Episode 51 - Kid Rex to the Rescue with Mayo Agard-Olubo

Join us talking to Mayo Agard-Olubo about his debut picture book, Kid Rex to the Rescue, illustrated by Diane Ewen. Max's imagination transforms him into the superhero Kid Rex, and he's ready to use his dinosaur powers to battle robots, dragons and even the evil king dust bunny. A fun bedtime story and definitely one for dinosaur fans.

Mayo's website can be found here.

His BBC Sounds appearance on Margins to the Mainstream can be found here.

The books we reviewed were:

Auntie's Bangles, by Dean Atta, illustrated by Alea Marley

Fred the Very Demanding Deer by Pepé Smit

Transcript

Ali 0:12

Hi, I'm Ali.

Katy 0:13

Hi, I'm Katy and welcome to Mostly Book Talk. We are very pleased to have with us today Mayo Agard- Alubo,

Ali 0:20

and we're going to talk to him about his debut picture book, Kid Rex to the Rescue.

Katy 0:28

So we're really pleased to have with us today Mayo Agard -Alubo, who is the author of a debut picture book, Kid Rex to the Rescue. So welcome, Mayo. Really nice to have you here. Can we just start off with listeners who haven't come across you? Because I know you've been all over social media with this book. For people who haven't come across you, can you just tell us a little bit about yourself and your journey to becoming a debut picture book author?

Mayo 0:54

Hi, yeah. Absolute pleasure to be here. It's been an interesting journey. I think, probably like a lot of writers, I have always wanted to write. I've been writing all my life, and people go, How long have you been writing? The actual answer is like all my life in some capacity. But you don't always think it can be an actual career. Sometimes it's like people who get published, how do they do that? They're special people that you meet once in a blue moon, right? But yeah, I've always wanted to write a book. I've always wanted to be an author. I did a lot of writing, starting things, not finishing them, which I think is very classic. But in 2019, I decided, no, I'm gonna take this seriously. I'm really gonna try to figure out how you get a book published and what you need to do. And that's when I wrote my first picture books and didn't quite know what I was doing, so I just tried to write books that reminded me of the books I loved when I was a kid, and found some agents online and sent them off and got all rejections. Then I thought, all right, I need to figure out a little bit more how to do this. The big thing that changed everything for me in my career was writing programs. So I came across a writing program called A Writing Chance. It was a competition run by New Writing North and the Joseph Rountree Foundation, and it looked like the perfect thing. 2020 is when I first saw the competition, and they were choosing writers for this program that was going to start in 2021. And it was, oh, you get some mentorship, you get to be published an article in the New Statesman and on a podcast, and it looked really good. And at that time, I didn't quite know how to get into the industry, and it looked like a great opportunity. So I wrote uh a piece for that. You had to write a piece about life in 2020.

Katy 3:07

Interesting time to be writing about, yeah.

Mayo 3:09

Yeah, this piece about life in 2020. It was the pandemic. I think like a lot of people, the pandemic was a really tough time, but it also gave us time to pause and think about what we really wanted to do. So, yeah, I wrote this piece about living in the pandemic and what a tough time it was. It was a fictional piece from the point of view of the tough time that the NHS was going through. And it got me onto this writing program, which we didn't know at the time when we applied, but there was 11 of us, and we found out that this program was being sponsored by the uh actor Michael Sheen. So that was really cool. That ended up being really cool, and that was just a really, really great program for me to be on because New Writing North were great about helping me and the other writers think about what kind of writers we wanted to be. And I really want to try children's books because I loved the impact that children's books have. I think everybody remembers their favourite picture book. It's one thing you could ask anybody, and pretty much everyone will have a favorite picture book because they stay with us all our lives. And what was great about that programme is it paired me with a wonderful mentor, the author Shauna Jackson, who wrote High Rise Mystery and Mike got so many amazing books. She was a great person to talk to about how to get into the industry, how book deals work, and how getting published works.

Katy 4:44

Am I right in thinking she had a background in publishing before she was an author, or have I misremembered that? Maybe she was an academic.

