Ah! that new book feeling :-)

Animal Antics – how the book happened...

March 21^st was World Poetry Day, and it feels good that my first book Animal Antics – a book of fun and factual poetry – has come out in print around the same time.

Animal Antics combines my interest in wildlife and the environment with my love for poetry and wordplay. When I was a child, some of my favourite reads were The Jungle Book and Just So Stories of Rudyard Kipling, the humourous rhymes of Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear, Hilaire Belloc and Roald Dahl, the wildlife expeditions of Gerald Durrell, the veterinary tales of James Herriot and books about the environment such as The Living Planet by Sir David Attenborough. Many Indian languages also have rhyming verses, about animals and birds or creatures we encounter in our daily lives, which are used to help children learn the alphabet and build a vocabulary. As a child I learnt Assamese as an additional language in school and one of my early Assamese text books had a series of rhyming couplets about each letter of the alphabet, which helped us learn new words and build a beginner’s vocabulary of the language. I still remember a few of those couplets and I’m sure all of the aforementioned works have (either consciously or unconsciously) influenced the writing of Animal Antics and to them I acknowledge my debt. 

Animal Antics is certainly inspired by the humourous genre of Nonsense Verse, with an important difference – though humourous, the verses in the book are not nonsensical. Each poem contains factual information about an animal or bird such as where it lives, what it eats, how it behaves and what it looks like – in a rhyming format that makes it easy for a parent or teacher to read aloud, or a child to learn, elocute or act out in a classroom or activity area. That’s why I call it a book of fun and factual poetry.

The original germ of the idea may have emerged in the year 2000 while I was working in my first job as a copy editor. I was one of a team of editors who were developing content for an educational website for school students in the US. One of our assignments was for each editor to write an article on an animal that had to include a few facts on the creature in a readable format for a target audience of young readers. I was assigned to write an article on a Polar Bear. The article was written in the required format and submitted and probably appeared as part of a larger set of articles written by the team. Later on, while playing around with the text in my spare time, unconsciously, perhaps, the factual article became a poem of 4 verses which contained the same facts within it. That poem was never published, though I thought it was fun to read - and possibly made it easier to recall some facts about the animal when compared to the factual article I was asked to write - but I didn’t think of doing anything more with the poem at the time.  

A couple of years later, and in a different job, I was teaching a batch of 10th grade students the science syllabus for their annual high school examination. They were a bunch of bright 15-year-olds and our discussions outside the classroom included popular fantasy novels of the time, which they enjoyed reading. I realized the teenagers were very aware of many fantastical creatures; however, to my surprise, they were not aware of some amazing real-life creatures that we encountered in their science textbook, as we discussed the chapter on evolution. Since I remembered growing up surrounded by books, of which a large Readers’ Digest Atlas of Animals was a favourite, as well as the animal expeditions of Gerald Durrell and Sir David Attenborough’s Living Planet, I found it odd that these bright young teenagers had such gaps in their understanding of the living world around them, particularly since there are several channels dedicated to wildlife programming on television, which were not around when I was at school. In fact television broadcasting in India hadn’t started when I was in my early years at school. I wondered how these teenagers were up-to-date on fantastical creatures or cartoon characters but not on living or endangered forms of life. Was it simply because information was presented in a fun and more engaging way through cartoons or fantasy novels? It made me wonder about whether I could write something informative and easily readable about animals and birds from around the world?

I recalled my Polar Bear poem written some years ago, searched through my incidental writings and found the poem. I thought about writing some more poems to put together a slim volume of fun and factual poetry. The idea was to create a basic introduction to some wild and endangered creatures, without intending to replace any textbook, though the book could become a learning resource that an innovative teacher or school could use in an English or Environmental Studies classroom. I felt it could also be read by any general reader interested in wildlife or anyone who enjoyed reading humourous verse.  A few more poems then began to emerge...

Now came the question of how to link the poems together? What would the structure of the book be? Could it be a book about animals on different continents, but that seemed like a large and unwieldy project unless I restricted the poems to a certain number of animals/birds on each continent. Trying to decide on a manageable number, so that the project didn’t seem too daunting to start with, I thought of an alphabetical sequence that could cover animals and birds from all over the world with a special focus on animals and birds in India and Asia. This allowed for a manageable number of 26 animals or birds and an introduction and conclusion summing up the environmental theme of the book – thus 28 poems in all.

