A FORMER Miss Kidderminster and owner of a pamper party salon has written a series of children’s books, inspired by her two dogs.
Jeanne Frith, who runs Pink Lemonade and also works at The Confidence Clinic in Hartlebury, first had an ambition to write a children’s book when she was 13 years old.
She started it but never finished it and then one day, while she was out walking her two dogs, the idea for the book she had always wanted to write came to her, with her Yorkshire terrier Pepi and sausage dog Harley, as the main characters.
‘How Jeanne’s writing journey began’
Whilst walking around Springfield Park, she came up with a short story and wrote it.
Jeanne said: “When I got home I said to my children, I’d written a book and when I read it to them, they didn’t believe I had written it.
“The next day on my dog walk I wrote another one.
“The same thing happened and eventually I had written 10 short rhyming stories.
“For the next few months, every time I saw my son Carter, he was asking me what I was going to do with my books, asking if I had found an illustrator and ‘would I get my books published?’.”
Jeanne, who won Miss Kidderminster in 1986, has lived in the town for 50 years and has lots of clients here, needed an illustrator for some pictures to go with her words.
Her sister Helen Mikolajczyk suggested she contact Nicola Christopher, a local teacher at Heronswood School and a talented artist.
Jeanne, who then commissioned Nicola to provide the illustrations, said: “She is an amazing artist – in fact, I don’t think she realises how good she is.
“I give her a story and she produces such detailed pictures and it’s just how I imagined them to be – it’s like she’s in my head.”
‘A lesson for young readers’
As well as telling the tales of Harley and Pepi’s escapades, each book also contains a lesson for the young readers to learn.
Jeanne has 10 books in the series and two have been published so far, via Amazon – ‘Harley, Pepi and the Treasure Map’ and ‘Harley, Pepi and a Christmas Tale’.
In the first one, the canine pair find a treasure map and go in search of gold and jewels and in the second, it is Christmas Eve and Harley and Pepi cannot sleep – so they go out into the snowy night.
Both are available through Amazon and in two independent bookshops – Script Haven in Worcester and The Violet Bookshop in Upton-upon-Severn.
Jeanne is doing a book reading to children in Upton on May 29 and is hoping to get another couple of her creations into print this year.
Click here for more on Jeanne’s books and to buy them on Amazon.
