One Cat, Two Cats

The inspiration for One Cat, Two Cats came from a suggestion that was made for Number Train, another counting book which was also published by Nosy Crow. Number Train counts up to ten, but when editor Victoria England started working with me on that book, she passed on this feedback from Nosy Crow’s Sales Manager.

“Some bookshops have been asked by customers more than once for a counting book that goes up to 20. This might be a nice point of difference and would give the book more mileage with toddlers.”

Although we decided not to make Number Train count up to twenty, I thought it made sense to respond to the gap in the market the sales manager had identified, so I resolved to write a separate “count to twenty” book. 

All of the books I’ve written for pre-schoolers are in rhyme to make the text more engaging and memorable. For this book I used a rhyming structure similar to that used in the traditional counting rhyme One Potato, Two Potato, but with fewer syllables in each line. And while the potato rhyme stops at seven, I took my rhyme up to twenty by adding three additional verses.

When I was happy with the text, I sent it to Victoria at Nosy Crow with a reminder of the sales manager’s feedback. I suggested the text could be used as a straightforward picture book, but offered to develop it into a lift-the-flap or simple novelty book if Nosy Crow were interested. Nosy Crow took me up on the offer, so I spent some time experimenting with simple lift-the-flap and pop-up ideas before creating the prototype dummy shown in the video clip below.