Once upon a time, in a land far, far away in London, there lived a boy and a girl. The boy was called David and the girl was called Kate and they liked to tell stories about animals to children. But these were no ordinary animals in ordinary children’s stories… these were odd animals with odd tails with even odder tales to tell.
At first glance, the characters in the Oddtails books are no different from any other children’s stories- there’s Roy the eagle, Dave the lion, Jamie the orangatan, Milly the cheetah and loads more. And what’s so different about a kids’ book with animals in? Well, Roy is incredibly short sighted and has to wear glasses, Dave has a rather squeaky roar, Jamie is scared of heights and Milly has asthma. In fact, every character in every Oddtails book has a disability of some sort. It’s really rather clever.
“I’ve always wanted to be a writer,” said David. ”I didn’t necessarily always want to write children’s books but writing is what I wanted to do.”
So, armed with a completely unrelated degree each from the University of Sheffield, a qualification in journalism, a First Steps grant and a very talented illustrator called Alex Ryan, Kate and David created Oddtails… and they’ve been run off their feet ever since.
“Getting published was definitely the hardest part,” said David. “We went to several publishers and got rejected before we met Arthur from Loose Chippings Books. But walking into Waterstones and seeing your book on the shelf… that’s amazing.”
They live in London and spend a lot of time travelling to meet people and promote their books. It’s a lot of work and they’re extremely busy. But something tells me they like it that way. With positive responses from all kinds of avenues, they’ve definitely been given the incentive to push on with this fantastic project.
They’ve published one book already (Roy the Eagle) and are getting ready to create the audio versions, they’ve just had a theme tune created and they’ve even been talking about a possible cartoon. They’re keen to promote the Oddtails brand, not just the books.
“Our dream would be to get ten books published, get a series on TV and get the audio books done,” said Kate. “Our goalposts keep moving though. At first the aim was just to get published. But now we’re published, it’s opened a lot more aims that are a lot more complicated.
“There’s a message in the books. And it’s a message we believe in. We want to get our books into schools in England but also in other countries.”
