Birthday Baby

with Davina Bell and Freya Blackwood

Allen & Unwin, 2018

Once I wrote a story called One Hundred Mummies about a little boy who wanted more than just his one mother.  I didn’t do anything with this story and then one day I was talking with my friend Davina Bell about it and somehow through our conversation the mummies turned into babies and we were going to write a book called One Hundred Babies!  Then it became Twenty Nine Babies when we realised that maybe one hundred was a few too many babies, and then it came down to just a few babies!  We wanted to make a book that celebrates a baby’s first birthday, but also all the different types of personalities of babies everywhere.  We were thrilled when our friend Freya Blackwood wanted to illustrate it.  Freya used lino cutting in this book – all the babies’ clothes are little linocut stamps.