Mayo 4:52

I'm not sure because when I met her, we talked about her background in R. So she worked with the Tay, and she worked with art galleries. She's done so many things. She's worked in video games, so yeah, I'm not sure, but I wouldn't be surprised. It was really great having a mentor like that. On that program, I didn't work on picture books, but I got to work on my writing. I wrote uh a short story, a YA short story called We Must Slay Giants, which is a fantasy story, and it's on BBC Sounds, still on a podcast called Margins to Mainstream with Michael Sheen. So that's still up. You can listen to that.

Ali 5:34

And we'll add a link to it.

Mayo 5:37

Yeah, oh, wonderful. And then while I was doing that programme, I was still interested in pitch books. I entered the Jericho Prize, which is a pitch book prize for black authors, and got long listed for that with a different book I was writing. And when I got on the long list, Claire Malcolm at New Writing North was very encouraging and saying that I should be writing picture books as well, and I should keep exploring that uh and that she would be willing to connect me with people who would look at my work. And Kid Rex to the Rescue was actually a pitch book I'd written back in 2019 when I was first thinking about being a pitch book author. It was the same character but completely different story. I decided that there was something there with that character, and I went back and I rewrote the story. And in this time, I was doing other writing programs. One of the best things about being on a writing chart, the organization was great, but also I was on it with 10 other writers, and the community was just such a special thing. And you learn about opportunities through other writers.

Ali 6:55

You don't know what you don't know, do you? But once you're in the mix finding out about it, other opportunities present themselves.

Mayo 7:02

A hundred percent, absolutely, absolutely. And that is exactly what happened. One of the writers on the program had done a HarperCollins Author Academy and recommended it. So I applied and got onto that. And that again was a wonderful experience learning about the industry, learning about becoming a published author and what it takes. And a different writer who I'd met had done a program called London Writers Awards with Spread the Word, which is now the London Writing Centre. And that was a wonderful program because you get to work on your project and also learn a lot about the industry, and you get to meet agents, and so all these different things came together. In 2023, there was another competition called the Mo Curin Prize, and that's a really interesting prize run by Hashet because it changes imprint every year. So every year it's like a different genre of book. So it goes from literary fiction to crime fiction. Then the year I did it was picture books, and then it went to fantasy adult and YA fantasy the year after, and then non-fiction. So you have to catch it at the right time.

Katy 8:23

I saw that you'd won it, and I thought that's a prize I hadn't heard of. And we follow the children's prizes, but that makes sense. It's only a children's book prize every few years, or maybe even every five or six years, but it sounds like it's yeah, so it was the right time for you.

Mayo 8:37

It was really the right time, and I entered that. I won that with my newly rewritten version of Kidrex, and that was everything coming together. The part of the prize was that was gonna take it to an acquisitions meeting, they were gonna review it and decide whether they would publish it. And I immediately jumped on that and I emailed some of the agents who I'd made contacts with through London Writers Awards and said, Hey, I've got this pitch book going to a publisher and they're gonna decide whether or not they publish it. And I'd like an agent to help me through this process, talk to them. Do you know, do you like my work? Would you like to represent me? And that's how I found my current agent, Ludo Snelli, at the Eve White Literary Agency.

Ali 9:23

So it's kind of the other way around. You've had something to take to the agent. Yeah, it's really cool.

Mayo 9:29

I would say I did it this kind of other way around in that through these writing programs, I met the agents first, and then I got publisher interest. Then I signed with my agent for using those factors rather than approaching through cold querying. So yeah, it was a different kind of route to getting an agent.

Ali 9:48

I think we should talk about Max now, and I think we should talk about the fact that he's now Kid Rex to the rescue. So, what was he in 2019? Because obviously he was a character that you'd envisaged and imagined, but what was he doing in 2019 then?

