In the original dustsheet. Black cloth binding with silver title on the spine.

• F.B.A. provides an in-depth photographic presentation of this item to stimulate your feeling and touch. More traditional book descriptions are immediately available.

Before I self-published my own children’s picture book, I did a lot of homework. There were too many reasons given not to publish it. Because the idea was deemed not commercial enough to make big bucks, the large publishers turned it down. A handful of smaller publishers showed interest, but a few wanted me to stump up a couple of grand for the pleasure of seeing my hard work in print. I politely declined. The story wouldn’t go away, so I persevered, got some professional feedback, worked on the story a bit more and then got together with a team of illustrators to make the whole thing come alive. I won’t say it was easy, and if I hadn’t been so sure of the story, then I might well have consigned the manuscript to the ‘unpublished’ section of my filing cabinet. I won’t say this book I am reviewing gave me all of the answers, but it gave me the most important thing: hope. That if you feel strongly enough about something, then don’t abandon it. Make it work!

Since this book was published, the world wide web has arrived, and the opportunities for eBooks, which means less paper is wasted in having to produce print runs. I also understand that around the time this book was published, paperbacks used to have a shelf life of approximately six weeks on the supermarket shelves. After that, because of shortage of space, the unsold copies were removed, the top cover torn off, and the remainder sent for pulping. I sincerely hope this isn’t true now, as there is no excuse for producing piles of unwanted books.