Boots, Cats & Beatboxing?!?

With thanks to Anna Read at Macmillan Children's Books for suggesting I do a Q&A with Hazel Gardner about her very unusual and very funny Boots & Cats and to for giving us such wonderful answers to read & of course a fabulous book to share! On which note you can find the book in all those wonderful places you might usually visit to buy them!

Where did the idea of Boots and Cats come from, I wonder if you were inspired by the old tale of Puss in Boots? I wasn’t inspired by any story in particular, just the ‘Boots and Cats’ classic beatboxing starting point, which I think a lot of parents are already familiar with thanks to Hey Duggee.

Why did you choose to create a story which uses beatboxing and what did you know about it before you started writing? I knew very little about it, aside from the fact it’s about using percussive mouth sounds to make music. I saw it as an opportunity to do something a bit different - something where the focus is purely on reading aloud and having fun. I wanted it to be bold, bright and silly and to make hardly any sense.

How did you know beatboxing would fit with a picturebook format or was it a gamble? A bit of a gamble! Although, children do tend to love things they can participate in - and I did make use of lots of animals doing silly things, which I hoped would be funny. I always have children in mind when I’m writing. I have children myself, and I vividly remember being a child reader and the things that made me giggle.

Did you have to do much practice, reading aloud to anyone willing to listen, to make sure it worked and had a good flow? I literally sat in my then-3-year-old daughter’s room with her while she played and beatboxed it out loud until I was happy with it! She must have thought I’d gone mad. It was all ‘written’ out loud before I actually wrote any of it down properly.

When you create a picturebook like this, with rhyme, do you use techniques from poetry for writing it? I absolutely love writing in rhyme and I have always written poetry, long before I started writing picture books. That said, I’ve never had any training or education in writing poetry - the rhythm and meter of writing in verse has always come naturally.

Finding the perfect word - one that fits the meter but also conveys the right meaning - is a challenge I enjoy massively.

Was it always your intention to make the rhymes as silly as possible or did that happen naturally? Well, I’m a very silly person in general, so I suppose you could say it came naturally.

Picturebooks often appear to be simple to write – would you agree or can you share some of the challenges? I think that most people assume they are easy to write, but it’s really not the case. With a picture book, because they are short, every single word really counts and has to be there for a reason.

The narrative structure has to be extremely tight; it has to be appealing to a child and capture their attention…I could go on. I think the toughest challenge is to write something that a publisher sees as marketable.

There are some ‘cheeky’ words in the book which will absolutely have children giggling – bum – being one. Do you think it’s good for readers to discover these words in books? I absolutely think it’s a good thing! People have been laughing at the word ‘bum’ (and others) since the beginning of time - it’s an extremely human reaction.

Everyone should giggle more! I strongly believe in children finding the fun in reading, and if you can give them a giggle, why not?

There are also many ‘sound’ words, using onomatopoeia. Was this helpful for making it a book which would be perfect for reading aloud? Yes! I was very focussed on the exact sounds I used, the parts of the mouth used to make them and whether they were percussive enough. Everything was done very intentionally - I use a lot of plosive consonants which give that percussive feel.

I did a Master’s degree specialising in phonetics and have always been fascinated by the mechanics of speech - which definitely fed into this.

Is the use of beatboxing a format you’d like to try for older readers too? I haven’t thought about it to be honest! I do write for older readers but wonder if at that age, they’d benefit more from hearing from a professional beatboxer - for example, Conrad Murray, who recorded the Boots and Cats audio book.

What is your favourite thing about being an author? Everything really. I love writing, I love editing, I love seeing my books in print and I love visiting schools and meeting young readers - they never fail to make me smile and ask me the very best questions that keep me on my toes.

Are you a fan of beatboxing or another form of music and, cats, are they a favourite animal? I love music of many different genres - everything from classical, to 80s and 90s pop, to grunge and heavy metal. Music has always been a massive part of my life. As for cats - I have three of them! I love cats - they are all slightly weird in their own special ways.

Now, are you ready to have a read and then have a go! Louise would love to hear about your results...!

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