Mayo 10:04

Basically, Max is based on a childhood memory of mine. So growing up, I loved superheroes like Batman and Spider-Man, and I love dinosaurs. I had the idea that I was gonna become a dinosaur-themed superhero, that I was gonna wear a costume and have dinosaur superpowers and dinosaur gadgets. And so in 2019, when I was thinking of pitchbook ideas, I took that idea at memory and was like, okay, I'm gonna make a story about this. And the initial story was just retelling that memory. It was the boy who wanted to be a superhero, and the whole story was just him putting together his costume and making gadgets and practicing his moves and like getting ready to fight crime and his mum going along with it up until the point where he wants to go out and actually fight crime, and then that's too dangerous, so it's time to bed now, kind of thing. So that was the initial story, Max becoming Kid Rex, but actually, it's just a boy who wants to be a superhero that just didn't quite have enough appeal for the people I sent it to. And when I went back to it, I was like, something's missing, what could I add to this? And I was thinking, let's actually make him a superhero, let's actually go on a superhero adventure. But I wanted to do it in a slightly different way, and I combined it with another childhood memory, which is that growing up, my mum always made chores fun. So every chore was a game or an adventure, it wasn't boring. I guess we had to do it, but actually, we're gonna have a good time doing this, and we used our imaginations while doing it, and I've always loved that, and I've always loved stories about kids using their imagination. So I loved growing up TV shows like Rugrats, where it was all about how little kids saw the world and all the ordinary things could transform into these amazing things, yeah. And so I really, really wanted to put an element of that into my story. I was, you know, looking at other books that were out at the time, and I read We're Going to Find the Monster by Malorie Blackman, illustrated by Dapo Adeola, and that was such a big inspiration because it's such a beautiful book in that you go through the imaginative world where you see what the kids are seeing, and then then it reverses and you see what things actually are. And I was like, I want to combine my kind of superhero with this kind of storytelling, so that's when I thought, okay, so he's doing something ordinary, what could he be doing? My mum always made chores fun, so it could be a chore. Oh, okay, he could be tidying up, and what would be the adventure version of tidying up? Oh, his toys have been kidnapped by a villain, and that's when it clicked together. So gonna have the real-world thing of a kid putting away his toys, and the imaginative thing of a villain has kidnapped these toys, and a superhero needs to rescue them.

Katy 13:28

Yeah, no, brilliant. Are you a tidy person?

Mayo 13:31

I try my best.

Katy 13:32

It does feel like there's a pull in the book towards like order.

Mayo 13:35

Part of it is yeah, I I also need this kind of encouragement to tidy up, you know. I think I wrote it probably for myself as much as for everyone else.

Katy 13:46

Fair enough. The illustrations are by Diane Ewen. Yes, and she's illustrated big names as well. What was it like seeing your world come to life, seeing Kid Rex appear?

Mayo 14:01

It was such an amazing experience. It was really interesting because when I got the deal with Hashette, as we were sorting out the deal, they were like, We've already gone illustrator who's interested. And I was like, wow, that's really fast. And they were like, Yeah, we thought Diane would be perfect for this book, and so we've already approached her, and she's really excited to do it. And I was like, Wow, that's because

Katy 14:26

she's done Mallorie Blackman, hasn't she? And Floella Benjamin.

Mayo 14:30

Yeah, all massive names. Rashmi Sirdeshpande. Yeah, yeah, she's done the never give a T-Rex book, and that's right, yeah. Stegosaurus sums those books. Maybe that's why they thought a perfect synergy with the dinosaurs. I think it was really cool hearing that she wanted to be on board, and she was really excited because before she even started working on it, she did a couple of character designs, and the publisher shared them with me. And it was amazing that it was actually the costume and the things she was already thinking felt like they were pulled out of my head before we'd even had any kind of correspondence or conversation about it. Obviously, I knew she was immensely talented and an amazing illustrator, but then the moment I saw an initial design for my work, I was like, wow, she gets this.

Katy 15:27

I really like the mask as part of the costume because it's clever because you don't really notice it but first, but the teeth are around the eyes, aren't they? So you can see that it's a mask, but it does give that real sense of a smiling dinosaur, it has to be said.

Mayo 15:41

Yeah, I think that's one of the things she does really well, is that it's all has this light, fun energy to it. Things that maybe could be a little bit scary, come across as like super cute and just like wonderful by the time she's brought it to life.

Ali 15:58

And we were talking Ali weren't we when we were looking at it, that it's a really good book for spotting things because if you're dinosaur obsessed, as I suspect this book will appeal to the dinosaur obsessed, there are so many dinosaurs, and in some of the pictures, you could spend quite a long time going, Oh, look, it's a dinosaur this, and it's a dinosaur jigsaw piece and a dinosaur drawer handle, pajamas, yeah, socks, wallpaper. And of course, I don't know the names of all of the dinosaurs in the pictures, but there will be children that do. There will be some more children that know all the names.