Choosing which animals/birds to write about wasn’t easy. There were so many I wanted to write about. I knew I wanted to write about our nearest relatives, the great apes – Chimpanzees, Gorillas and Orangutans – so the animals for those three letters were a straightforward choice. There was also the question of whether some animals/birds were too familiar or not well known at all; how was one to strike a balance? In some cases the alphabetical arrangement provided a solution. For instance there aren’t very many creatures whose names begin with the letters Q, X, Y or Z, so the choices were fewer and easier to make. In the case of other letters it was tough to decide, but after some thought I concluded: “Well, if I feel I really want to write a poem about both these animals or birds whose names begin with the same letter of the alphabet, maybe I’ll just write one poem for this book and keep the other aside for another book, possibly a sequel that I can write later...” and thus the project started. There were many changes along the way. The original Polar bear poem didn’t make it into the final book, since – after the other poems were written – it seemed meant for an even younger audience and somehow I couldn’t bring myself to modify it. P for Polar Bear was replaced by P for Panda (as in Giant Panda) and there was a bit of shifting around in some cases.  For instance, I supposed it should be G for Giant Panda, but I wanted G for Gorilla and also wanted to write G for Giraffe. That conundrum was solved by retaining G for Gorilla in this book, shifting Giant Panda to the letter P (for Panda) and moving the poem on the Giraffe to the next book (More Animal Antics – a work in progress at this time). After juggling several other choices in the case of other letters, I had a structure in place for Animal Antics. The title of the book emerged as I thought of a phrase that would convey the poetic and humourous aspects of the book, while also not being too long or difficult to pronounce for young readers.

In order to ensure that the poems were factually as accurate as possible, I read up on each animal or bird (referring to an encyclopedia and online wildlife archives) and then wrote a poem a day through the month of August 2003, either before or after my classes with my batch of teenage students. I also discussed each poem with a friend who was kind enough to read each poem as I completed it and give me valuable feedback. Once all 26 poems were complete and I had the verses for the introduction and conclusion in place, I thought “I'm ready to send my manuscript to a publisher!”

Looking at the websites of the leading publishers in India, I could see some clearly stated they did not accept manuscript submissions in the genres of poetry or children’s literature, so there was no point trying there. Others didn’t specify that they did not accept poetry, so they seemed worth trying. Most publishers’ websites said their review process would take at least 2 months. I began by sending the manuscript to a leading publisher and waited to hear from them. Their reply was that their list was full for the year and they could not accept the manuscript. Undeterred, I sent it to another. A long set of queries from their editor came back in reply. I answered all the queries, but then never heard back from the editor, even after a reminder... Trying one publisher after another I came across a variety of responses and quite often no response at all... Sometimes a couple of months would pass by and then I’d send them a reminder but never hear back. In some cases they were prompt to respond, saying this was not a work that they wished to publish. I appreciated the promptness of these responses and moved on to try elsewhere. As this process of submitting the manuscript and receiving a negative reply (or no reply at all) extended over several years, and since I was also busy with work and would take up the process of submitting the manuscript and following up with editors intermittently, I realized I had approached possibly all the leading publishers in India, including the leading children’s publishers and the leading educational publishers. I’d also sent the manuscript to some niche publishers in India, literary agents both in India and abroad and had expended a considerable amount of time and energy with nothing to show for it. Working in the publishing industry myself, I understood that each book is an investment on the part of the publisher and it was possible that many publishers were reluctant to invest in a book of poetry, which they perceived might not sell. I did feel strongly, however, that Animal Antics was worth publishing and would surely find an audience once it was out in print and people got to know about its existence. I was determined not to give up on the idea. I also developed some additional learning material in the form of fun quizzes and vocabulary exercises to help young readers make the most of the learning aspects of the poems. I thought these might also be useful for teachers or parents who could use the supplementary material as part of a fun learning exercise.

During this time I had also commissioned an artist to create original water-colour illustrations to accompany the poems. It was a deliberate choice not to create cartoon-like illustrations but to create life-like images of the animal or bird in its natural habitat or displaying a characteristic behavior described in the poem. Reviewing what I had, I found I had a complete text, possibly sufficient illustrations, and additional material which could be given away as free downloads for teachers or parents to use as additional activity material to reinforce the learning in the book. The fact box element titled ‘In a nutshell’ that accompanies each poem and provides additional scientific information also emerged, as I thought about creating each two-page chapter as a holistic unit that consisted of a poem, an additional factual component and a further learning activity. Now I just had to figure out how to put it all together. I then began to think of self-publishing as an option, as I realised publishing solutions providers had begun operations in India. 

More online research followed and after attending a self-publishing seminar at the World Book Fair in Delhi in 2012, I found a professional self-publisher. Their team carried out all the production tasks over the course of 2012 and the book finally emerged in its present form in 2013. From an initial draft in August 2003 to a published work in February 2013 - it took almost 10 years for the book to see the light of day!  

While meant to be an informative and fun book for young readers, albeit with a serious message, I believe Animal Antics could appeal to readers of any age with an interest in wildlife. I do hope you enjoy reading it. Finally, I think of it as a fun and whimsical book that I enjoyed writing; so much so, that there’s a sequel on its way. I welcome your comments and feedback, which I shall try and incorporate in my next book, More Animal Antics, coming soon!