Wheesht!
We’ve had a really busy February. Not only did we meet lots of lovely families during the half term holidays – which with different dates for different areas, lasted for three weeks – but we’ve also been working on the new picture book Wheesht! Last year we were lucky enough to be awarded a Scots Language Publication Grant from the Scottish Government through the Scottish Book Trust towards the cost of publishing this new picture book. Due to other work commitments it was towards the end of the year that we finally got started on the book. The wonderful illustrations are by Wigtown artist William Gorman of Will Gorman Art who has illustrated two books with me in the past, one when I was the director of Curly Tale Books and last year as the owner of Foggie Toddle Books. He has a well deserved excellent reputation for his depiction of dogs so when we won the grant for Wheesht, which is about Shug the Dug, he was the obvious choice to go to.
It took a while, though, to decide what the main character should look like. We allow dogs to come into the shops (with their owners) so I was taking pictures of likely looking candidates and sharing them with Susi and Will. Of course they had their own thoughts. Then a friend of Susi adopted a rescue dog through the Scruffy Dog Rescue, sending her a photo of the new family pet – and we were all won over immediately. The dog had been in a terrible state when she was rescued, and not given much of a chance but she responded well to treatment and found a new home in Dumfries. Because of her story we will be giving a donation from every copy sold to the Scruffy Dog Rescue to support their work – and if the book is ordered through the website shop during April, we’ll be giving a £1 to the charity for every copy sold.
Susi will be launching the book as part of Oor Wee Podcast Live on Saturday April 2nd at the Theatre Royal, Dumfries. We’re delighted that everything has come together really well, and the book is now at the printers. Wheesht was a story originally commission by Matthew Fitt of the Scots Hoose online resource for learning and teaching the Scots language. Susi was asked to write two stories and they were performed and recorded at Moat Brae, the National Centre for Children’s Literature and Storytelling in Dumfries. You can see Susi perform the story by clicking here.
The lovely illustrations make the story clear for non-Scots speakers and there’s also a helpful glossary of Scots to English in the back of the book. We hope you’ll love the book.
Charity