Puffins book tests illustrating skills
The last thing Sarah Harmon wanted to do was to raise the ire of any Shetlanders.
The Tawa illustrator recently combined with Pukerua Bay author Gay Hay to produce children’s book Will There Be Puffins?
Told through the eyes of a sixyear-old travelling to Shetland, a group of islands north-east of Scotland, the book uses puffins as a metaphor in the story.
The plump birds spend most of the year at sea, but always return to the mainland - not unlike the Shetlanders themselves, who work at sea or move away but ‘‘always carry their home in their hearts’’, Hay said.
She met Harmon at the Pataka Art Awards four years ago and, when it came to illustrate her puffin story - a subject close to her heart as her husband’s family is from Shetland - knew Harmon would be right for the job.
‘‘Sarah is incredibly talented and deserves so much credit for bringing this story to life,’’ Hay said.
‘‘Her illustrations are just wonderful.’’
Harmon worked for seven years as an assistant at Porirua Library before recently taking a job in marketing and communications with Upper Hutt libraries.
Her work for Hay’s book have been ‘‘in weekends, evenings, any spare time I had,’’ and even included a trip to the Shetland Islands last year.
‘‘We had the most amazing weather the week I was there and I got a brilliant feeling for the place and the people,’’ Harmon said.
Her illustrations of the Celtic patterns on Shetland jewellery and even the deliberate colours used in local knitwear are painstakingly accurate.
She watched a puffin ‘‘clowning around’’ and it made her drawing them that much more personal, she said.
‘‘I wanted to get everything right, because I knew some of the books would make their way to Shetland.
It was important to me because Shetlanders have that incredible sense of identity and we wanted to get that across.’’
Hay acknowledged the support of the Shetland Society of Wellington, which celebrates its 95th anniversary next year, in putting the book together.
The book is officially launched at The Children’s Bookshop in Kilbirnie on November 2 and can be bought in Paper Plus stores.