Mayo 16:33

Absolutely. One of the fun things about taking the book around schools and reading it and meeting children is I get taught new dinosaurs, they know so many, so it's a lot of fun.

Katy 16:44

The thing is about dinosaurs is that they've changed the names of them since we were children. They absolutely have reclassified and renamed them, so we don't stand a chance.

Mayo 16:54

Things do shift. When I talk about it, I talk about the kind of old school versions of dinosaurs in the sense that I don't overcomplicate things because now they're saying some have feathers and things like that. I don't bring any of that into it.

Ali 17:08

Yes, but still a stegosaurus, it's not whatever it's called.

Mayo 17:13

Yeah, it's an amazingly shifting world for animals that haven't been around for 53 million years.

Katy 17:20

Haven't they discovered that there were other quite vicious dinosaurs that weren't T-Rexes that all the things that they thought were baby T-Rexes are actually a different species of carnivorous vicious dinosaur?

Mayo 17:32

Yeah, probably can't keep up. I was just reading this morning that they're now debating the idea that a T-Rex actually ran a bit like an ostrich. That's a new bit of research. I think that's just been publicising the last couple of days.

Katy 17:47

Hard to keep up with these creatures that have been dead for uh millions of years. Tell us also about Dino Dad, because he is Max's sidekick, really, isn't he? As his superhero incarnation. Was it important to have a father figure in the adventure with Max? So many of the home stories are with a mother. Your mother is in the book as well, but was that deliberate to have it more with the father as a sort of sidekick?

Mayo 18:12

I think it was. I think I was conscious that's a dynamic that I feel like I don't see a lot in pitch books, especially between a young black boy and his father. So I did want that to be the dynamic, and I wanted to have elements of both my parents in this book. And in a sense, sadly, my dad passed away when I was very young, and he passed away when I was before my first birthday. So I never really got to know him that well, but I knew him in terms of the way my mother kept his memory alive through stories, and he was a fantastic artist, so our house was full of his art and things like that. And on a personal level, I wanted to explore the relationship that I didn't really get a chance to have in these books, and then on a kind of wider level, I wanted to have a book that represented a strong, caring dynamic between a father and son.

Katy 19:16

It's lovely, it's really nice.

Ali 19:18

It is lovely, and I just I love as an adult reading it, and you draw back and you're like he's collecting all the monsters, and then you wrote, Oh yeah, he's just in his bedroom, he's in the back, he's not gone very far, but he's having a massive adventure. It's really super cute. And you're also a poet and you write in like prose and verse, and did that shape the kind of rhythms of Kid Rex when you were writing it?

Mayo 19:42

Yeah, I think that my experience in poetry is really useful in pitch book writing because I think whether whether it is a rhyming or non-rhyming pitchbook, I always try to have a sort of poetic rhythm to my writing, and I want a sort of lyricism to my writing. I think whenever I write, I try and put the best elements of my poetry into my writing, even if it's prose. I think that's an important part of my writing, that background in poetry.

Katy 20:18

You can definitely feel it in the pattern and the rhythms in it and the way it sounds when you read it aloud. The checklists and things like that feel very much the dud dum, cake check dyno mask. It works really nicely. In terms of children, you mentioned how you've been going into schools, haven't you? You've had real life children reading it and reacting to it. What kind of response have you had? And did you have a child in your mind? Was it you or was it another child in your mind when you were writing the book?

Mayo 20:46

Yeah, honestly, the reaction has been it's blown me away. It's been so lovely. The kids have been great, they're really excited by the book, and yeah, they just get so into it. It's really fun reading it to them because a lot of the time I will get them to join in with the sound effects. So the book has a lot of these kind of comic book sound effects like kapow, and it's got T-Rex roars and tigers growl and a tiger in it. I get them to growl like a tiger and roar like a T-Rex and make the kapows and the whooshes. And yeah, it's been so much fun. I've had some great reactions, particularly wonderful. One was the last school I did. The session did end with a lot of the kids starting to chant Kid Rex, so it broke into a spontaneous chart, and that I would have never seen coming. I really enjoyed that.

Ali 21:45

That's really nice. Fabulous.

