Have you ever seen a smack of jellyfish, a dazzle of zebras or a glimmer of dragonflies?
In April 2018 my first ever illustrated children’s book, A Kaleidoscope of Butterflies & other such collective nouns, was published! This book started four years earlier in 2014 and was an ongoing passion project, so to see it finally become a book was a great feeling. The idea came about after a friend came back from Africa and told me that a group of zebras was called a ‘dazzle’. I just loved that and started researching all the other crazy collective nouns of animals.
Originally I just started illustrating my favourite animals for fun, but after I had produced a few illustrations i thought it would be great to create a book of all these wonderful words and animals. The great team at Mary Egan Publishing loved the idea and we decided to publish this book under their children’s book imprint Little Love.
The publishing process was a real learning experience for me, there was so much to consider from paper stock to the binding and there were several hiccups along the way, including a complete cover redesign, but I was thrilled when the final book arrived. We held a super fun book launch at the sea scout hall in Devonport complete with a herd of llamas, a lounge of lizards, a galaxy of starfish and a pandemonium of parrots!
