We love working with children’s book illustrators Happydesigner. We write all their blogs and, when they had their own book published, were able to get some publicity for this, including in the Ross Gazette.
An award-winning children’s book illustrator has put pen to paper and published her own story for youngsters – all about a tree.
Sarah-Leigh Wills, who runs Ross-on-Wye-based Happydesigner, has written, illustrated and published ‘Sally Sapling’, which will be the first in a series of books, all featuring a different tree.
Inspired by her love of trees, nature and history, Sarah-Leigh’s story follows Sally from sapling in the 1920s right through to her old age in the 2020s.
With the subtitle ‘the little tree with the big history’, Sally’s progress is tracked through the decades, meeting suffragettes in the 1920s, hippies in the ’60s, yuppies in the 1990s and witnessing Millennium fireworks. She sees London Olympians and even has a special visit from the late Queen Elizabeth II to mark her hundredth birthday.
Sarah-Leigh wants to focus her ‘tree’ series on lesser-known varieties, and all the stories will be set in different times, including Romans, Vikings and Druids. Sally is a copper beech and other heroes will include Walter Walnut, Hetty Hornbeam and Percy Pine.
“The story is very subtle so people can look at the illustrations and words and interpret them in their own way,” said Sarah Leigh. “It isn’t always about happy times, for example it includes people’s sadness during the war years of the ’30s and ’40s, and shows children that people do go through difficult times too.”
Sarah-Leigh’s inspiration came in part from the tree-like Ents beings in Lord of the Rings. “They made me more aware that plants and trees do have life and are very spiritual. Do they have feelings? Do they feel happy or sad? I wanted to use this to help guide Sally Sapling.”
This isn’t Sarah-Leigh’s first children’s book. She has a series called ‘Gillie Can’ and is also developing her own brand, ‘Oh Erik!’, based on Erik, the Happydesigner studio cat.
Happydesigner, which as well as designing books also offers logo design and branding, has twice won Illustration Studio of the Year in the annual Prestige Awards, in 2022 and 2023.
Sally Sapling is aimed at 5 to 8-year-olds, and is available via Sarah-Leigh’s Etsy shop https://piggypawsshop.etsy.com/. Details of her other books and projects are at www.piggypawsip.co.uk. For more about Happydesigner, visit www.happydesigner.co.uk.