Mayo 21:47

And yeah, it's one of those things. Did I have a particular chart in mind? I do, in one sense, write all these books for me when I was younger. One of my goals with my writing is to. Write books that I would have loved to have as a child but didn't. And yeah, do I hope that this book will have a particularly special meaning to young black boys like I was? Absolutely. But in a sense, it's also just for any child who wants a book that is a fun adventure. And I think that's pretty much all children. So yeah, it's both for little me, but also for any child that loves adventure.

Katy 22:30

Yeah, and there will be lots of dinosaur fans there that would like it.

Ali 22:34

I was just gonna say, have you got the superhero outfit?

Mayo 22:37

Have I got the superhero outfit? So a lot of people have asked me that. Like I have not, I think I need to put a costume together, but I'm very much enjoying getting sent photos of kids who have cobbled together a Kid Rex costume already. I've seen quite a few makeshift Kid Rex costumes from children out there, and that has been really fun.

Ali 23:03

That is fabulous. That's so great. I think you should go for a mask, definitely get a mask done. Yeah, just the mask of it, it would be cool. Because my son's now 21, but when he was little, he had a superhero that was called Super Dupe. I made him a little cape and it had a lightning thing on the back of it. And he spent a lot of time running around the house in his super dupe cape. He's 21 now.

Katy 23:26

He'll really appreciate you sharing that.

Ali 23:28

Anyway, that's what he's he was super dupe.

Katy 23:31

You mentioned that part of your thinking was having a book that black boys would recognize themselves in, and you have written about representation in books and the representation of children of colour and just having that diversity in books. How do you think things are moving? How have you found the publishing sector? What would your comment now be? Because you wrote quite a powerful article a few years ago about representation, particularly around fantasy and what genres black authors were seen as writing in. Do you have any further thoughts on that now you've been through the publishing process?

Mayo 24:10

Yeah, it's it's interesting. I would say that I do think there's been progress. I do think I've seen since I wrote that article quite a few really, really good books come out in all different genres in fantasy and in a lot of different genres. I think there's been progress. I don't think there's been loads of progress. I think one of the things that can happen is that a few very high-profile releases can make it seem like more is happening than it actually is. When you then see the reports and you see the absolute numbers, and you realize it probably still hasn't shifted that much. It's tough out there for black creatives and creatives of colour because one of the I think very interesting reports is the IBC Inclusive Books for Children report, which shows that even as representation kind of increases, the people behind these books isn't maybe shifting as much. That report showed that in a lot of these children's book categories, these books are coming from over 50% white authors. Sometimes, even when the percentage of on-page representation is going up, who's actually getting to tell their story isn't shifting as much. And sometimes the industry does respond to these things by asking their established white authors to just add diversity to their books rather than championing both the established authors of colour and new authors of colour to be able to tell our stories. I think I've seen progress. I think we still need a lot more. I think the publishing industry really still needs to focus on allowing a more diverse range of creators to tell their stories and supporting those books because it's not just about what gets published, but it's also about what gets marketed and pushed and what shows up on the bookshelves. It's one of those things that a great thing to have data about would actually be the diversity of bookshops, the shelves, because when you look at what's newly being published, that's great, but also a lot of classics hang around for a very long time. How much is that shifting the actual, like when a child walks into a bookshop, what they see on the shelves? And I think the last thing is just the fact that actually it's also worrying that the progress we have made feels increasingly at risk. We're now seeing this whole concept of book bands, it has really swept through the US, but now we're seeing it in schools over here in the UK. And and so it's like we're also at a time where I'm worried about what has been done actually going in reverse. We're at a tough moment with this stuff, and I think it's really a moment where we need to commit more than ever to diversity because having a real range of stories is, I really believe that's what gets kids of all types reading. I know that publishing as an industry might want to chase the things they think sell the best, but if you only do that, you leave a lot of readers out, and you leave a lot of people who could be your customers, who could be readers, but never see anything for them, you leave them behind. If I was thinking about the same piece today, I would say that I've seen some progress get made, but we need to one, secure that progress and be really committed to fighting back against any kind of book banning, any kind of censorship, and then also go, we still need to go much further.

