Story Behind The Book
The Land Far Away Series is aimed at children from 3 upwards. For children just learning to read, it’s a parent read like The Gruffalo or Dr. Seuss. For older children it’s intended to exercise their language skills and their imagination. The Land Far Away was inspired by the imagination of my children. My Son was doing poetry and rhyming at school in his Literacy classes and my daughter has an active imagination at the best of times! I wrote a Rhyming Story about a character called Pika the Phluph in an effort to help my daughter understand that Ph sounds like FF and the next thing I know, an entire world has come into being! I perfected the initial story with the help of a number of fellow parents and writers and then it lay dormant until I met Maria K. She was engaged in translating a Russian Novel and illustrating it and I fell in love with her drawing style. I showed Maria the manuscript for Pika’s adventure and her sketching fingers started twitching! Before long we were collaborating on a project that spanned 3 years and over 3,000 miles!