Celebrating the Kid in Us

When I taught Paralegals at Capilano University I was dismayed by the lack of appropriate teaching texts. So, I wrote a legal interviewing text followed by a Canadian Evidence Law text. As thrilling as these topics were, there was a writing imp in me that needed freeing. Well before publishing any books I was always writing snippets of dialogue or scenes. So it was, that I was noodling with some nonsense words and the word mogogos popped into my head. This was back in the day when the internet was a surly beast, but with a bit of searching I discovered that a mogogos is an East African clay cooking oven. More searching about Kenya led to me learning that a hyrax is a guinea pig sized mammal related to the elephant-though not in size. I wrote the Hyrax in the Mogogos and after a time, I emailed an art institute in Kenya to try to locate an illustrator to create a picture book.This is how I connected with Susan (Alex) Percival who devoted herself to creating extraordinary illustrations to bring the text alive.