Katy 28:15

It's the age-old problem, isn't it? That actually the diversity within the publishing industry hasn't changed that much. And the people who are commissioning books commission the books that they would have read as a child. Well, their view of what children want will inevitably be shaped by their view of their own childhood, their own children. And if it's not a particularly diverse industry, then that makes that uh an additional barrier. It has to be about not just the established audience that you can have, but all of the new readers that are missing out because they don't see themselves in books. And you're absolutely right in terms of bookshops and we that you go in, and you can almost predict what will be on the shelves because of the tables that they're pushing. I think it is getting better. I live in Lewisham and I've spoken about this before. Ali's going, oh no, she's gonna have a pop-up wallet's again. I

Ali 29:13

'm not take your pop.

Katy 29:15

So when they opened in Lewisham, they basically opened with a bog standard manila selection of books that I assume, and I don't know this, but I assume it's like they have a opening a new bookshop kind of set order that just goes in. And Lewisham is one of the more diverse boroughs in London, and there wasn't a black author on display. The first few times I went in, I was just absolutely gobsmacked because they didn't even have authors who write at children's books about Lewisham. People like Nate Lessore, who writes about South London, they weren't even on the shelves. But give them their due, and when I raised it with them, they weren't defensive at all. The booksellers who were in there just basically said, give us some time. We literally just started, and give them their due over time. They clearly are now thinking about which books they want in that specific shop, and it is so much better. But there are still whole displays of the usual suspects, and you can buy any Winnie the Pooh version. There are all of those things which you would expect, but it has got a lot better, and there is a good range now. And although they do have and the picture books, they've got their sort of the classics, the ones that sell Hungry Caterpillar and uh How Much I Love You, and all of those things, which feel like everyone has to have bought at some point, but they do have also a display of a much more diverse range. So I'm giving them their due. The thing that I think irritated you at the time was it took six months to open you. No, no. So they had they could have done it before. They could have thought what yes, maybe we don't need our standard, this is our off the shelf, whatever. So anyway, I've had my rant now about it. I've given them their deal. We might edit it out because we might edit it out because Ali thinks I'm very boring about it, which is fair. I think it is truly a reasonable thing to think that you want to reflect your audience. Because also, if you don't normally go into a bookshop and you're like, oh, it's a new bookshop, I'll go and pop in. If the first time you pop in, there's nothing that's you want to pick up and look at, you're not gonna go again, are you? You're not gonna give them a second chance. So you have one go to get this right sometimes, and I think that's important. It is really important, representation really matters. The Afori bookshop in Brighton. I don't know if you've been following that on Twitter and TikTok are having a really tough time at the moment. Yeah. And you've got publishers like Knights Of, who have been amazing in terms of publishing diverse books, and they've gone out of business, and that just takes another voice out of the market, which feels worrying. And as you say, book bans as well, because the incident that's been in the press did seem to be disproportionately banning books by diverse authors.

Mayo 32:18

It was really but yeah, I mean, Afray books are definitely been following that, and I think they were having a very tough time. But what has been amazing has been the way people and and community has come together. They were trying to sell a thousand books in April to make sure that they had sustainability and could keep going as a bookshop, and they ended up selling over 1500 and they smashed through their target, and they specialize in books by black authors. And the fact that they could do that shows people want to support both the bookshop and black authors. And when it comes to bookshops, one of the things I think that the publishing industry, both through the publishers and the shops, are a little bit stuck by is you used the phrase earlier, you don't know what you don't know. And I think that the publishing industry, they know what sells, but only of the subset of what they sell, and that's how they make decisions is that what do we sell and what is selling out of that? And I think that in terms of doing your homework and in terms of maybe reaching out a bit more, I think there does need to be more work in the industry to work out who they're not serving and essentially what money they're leaving on the table by not serving these people. I wish they would do a bit more market research and a bit more outreach to find out who they're missing. And it could be interviewing families, it could be simply talking to librarians in forming librarian focus groups and talking to the people who know what kids especially are coming in looking for but cannot find. I think a lot of the time when you talk about diversity, you get a pushback of they've got to sell what sells, but actually they are missing out on a lot by not offering books for a lot of different kinds of readers who will then just see nothing for them and not come back. I think that there's definitely progress. There is progress being made in bookshops. There are wonderful indies that work really hard to diversify their lists, but yeah, I think in general the industry still needs to work on catering to a wider group of people, and I think it's good for society and also good for business. I think if they put more effort into that, they'll find that out.

