The Sour and the Sweet by Sandra Horn

First the sour, then the sweet. You know that thing, particularly prevalent in children’s picture books, when you have a great idea and write it and then find that someone else has already published something very similar? Well here it is: about ten years ago I wrote a story about a misfit dragon child. I called it Bubble-blowing Brian: -

Deep inside the volcano, dragon eggs were hatching, One, Two, Three.   One and Two snuggled down in the red-hot rocks. Three flapped his wings to make a breeze.

'Phew!’ he said, ‘it’s hot in here!’

Every day, One and Two practised breathing fire and roaring.  Three fanned his wings in a quiet corner by himself.

On Midsummer Eve, the little dragons chose their special names.  The Dragon King came to hear them.  ‘Fearsome Firesnake!’ Shouted One. He blew a plume of scarlet flames. All the dragons clapped.

‘Ferocious Flamebreath!’ roared Two. He snorted green fire.  The dragons cheered.

Three said, ‘Hello, I’m Brian!’

The dragons laughed. The King frowned.

‘Blow fire!’ whispered Flamebreath.

Brian shook his head. ‘Don’t want to.’

‘Try chewing a red-hot rock,’ said Firesnake.

‘What, and fry my lips?’ said Brian.  

‘Leave the volcano!’ roared the king, ‘You are banished!’

And so on. Then I was approached by a delightful Italian translater, Daniela Cesero, who had seen my books and wanted to create Italian versions. I told her it wasn’t in my gift, she needed to contact the publishers. She did, but was told that they had their own translating arrangements. Then I had what I thought was a brainwave – Bubble-blowing Brian was not yet ‘out’ for publication, why didn’t we try it in both languages and see where that took us? Daniela had even found an illustrator, Marco Trevisan, who created a storyboard and was ready to take it all to that year’s Bologna Book Fair - BUT I was chatting to a friend about the story and the plans and she said, ‘I’ve already read it.’

‘It’s not published yet,’ I said, but she was sure she’d seen it. I trawled the net, and sure enough, there was a picture book about a dragon who blew bubbles instead of fire. Not the same story, obviously, but with such a closely-matched central character, my version was finished before it began. I had to pull the plug on our dual-language plans. The whole enterprise could well have come to nothing in the end anyway, I know, but I felt sad and bad about it all the same.

Here's the sweet: at the end of January I had an email from Daniela, who is now a primary school teacher. It was an invitation to have an online chat with her class, about one of my books. We thought about Tattybogle or The Moonthieves, but then I remembered that I had a copy of the Italian version of Shadowhog: Pippi e le Ombre della Notte. 

 

 

 I sent the book to her and we built the session around it. On the morning of the 9^th I met her class of 8 – 9 year-olds online for a lively and delightful hour of Q and A followed by Word Bingo devised by Daniela. She had sent me a list of words which I cut up and put in a bag. I drew the words out one by one and spoke them. The children had cards with some of the words on each one, to cross out when they recognised one. The excitement was palpable! The first one to call Bingo! With a full card, one nearly fell over herself coming close to the camera and mic to speak all the words. It was sheer joy to see them reading with such pride.

I don’t do whole-day school visits now and the days of writing children’s books are over, but this session with Daniela and the children took me right back to the days when I could call myself a children’s writer and what great fun it was. All the ups and downs, rejections, hassles with publishers, etc. were as nothing compared with the enjoyment of sharing the work with a room full of happy, excited children. I loved every minute of it. It’s why we do it, when all’s said and done.