Award-Winning Picture Book Trilogy

The Fairy in the Kettle Trilogy is a sentimental achievement that harks back to my childhood.

I don’t often think of these books without thinking of my grandad and his garden. His pride and joy, it was overflowing with vegetables, fruit trees, and his greenhouse transported me to another world, wild and exotic. Yes, there was the expected resident, tomatoes. But there was also an established grape vine that had taken hold and flourished year on year as its ageing vines enveloped the greenhouse, producing an abundance of red grapes that we feasted on for weeks. Remember, this was back in the late seventies. No one else I knew had their own supply of fresh grapes, and so, to me, my grandad was, quite simply, a genius.

But there was far more to his garden. Although there may not have been fairies, during school visits, I definitely have a story to tell when the children ask me where my inspiration came from to have a fairy living in a kettle.

My grandad passed away when I was seventeen (I don’t tell the children that bit), and we were extremely close. So, as I fast forward from the late seventies to late 2016, when the first book in The Fairy in the Kettle trilogy was published, you can imagine that it gave me a sense of feeling closer to him. I speak about his garden regularly through the ‘story’ I tell the school children, which incidentally involves a coal shed, a kettle, and my imagination. And it’s a story they love!

Fast forward again to the present day, and these special books have become an award-winning trilogy.

We can never imagine how our childhood’s will affect our lives, even decades on. But there is one thing I know for sure, without that coal shed and kettle, there would be no The Fairy in the Kettle trilogy!