Ali 34:51

Let's get back to you. Yeah, tell us back to you and Kid Rex. Is there going to be more of his story?

Mayo 34:58

Absolutely. I don't think it's a secret. I signed the two book deal, so there is a second Kid Rex book in the works at the moment. Not got an official release date for that yet, but it is coming. And yeah, hopefully, kids are loving it. Hopefully, it will be a success. And I can do many more because he is a character that I love writing about, and I can just imagine a bunch of different uh situations to put him in. So, yeah, there's definitely another one coming, but yeah, hopefully many more adventures to go on.

Katy 35:34

Exciting. And are you working on anything for any other ages as well, or are you concentrating on picture books at the moment?

Mayo 35:40

I definitely want to write across age groups. I think when I think about my bucket list as an author, my dream would be to get to a point in my career where someone, a child could read me all the way through their childhood so they could start at picture books and go all the way up to YA, and I would have a book in every category for them. Um I'm definitely working on some stuff for middle grade at the moment. And yeah, hopefully at some point I will have middle grade out, YA out. I want to have it all.

Katy 36:11

Very nice. Brilliant. All right, thank you very much. We should also say that we like the shiny bits on the cover, don't we?

Ali 36:16

Oh, yeah. Oh, love a bit of spot varnish on the cover. Makes me very happy.

Katy 36:21

So we thought we'd add that in. Thank you so much. That's been really great.

Mayo 36:26

Thank you.

Katy 36:31

So, hope you enjoyed that. Look out for that book. It's very hard to miss. It has a very bright cover. Just a couple of other picture books that we have looked at recently to add to the recommended list. We've got first up, Auntie's Bangles, which is by Dean Atta and is illustrated by Alea Marley. And this is Dean's second picture book, and it's also his second one illustrated by Aaliyah. The first one was confetti, which was a kind of celebration of everything, really, wasn't it? And bright colours and lots of confetti. This one has a more serious theme and tackles grief. Theo and his cousin Rama are used to have sleepovers and dance, but since Rama's mum, Theo's auntie, died, everything feels quiet. And Theo just wants to know what he can do to make it better for Rama. But his mum says that all he can really do is just be kind and give her some space and time. And the bangles become the thing that they remember Auntie by. They they jingle jangle as she cooked, and it's quite a sort of rhythmical book. That's a sort of refrain, isn't it? The jingle-jangling. And they also remember things that they read together and that they cook together and that they danced together. And slowly Theo helps Rama find joy in those memories again. And so it it is about grief, but it's in a very age-appropriate way. It's not um, it's not it is a sad book in some ways, but it's sad but hopeful.

Ali 38:04

Sad but hopeful.

Katy 38:05

And it definitely would be a way in to help to have difficult conversations, but not necessarily just with a child who might be experiencing that, but just a sort of general way of opening up those discussions with a younger age group and having those conversations before perhaps when you need to. Yeah, which is probably a good thing to do because it's kind of one of those things you don't want to have to do when you get there. You probably want to have thought about it a bit before you do get into that situation. So that's that one. You got one, Ali?

Ali 38:34

Yeah, I've got one, which is Fred the Very Demanding Deer by Pepe Smit, which is published by Scallywag Press and translated from the Dutch. I think Pepe did her own translation actually. Yeah, she did, yeah. Um we went to the launch at Gosh Comics. It's a very cute story about a deer who wants to leave the forest to visit the city, where he makes a series of decisions. He needs shoes to walk about on his hind legs and a hand so he can eat chips. He then kind of has a little lie down in the park and realizes that he's missing the forest, and so he returns, but he keeps his hands for further adventures.

Katy 39:13

He's quite a demanding

Ali 39:14

very demanding, yeah. He's demanding at the beginning about what he looks like, and it sort of breaks the fourth wall. It's a chat between the illustrator and the deer as they navigate the book together. It's very sweet. And I think there's in Dutch, there's like ten different books in it. So there's loads more where this one came from, and it was very sweet, and hopefully,

Katy 39:35

it's got a slightly quirky sense of humour, hasn't it?

Ali 39:38

It's very quirky, but it's very gentle and sweet. Really nice illustrations. Yeah, gorgeous illustrations, and our lovely deer. What's not to love?

Katy 39:47

What's not to love? Okay, excellent. So see you soon.