5 Books I've Written for My Nieces
How scrimping on Christmas presents inspired a book
Back when I had more time and less money, I hit upon the idea of writing a book for my nieces instead of buying them a Christmas present. This was 2014, a year when I had hours and hours of spare time trapped in my office at a university job in Mexico.
My nieces, Isabelle (3 and a half) and Orla (2), lived with their parents in Hong Kong. I was in Mexico, and the rest of our family was back in the UK. The last time I had seen them, Isabelle had asked who the mysterious figure on my jujitsu hoodie was.
Instead of explaining that I neither practiced jiujitsu nor knew the guy, I simply replied, ‘Why it’s Pop Pop Chicken Man.’
Soon, ‘Chicken Man’ became the focus of intense questions and developed into a sort of alter ego for me (a thin-legged uncle in a far-off land). Then, his ingenious catchphrase emerged (it’s just him saying “Oi!” a lot).
Summers were pretty slow at the university, so I started to work on a picture book for Christmas. I knew who the main character would be and had an idea for the story, but I faced a couple of problems: I couldn’t draw, and I didn’t know how to make a book.
Despite the threat of a copyright lawsuit, I decided to use Foghorn Leghorn to represent Chicken Man. There were plenty of PNG images of the character in different poses online. I proceeded to print and cut out the pictures, stick them onto the A4 spreads, and add text by hand. The basic story was that the chicken went around Hong Kong spewing questionable rhymes and bad puns in search of Isabelle and Orla.
I bound the pages with string and glued them into an unrelated but beautiful wooden notebook cover I’d purchased in Oaxaca.
The book was a smash hit with the girls (lots of pictures of them in it), but my plan to save money on gifts didn’t really work out. The production and postage costs for the book were about 50 pounds!
Producing this book took weeks of work. So when Christmas 2015 rolled around, I thought They’re not getting a book every bloody year!
The next installment came in 2016, and I have since followed the pattern of producing a story once every two years.
What’s cool is that in twenty-four months, the girls had moved on to being able to understand much more themselves. They wanted to turn the page and participate in the story.
That Christmas, the family was all together in the UK. Instead of a book, I had cobbled together an ‘animated story’ in the form of a PowerPoint presentation.
The girls could click through the slides and watch the characters move and talk. Many more characters were added, including two cat detectives who solved the mystery of the Milltown Thief (spoiler alert: it was Chicken Man).
Now, the girls could ‘watch’ this story back in Hong Kong. And as an added bonus, the postal cost was 0.
By 2018, the girls were six and nearly eight. They were developing into voracious readers capable of tearing through a mid-grade reader in a matter of minutes.
The story I produced was based on more bad chicken puns and the availability of two plushy toys (a chicken and an egg finger-puppet).
The Chicken and The Egg ran at about 4,000 words, and I took the pages to a print shop to produce two copies.
Rather than add pictures myself, I thought I’d leave this to the girls. It was fun to see how they imagined the characters. They really didn’t want to sully the books by drawing in them, but I insisted that I left spaces for that exact reason. I even had to threaten them with ‘NO MORE BOOKS’ unless they completed the pictures.
I’ll be honest, writing such an involved story AND producing the physical book was a lot of work for 2 ‘sales’. I’m relieved to see that the books are still on the girls’ bookshelves, though I’m not sure if the chicken and egg plushies survived.
Christmas 2020 saw a return to the lazy digital format — this time with poems. My nieces (now eight and nearly ten) were getting too old for simplistic stories where the chicken always found what he was looking for. So, I moved into education mode.
Poem Poem Chicken Man was a series of limericks based on previous characters and family members. The aim was to teach my nieces the form and for them to produce poems of their own.
According to their parents, this present was a resounding success because it kept them occupied for about an hour.
The last of the five books I produced for my nieces was the A-Z of Rotten Uncles. They are, to date, the only people apart from Caterina to have read the thing.
By 2022, they had their own Kindles, and it was cool to deliver the eBook to their personal devices. But, as any author will tell you, it’s not the same as holding the book in your hands.
That’s why, two years later, I’ve vowed to produce a paperback version with pictures. And this time, I’m hoping to get more than 2 readers!
Full List of Books Produced for My Nieces:
2014 - Pop Pop Chicken Man Goes to Hong Kong
2016 - Beefy and Big Eyes: The Milltown Mystery
2018 - The Chicken and The Egg
2020 - Poem Poem Chicken Man
2022 - The A-Z of Rotten Uncles
Thanks for reading.
Be nice to your niblings, and have an ‘eggcelent’ Sunday.
Phil
P.s. Here is a bonus shot of me being mean to Orla this summer during sunflower picking season.
It is not strange that you decided to write and publish your new book about "rotten uncles" - you have a lot of experience already writing childrens books. Those nieces are very lucky to have such a caring writer around them.
I completely enjoyed reading this newsletter! As an Aunt with over 20 niblings, I can imagine the thoughtfulness it took to write books. I have considered writing books for some of them, but the thought of the rigmarole of production gets me discouraged. However, I have written and shared children tracts with them in the past. I look forward to more inspiring ways to bond with them. Thank you so much for sharing👍🏻.