeting children in early childhood centres and ready to meeting them in book form in February, 2020.
