We are very excited because this week sees the launch of our online family story 'Four Corner House'. You can read the first instalment this Wednesday, and over the next couple of months the story will unfold as we load a chapter every week. In the blog below the author, Andrew Hewitt, describes how he came to write the story during time spent with his two children.
Andrew: When my children were small I had the pleasure of walking them to school most days. I can’t remember exactly how it began, but it soon became a feature of these walks that I would tell them a story – anything at all, from extended jokes involving a man and a runaway pie to episodes from the King Arthur legend or Don Quixote tilting at windmills. Gradually, inevitably, we began to invent characters and situations of our own. I say 'we' because, although I supplied the basics of plot, setting, character and so on, the children’s questions, ideas, objections and elaborations were what brought the stories to life. The 15-minute journey from front door to school gate readily lent itself to the cliff-hanger format which powers the Arabian Nights, and we were soon embarked on a kind of Thousand-and-One Mornings, over the course of which a whole cycle of stories developed about two children whose magical home, Four Corner House, was the starting-point for all kinds of adventures.
With the encouragement of Heart & Home, I’m now writing about Four Corner House for a wider audience: maybe others will enjoy reading the stories (and, I hope, telling and extending them). I’m delighted that at least one person has been inspired to join the adventure with ideas of her own: the illustrator Quitterie de Castelbajac is creating images to accompany the story. The experiment consists of a new chapter each week for the next 10 or 12 weeks. I’ve made a head start, but at this point I’m not exactly sure how the story will end, which is part of the fun. If you’d like to read it, click here
