I’m excited to announce my latest picture book, KAHU’S BUSY DAY IN CAROLINE BAY, a collaboration with the Timaru Lions Club Charitable Trust.
Teressa and Karen, the Lionesses
KAHU’S BUSY DAY IN CAROLINE BAY began in the mind of Teressa May, president of the Timaru Lions Club Charitable Trust (above, right).
When I moved to Timaru, New Zealand a few years ago, Teressa reached out, wanting to collaborate on an interactive community project that would celebrate Caroline Bay, our town’s gorgeous, stuffed-with-amenities coastal park, and the little blue penguins who next along the shore. Eventually, the idea became a book.
In an early meeting about the project, Karen (left) suggested changing the name of the penguin character from my original suggestion, Peri (short for Periwinkle), to Kahu, the Te reo Māori word for blue. It was also Karen’s suggestion morph the idea for an interactive community project into a book. Thank you, Karen!
A Uniquely Local Affair
A passionate supporter of Timaru-based businesses, Teressa decided to forgo the usual routes to publishing and handle everything locally.
Vivid Design + Print in nearby Washdyke (a suburb of Timaru) printed KAHU’S BUSY DAY IN CAROLINE BAY, and did a marvelous job! Owner Nathan, shown here in a penguin hat knitted by Yours Truly, was a paragon of patience and support. Thank you, Nathan and the Vivid Design + Print team!Renée Rowland (on the right in the photo above) sold copies of KAHU’S BUSY DAY IN CAROLINE BAY at a fun launch event planned by Teressa May and hosted by the Timaru Suburban Lions. Renée is the owner of two area bookshops, Timaru Booksellers and The Page and Prose (the latter in nearby Geraldine), and is the main distributor of KAHU’S BUSY DAY IN CAROLINE BAY. Thank you to the entire Timaru Booksellers team!Timaru District Libraries has been hugely supportive, too! Librarian Ingrid, featured here, even made her own Kahu costume for the launch event. Amazing! Thank you, Timaru District Libraries!
A Super Strong Debut!
According to Neilsen IQ, KAHU’S BUSY DAY IN CAROLINE BAY debuted at #12 in New Zealand. Hooray! THANK YOU, TIMARU!
Get the Book
Click here to order your copy of KAHU’S BUSY DAY IN CAROLINE BAY today!
When I was very young, my family moved from Illinois to Missouri. At the new house, my father promptly planted a row of roses along the back edge of the patio for my mother. Mom wasn’t a big gardener. I’m not sure how much time she or Dad spent tending her roses, but every summer, they bloomed.
My husband and I recently bought a home in Timaru, New Zealand. It’s our fourth house, although we haven’t owned one since leaving the US in 2015. Buying a home here has been our dream for nearly a decade, so of course we’re floating on a cloud of joy now that we;re home owners—but for me, it’s not just the house that’s making me happy. It’s the roses.
City of Roses
I can’t smell a rose without thinking of my mom, and Timaru is teeming with them. We just happened to drive past this gorgeous “Rose Cottage” while running errands this morning.
In five minutes, I can walk from our front door to a gorgeous rose garden in Caroline Bay, a beautiful city park.
Last weekend, a rose festival kicked off the summer season. (New Zealand is in the southern hemisphere, so summer begins in December.) And there are roses casually strewn about everywhere, decorating the lawns and gardens of nearly every house.
A Woman Who Prays
Dec 7 was my mom’s birthday. She passed away a few years ago. Some people say that grieving hearts heal over time, but I’m not sure that’s true. It’s more like grief changes you. You learn to function in spite of it.
My mother never stopped praying, and I know she had a hand in guiding me and Fred to Timaru, city of roses. Strangely, our new house—which has plenty of other flowers—had nary a rose. We fixed that today. We bought this rose and planted it for my mom, Marianne.
She is everywhere here, all around me, in every rose.
I feel closer now to my mother than ever—despite the grief and loss, which are still there, and always will be. I’m very, very grateful for our new home, and for the roses,
I was living in Auckland during New Zealand’s only mass shooting, which happened at a mosque in Christchurch. Idyllic, peaceful, beautiful New Zealand was shattered by an act of hate.
In the aftermath, I couldn’t stop wondering why our differences matter. Aren’t we all ultimately the same? Does it really matter that people look different, come from different places, worship differently? (And, by the way, isn’t religion supposed to be about love?)
This swirl of questions became the inspiration for a proposed lift-the-flap book, What Matters?. Every spread showed people with different opinions, different life styes, physical differences, etc, and asked the question, “Does it matter?”. Under the flap, the answer was always some form of “No!”.
My original storyboard for What Matters?
My agent pitched the idea to HarperCollins, where an amazing editor took an interest. She shared the proposal in a meeting, and the project sparked conversation. Apparently, a person’s ethnicity, color, and religion do matter. Of course! All of that stuff shapes each person’s worldview.
The concept of material wealth didn’t make it into the final book.
The editor asked me to pivot and send a revision.
The original color sketch and final illustration. Religion made it in—yay!
After a month of thinking and hand-wringing, I rewrote and redrew the book. I was visiting my cousin Tom at the time, who tossed ideas around with me and generally kept me sane.
Can cousins be BFFS? Of course!
I’d been asking the wrong question. “Does it matter?” became “Can they be friends?”. The answer under the flap was always some version of YES, and adds even more positivity to what I hope is a loving, joyful message.
HarperCollins bought the book, which was a giant relief and an enormous cause for celebration.
Let’s Be Friends is available everywhere as of Dec 14, 2021. Click here to order your copy today!
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