Fun with fowl and feathered friends
Ruth Paul is an award-winning children’s book author and illustrator based in the rural Wellington community of Mākara where she also looks after a large native forest project. Her latest book, Hatch and Match, is an early learning multi-tasker, teaching colour, patterns and encouraging number fun in one colourful volume.
Where do you find creative inspiration?
I tell kids that ideas are all around, but you must have the modem tuned in to find them. Be curious, be interested in others, read, look and listen and the ideas will come. Having said that, not all ideas are good ideas. Finding a good idea is serendipitous, and the trick is being able to recognise one fast enough to catch it as it scoots past. At present, I have naughty chickens that lay their eggs everywhere except where they’re supposed to, so the inspiration wasn’t far from home.
Do the words or images tend to come first?
Usually for me the words come first, but for Hatch and Match I had a strong folk-artsy image in mind of the chickens roosting in a tree. It was inspired by two different experiences – once I saw a bunch of wayward chickens doing this at a friend’s house, and another time I went to Staglands at dusk and saw all these different birds roosting in a tree, with a peacock way high up at the top. So I saved up these images in my mind, and eventually drew the first illustration of the chicken-tree which looks very Christmass-y. However, the story ended up becoming a puzzle book, matching patterned chickens with their eggs and hence becoming more suitable for the Easter market. Spoiler: the eggs hatch before you can eat them.
When did your love of illustration start?
It started when I was little, at home, and Mum said there was no such thing as ‘bored’. I disagree, I was often bored, but we filled in the time with crayons, chalk and paint. My older sister used to whack me if I left white bits visible on the colouring-in pictures, so that explains a lot about the density of Hatch and Match.
I would love to be a cool, sparse, thoughtful, quiet, limited-palette kind-of illustrator, but I always seem to make it way more complicated.
How does your rural setting inspire your work?
Mmmm. Nature is always full of ideas, but rural settings are often more busy than they are inspiring. We are trying to nurture 27-odd hectares of native forest into existence, so in direct contrast to Beatrix Potter, I seem to be killing rather than drawing small animals (goats, possums, hares, rabbits stoats, rats and pigs). I know this is not how people think of picture-book authors, and I realio, trulio look forward to the day we can live and let live. However, I have become accustomed to the space and privacy that rural living affords. It’s nice knowing the neighbours aren’t close enough to hear me talking out loud to myself, which I often do when working in the hills and writing a story. But please, someone tell me if I start doing it down Lambton Quay.
What do you hope children will learn from your book?
Mostly I just want the readers to have fun. If they learn to name and match some patterns, count the eggs, find a rabbit, make silly chicken noises and think about genetics (OK, so maybe that can wait till college) then I’ll be happy. As far as picture books go, it’s a pre-packaged colourful diversion with some fun-sounding words – and who doesn’t need more of that?