Picture This: Hippocrocohog

Today I am really excited to be featuring Adam Nuth author of the debut picture book, Hippocrocohog, on my blog. Here is a guest post from Adam himself about his inspiration for Hippocrocohog and how he came to publish it.

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The inspiration behind Hippocrocohog is a story in itself.

In 2015, I was working on board merchant ships as a security advisor in the highly pirated waters close to Somalia. Despite the long stretches away from home, it was a thoroughly rewarding job, helping to protect the hard working and often vulnerable men and women trying to make an honest living on the sea.

On one particularly lengthy voyage, we arrived into the port of Sudan after crossing the Indian Ocean, passing Somalia and travelling up through the Red Sea. We were pleased to see land but were met with unfortunate complications. The shipping company had not completed the required documents and therefore we couldn’t dock the ship. Everyone on board had no choice but to wait at anchorage. The situation continued for almost four long and wearisome weeks. Food and fresh water was running dangerously low, as was morale. I was missing my children desperately and had no means of contacting them. I decided to write them a story so that when I eventually returned, they would know that they had been constantly with me in my thoughts.

My mother is a wonderful storyteller and she would often record stories for me on an old cassette player. Archaic as it sounds now, as a young boy, pressing play and listening to her soothing voice made me feel so loved and special. I never envisaged that one day Hippocrocohog would be published. It was simply created in the hope that I could emulate that same warmth and spark the imaginations of my two beautiful girls as those cassette stories did for me years ago.

When I finally returned home, I sat the girls that I had missed so much, on my knees and read them their very own story. They enjoyed it so much and often asked me to read it to their friends. Sometimes their friend’s parents would be there and I regularly heard remarks such as ‘you should do something with that’.

Four years later, I was introduced to the very talented artist, Alice Samways. She expressed to me how much she would love to illustrate children’s books and our collaboration began. After much hard work and laughter, we had our finished product and it came to the attention of a benifactor. She heard my story, both the fictional one and the tale behind it and wanted to help me publish it. I will be forever grateful for her help. The delight on both Poppy and Lilly’s faces when they were handed a hard copy of their story will always stay with me.

Rhythm (although not with my feet, as those who know me will attest) and rhyme have always come easily to me. Although some of the rhyme in Hippocrocohog is not traditional or ‘perfect rhyme’, I believe it flows well enough to keep my children entertained.

The moral of this story being that if you believe you have something or are being encouraged to ‘give something a go’, then please try. It might seem daunting but ultimately in life, you will most likely regret the things you didn’t do over the things you did!

My heartfelt thanks goes out to Alice, for all her creativity, to my benifactor, for her faith in me and generous funding and to my beautiful partner Angela, who gave me the much needed support and confidence to make this happen. Above all of this, is a personal thank you to Poppy and Lilly who make me smile every day, even when I cannot be with them.

I hope you thoroughly enjoy reading Hippocrocohog. I have plenty more stories and rhymes, some already on paper and many more waiting to come to fruition. I very much hope to share these with you soon.

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This story has been a big hit with my two year old, who has asked me to read it a lot and remembered the name of the monster even when we didn't have a chance to read it over Christmas. It's funny and colourful, with a clear message about giving everyone a chance to change their behaviour. 

Hippocrocohog follows the story of two little girls called Poppy and Lilly, who are at the park with the grandparents when they are kidnapped by the monster in the middle of the lake. A swan queen, a squirrel and their quick acting, heroic grandparents soon save the day, and the Hippocrocohog is taken home and reformed.

Adam's backstory makes this story even more special, and I know it is one we will enjoy reading again and again.

Thank you Troubador Publishing for sending us a copy of this story to review.