Q&A with the Authors
Christiane Kerr:
What motivated you to start this project?
Having taught yoga and mindfulness to adults and children for over 20 years, I had lots of requests about how families could integrate mindfulness into their daily life. Young children are naturally mindful and this book aims to give them an awareness of this, and to recognise it as a skill that they can carry with them and develop throughout life. The frames of mindfulness are lovely qualities to encourage in children and they give parents and carers the opportunity to discuss and explore them with their children.
What was the most interesting part of the process for you?
I learnt a lot working with Mark and James about combining the skill sets of us as writers and James as the illustrator to bring the story to life. James’ extensive experience and wonderful illustrations made the whole process so much easier. The project has raised a lot of questions about how to make mindfulness engaging for young children.
What are your plans for the series?
Our aim for the series is to help make mindfulness as accessible as possible to children, families and classrooms alike. I would love for the attitudes of mindfulness and mindfulness practices to become seamlessly integrated into young people’s lives, to the point where it becomes as natural as brushing their teeth. Storytelling allows us to subtly introduce children to mindfulness and its benefits without being didactic.
Mark Pallis:
What motivated you to start this project?
I love high energy play with my kids, but I also love those all too rare moments of stillness. I’d heard about mindfulness and wanted to introduce it to my son (aged 3) but none of the books were right. They were all ‘about’ mindfulness. And for me, there’s nothing more boring than having a lesson about something when it’s storytime. So my goal was to have a really compelling fun story that would allow kids to experience mindful moments for themselves, without even realising that it was happening. I was confident about the story side, but I wanted to make sure that all the mindful elements were absolutely spot on, hence partnering up with Christiane who brings incredible experience to the project.
What was the most interesting part of the process for you?
For me, working with the illustrator was a lot of fun. I’m lucky to have bestselling author and illustrator David Melling (of Hugless Douglas fame) as a mentor/ fairy godfather, and he is the one that introduced me to James Cottell. What was so interesting about the process was figuring out how to convey the right mood. We really wanted the animals to express emotion, but we didn’t want them to be cartoonish. I’m really pleased with how James managed to meet our very tricky brief!
What are your plans for the series?
We are going to go through and do one book for each of the frames of mindfulness and then after that, we’ll work on broadening the reach of the series with translations. I really believe that cultivating an awareness of breathing is a great life skill and it’s never too young to start, so the more people we can reach with that message, the better. We’re on a mission to reach a million people by the time the series is completed!
Mindful Storytime: Crab & Whale will be available on amazon from February 12th.
Phone: 0208 995 3352
Email: info@calmforkids.com
