LOCAL author, Sue Tozer celebrates her first self-published children’s book, ‘Dustcart Bart and the Missing Growl’, which is now for sale at Hunting Raven books.
Sue said, “The basic idea for the book came from my seeing (like we all have) dirty, old toys attached to the front of a vans and lorries and my husband mentioning that he had seen a skip full of old props and toys to be thrown away outside ‘The Bristol Old Vic’ where he was working on the renovations. But I didn’t have a ‘plot’, until one evening when my father-in-law told us about one of his visits home on leave, during his National Service.
“He had served in the RAF as a Bomber Command pilot and as the survival rate for those brave men was so abysmally low at that time, his parents must have concluded that he would not be coming back because when he did arrive home on that occasion, he discovered that all of his possessions had been variously distributed throughout the family! To me though the most poignant part of his story was that the head had been cut off of his old teddy bear to remove the ‘growl’ in order to re-use it in a toy duck which his mother was knitting!
“So, I started working on ‘Dustcart Bart & the Missing Growl’ purely as a project for the family. I decided to self-publish the book because I wanted my father-in law who is now in his 97th year to see it and gain his approval for the use of his story.
“I discovered Carly Corlett and her company ‘Peahen Publishing Ltd’ www.peahen publishing.com who are based in Corsham via the ‘Frome Festival’ Book Fair in 2018. Carly teamed me up with a local illustrator, Kate Davies, who is based in Bath www.lovefromtheartist.com/Artists/bath/kate-davies, and I couldn’t be happier with the fantastic job that Kate, Carly and the team at Peahen Publishing have done for me.
“The feedback I have received from those who have read it so far, whether young or old, family members or not has been so positive that I decided to see how far we can go with it. The story just ‘happened’ therefore it was not aimed at a particular age-group, we have come to the conclusion that it would mostly appeal to ‘early readers’ i.e. children of 5 – 8 years of age or even up to 10 years, it will depend upon the reading age of the child. Adults also seem to enjoy it.
“It’s a funny, happy story which without moralising, shows the characters as being unselfish and helping one another. It also holds an important message, though I did not realise quite how important this was when I was writing it, as Stinkerbell says to Bart ‘Beauty is only skin deep, it’s what’s inside someone that counts’ – something which we must reinforce to children so much more these days.
“The book itself is a 66 page, line-drawn illustrated paperback 196 x 130mm, with a gold-foiled gloss cover, printed in Great Britain. The price is £5.99 per copy and is available by emailing me via my website www.dustcartbart.com or from Hunting Raven Books, Cheap Street, Frome.”
Above: Sue Tozer with her book in Hunting Raven, Frome.
