Writing children’s books wasn’t Anna McCarthy’s first path in life. The language teacher stumbled upon becoming an author through making up rhymes with her son at bedtime. She comes from a musical background and that structure had always been in the back of her mind.
“It was nothing I ever wanted to do. I’ve met loads of people that are authors because that’s what they always wanted to pursue. That was not the case for me at all. I actually hated English classes at school,” shared McCarthy.
From the time her now 15-year old son was tiny, they had played with words and making rhymes and rhythms with words.
“(We) would find words that are similar and different. It’s just been something we’ve always done. Especially with his bedtime. We would read books. We would play around with making up rhymes and just have a giggle with it. When you look at the types of books I write, that has always been my practice”
Writing children’s books came to her when a lot of new ventures came to people - during the pandemic.
“I used to go on walks and one day I was thinking about another children’s book that was a favourite of my nephews and it’s about two animals. It’s a rhyming book and I just had these crazy thoughts about how different that book would have been if she (had) chosen two different animals and the rhymes that would have come from that.”
This kick started McCarthy’s creative process as she begun brainstorming different animal pairs and playing around with what they would do in various rhyming schemes.
“I’m going to see what would happen with (a) giraffe and my first book kind of came from that silly idea on my walk. By the time I got home, I had about five verses in my head and I read them to my family and they’re like ‘this is actually really good, you should do something with this.’ So that’s where it began and then I wrote about six books over the course of a year.”
McCarthy continued to think over the books in her head and eventually decided to pursue publishing them. This was no easy process.
“I reached out to editors - I spent 11 months trying to find an illustrator because I can’t draw and no one would want that work and then it went from there. It’s been incredible.”
The book, Message in a Bottle, A Magical Journey of Hope came out this year, illustrated by another Vancouver Island resident, Nicola North, and is now a finalist for the Whistler Independent Book Awards. It is McCarthy’s second published book.
“It’s about a magical enchanted bottle and a girl who has a vision of environmental stewardship and a vision of healing our world. She takes this magical bottle and sets it out to sea and this bottle travels around and sees all these beautiful things and kind of captures them inside itself. It also starts to see some of the effects of the damage we’re doing (to the environment) and captures all of that.”
The bottle takes a journey around the world and is picked up by various people who open the cork and see both the good and bad and realize they need to clear up environmental messes but also change the way they do things. Once the bottle is satisfied that it has done its job of delivering the message, it moves on to the next person.
“It goes around the world, spreading this message that we need to do something. When we all do that, some big changes happen and once the bottle is satisfied that it’s done its job, it ends up in this beautiful, idyllic place.”
McCarthy already has a Christmas book on the horizon, currently in the editing process, about the 12 days of Christmas, Vancouver Island style.
“It’s 12 things from Vancouver Island and the first one is afternoon tea at the Empress,” previews McCarthy.
The winner of the Whistler Independent Book Awards will be announced at the conference at the end of October.
McCarthy’s books can be found locally at Laughing Oyster, Blue Heron, Smol Store, Books4Brains, Bean Around the World cafe, TinTown Cafe and Podlings. They are also available for purchase through her website, www.annamccarthybooks.com.
