Margaret Guppy has written and published her first children's book called The Night the Moon Fell.
Photo by
Megan Fisher
It was a single-sentence prompt at her local writer’s group in Shepparton that catapulted Margaret Guppy’s imagination into unfamiliar territory.
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She’s been a writer all her life, but before she penned her debut, The Night the Moon Fell, she had never written — nor considered writing — a children’s book.
Although after writing only part of the story during the group exercise during that meeting, she shelved it and forgot about it until she was on holiday a few years later and rediscovered the unfinished work on her laptop.
While she had the time, she completed the story about a mischievous comet who knocks the dozing moon from the sky into the ocean, where he makes friends and memories with creatures of the deep before being beckoned back into the sky by the stars and then finding a fun and unique way to get there.
Pleased with what she’d produced, she shared it with her sister-in-law, who is an ex-school teacher with four children and several grandchildren.
“She rang me and said, ‘That’s really great, I really enjoyed that; what are you like at illustrating? Because that would make a really great children’s storybook,’” Mrs Guppy said.
She then tested the picture-less version of her story on a friend’s granddaughter whose eyes lit up just by hearing the words.
“So I thought, I think I might run with this,” Mrs Guppy said.
Margaret Guppy’s book is beautifully illustrated by Jill Riordan.
Photo by
Megan Fisher
From there, she flagged the idea of illustrating her story with her friend Jill Riordan, a skilled painter whose artwork she admired. Ms Riordan immediately accepted, telling Mrs Guppy she had been thinking she’d love to do something like that, being the grandmother of nine children.
Within days she had a sample picture for Mrs Guppy, who was thrilled it was exactly how she’d envisaged it.
In a unique touch and a nod to her surname, there are guppy fish strategically drawn into the illustrations on each page for readers to find.
There is also space for them to draw their own guppies and whale, and an educational diagram of the moon’s phases.
“We both really enjoyed the process,” Mrs Guppy said.
“We were both on the same page.”
It would seem they were both on several of the same pages.
Once complete, the pair worked with Busybird Publishing in Melbourne to tweak the book to perfection before publishing.
Self-publishing a book is often a labour of love; authors rarely make much, if any, profit from the process.
The book is about the moon’s adventure under the sea after he was accidentally knocked from the sky while dozing by a cheeky comet. He has to find his way back to the sky at the call of the stars, but not before having some fun with the sea creatures he befriends.
Photo by
Megan Fisher
However, Mrs Guppy said her journey with The Night the Moon Fell had been an opportunity to try a different genre and share her writing with readers younger than her usual audience.
The versatile author is currently writing a fictional novel based on her mother’s troubled life, having written family history and dabbled in poetry.
She has previously won the Joseph Furphy Literary Award for a short story about her mum’s time in an orphanage.
The Night the Moon Fell was launched at the Goulburn Valley Writer’s Group earlier this year and has sold more than 100 copies so far.
It’s available at Collins Booksellers, the Shepparton Visitor Information Centre, the Shepparton Heritage Centre and by emailing mguppyauthor@gmail.com
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