Wilbur’s Walk by Rebecca Nash

Wilbur and his Mama walk Wally dog by the sea. As Wally chases the pinecone and Wilbur’s buggy bounces, the birds begin to appear, firstly chattering and chirping and then gossiping and philosophising.

Author Rebecca Nash wrote the story when her daughter was a toddler.

“I was so in love with the way she used language. I wanted to imbue the story with toddler logic and ways of speaking. When I used to walk the dog with her in the pram round the bays in Lyttelton, it was so routine, but at the same time, looking at birds and slowing down to kid-speed is kind of magic and beautiful. That’s where the story came from,” says Rebecca.

Rebecca gave the manuscript to her little brother Daniel to illustrate. They shared the same imaginative space as children, and she knew he would instinctively understand the spooky and magical undertones of Wilbur’s Walk.

“I think it’s so cool to see how our creativity intersects; how he sees things in the words and gives them new energy and light.”

The end result is a story of small struggles, small triumphs and really big love.