A Week of Mischief with Zuzu and Gromit is a book of children’s poems that are almost, sometimes, mainly true. They’re about our daughter, Zuzu (explanation to come) and her best friend, our cat, Gromit.
My wife, Netan (hippy parents) writes the stories, and I (Mike) make them sort of rhyme, so they go ‘diddly, duddly, dee, bibbly, bobbly, be’ in your head, and make your brain giggle.
Netan started writing the stories as she watched Zu and Grom, grow up, become friends, have fun and generally get into mischief together. What we love most about the stories is that they come from a real place, they grew naturally into something, and we hope they keep that sense of innocence, of fun, the genuine, without pretense or affectation.
We created their own Facebook page The Adventures of Zuzu and Gromit, and by the magic of the worldwideinterwebnetwork, we now have almost 16,000 people from all over the world liking and enjoying the stories and poems.
But we really want to publish the poems as a children’s book, because we love books, by October/November, because we think it would make a good Christmas present!
So, we need your help, to bring this book to life, as we’re self-publishing, and need to get a move on!
Basically, we plan to raise the money for printing by pre-selling the book. So if you’d like to pre-order, just select the $25 Reward if you’re in Australia (includes domestic postage) or $35 Reward if you live overseas (includes international postage).
If you’d like to pledge more than this, we have created other Rewards, so you get extra fun stuff, as well as the book – art prints, badges, cards, our unending admiration and love, eternal happiness and such like. You even have the chance to pat Gromit and for Mike to write you a poem.
We’re very excited about this book, so thank you so much for helping us continue to follow our dream of having a book made that captures the love of our family.
So, on behalf of a spirited little girl and a crazy black cat, please pledge what you can. Self-publishing keeps costs down, as we do all the print production, sales and distribution, marketing and accounts too.
Oh, I almost forgot. Zuzu, comes from the character Zuzu Bailey from the classic 1930s Christmas movie, It’s a Wonderful Life, our all time favourite movie. And shouldn’t be confused with Zulu, as Netan’s Uncle did, and shouted down the phone at us, which is another story.
It features poems by me, Mike Guégan, illustrations by renowned UK illustrator, Gavin Scott (we have purchased copyright for the illustrations outright).
We’ve also been busy getting some age demographic research with teachers, parents and schools in Australia, New Zealand and the UK. This has helped us decide to aim the book at 2-7 year olds, designed for parents and teachers to read to their kids. We have also received support from local libraries and book stores in Sydney to help promote and stock our book.
We have had some feedback, with the first poem and illustration read at Zuzu’s school. It was deemed a hit (we class 3 reads in a row, as a hit!)
Illustrations
1 x illustration left to go
Printing
the book is hard cover and full colour 24cm x 24cm,
32 pages plus cover page
this includes scans and pre-press
printing (and the 5% Pozible charge)
delivery to us in Sydney + GST
Marketing/Distribution
marketing and publicity
promotional materials
Rewards
material used for all the great rewards
distribution of rewards to you
We have been running a successful Facebook page with stories, poems, photos, illustrations for the last 4 years with an audience of almost 16,000 people around the world – The Adventures of Zuzu and Gromit we also started an online business selling merchandise to Zuzu and Gromit fans on Shopify – The Zuzu and Gromit Store.