GOING BANANAS

I enjoy volunteering at the town’s charity library, writes subscriber Cynthea Gregory.

Not only can you chat to the locals about what they enjoy reading and why, but I also delight in seeing young readers engrossed in the library’s collection. The place may be small, but there is an excellent range for all kinds of bookworms – anything from toddlers’ picture books to novels for young adults.

One day, curiosity led me to sit amongst the youngsters, listen to their comments, and study the books themselves. I was fascinated. The reading material had changed so much since I was a child. I started borrowing armfuls of children’s books to take home and study after my volunteering sessions.

As well as writing, I’d always taken a keen interest in art, and had taken up painting again after a very long pause. My new interest in children’s picture books started with me experimenting with painting illustrations for children’s fiction.

During lockdown, of course, the library was closed. However, I was able to enrol in two online courses about writing and illustrating children’s picture books. That was it! I was hooked. I decided to give it a go. At first, after being used to writing novels, creating such short stories was a real challenge, but who doesn’t love a challenge? I’d soon written quite a collection of children’s stories.

Then, watching the TV series, The Orangutan Jungle School, one of the young apes was a real character. Despite his carers’ guidance, he persisted in trying to ‘do his own thing’ and devour masses of his favourite food. I got my paints out and tried painting my version of the cheeky young orangutan. I decided to base my story on his determination – something that, being a dyslexic writer, I knew a lot about.

Two years later, after testing the story out on children, professional editing, advice from friends, and hundreds of hours of painting, Beni and the Bananas was finished. It is available on Amazon, Kindle version and paperback.

Beni adores bananas. Despite his Mum’s advice not to eat too many, he sneaks off into the rainforest in search of his treat. But finding his favourite food isn’t as easy as he’d first imagined, and Beni gets himself into all sorts of trouble.

Like many, I feel distressed by the diminishing numbers of orangutans in the wild and decided to donate any profits from my book to the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation.

Website: www.cynthea-gregory.com