Poppy would always come home from nursery with her arms full of stuff - her little blue school bag with the cute owl on it, a brand new picture or three (with the paint still slightly wet!) and of course, old Alan himself. One day she came home clutching something slightly out of the ordinary an empty shoebox. It was accompanied by a letter asking us nicely if we could fill it with anything we could spare – old toys, toiletries, games etc, so that it could be passed on to someone who’d really benefit from it. I suppose it was probably then that the little acorn that grew into My Friend Alan was planted.
I’d thought about writing a children’s picture book for a while, reading them nightly to Poppy as I was. All I was lacking was the right story (well, any story!) And then it hit me. Why not write about doing something nice, something just like this, a story that shows the kind of difference you can make on an individual basis, however big or small you happen to be. For full emotional impact, I wanted it to be something very kind, but ultimately very difficult to do, a story that involved an element of letting go. I got to thinking about what my own daughter would find difficult to let go of and the answer was right there in her arms. Alan.
Now all I needed was some characters, a young child and their mother... Well, I didn’t have to look far for inspiration! Annie was (and still is) forever doing crafty things with Poppy; painting, gluing and papier-mâchéing like it was going out of fashion. If anyone could knock up a nicely decorated shoebox for Alan, it was Annie!
I spent a week or so pulling it all together, bringing the story to life. It was great fun imagining Alan’s journey to Malawi and the sort of things he might get up to there. It was also actually pretty affecting, charting my own daughter’s maturing emotions as she comes to terms with saying a tough goodbye.
