Bringing Down the Moon

Sometimes the idea for a story will spring into my mind fully-formed, but a lot of the time, I get an idea that doesn’t work the way I think it should and I put it to one side and come back to it later. The story for Bringing Down the Moon was like this.

The first idea I came up with was for a story called A Tower to the Moon about a man who tries to reach the moon by building an enormous rickety tower. The tower gets taller and taller until it eventually topples over. But I wasn’t happy with this story, the man’s behaviour didn’t feel right to me – why did he suddenly decide to do this? And why didn’t he know that the moon is too far away?

I kept coming back to the story every few months, but got no further with it until I hit upon the idea of making the main character a mole. A mole lives underground and might never have come across the moon before. And moles are short-sighted, so they might have difficulty judging distance. Then I remembered a picture of a mole that David Parkins had drawn as an incidental character for Tick-Tock – one of my favourite picture books. When I looked at this mole (who is determinedly riding a bicycle), my Mole’s character and the rest of the story began to fall into place.

I decided that a tower was a bit too sophisticated for a mole, so he would build a ladder instead. I also thought that he would try a more straightforward approach first. So, to start with, I had him jumping up, poking and throwing things at the moon.

Next, I introduced some other characters for Mole to interact with. I liked the idea of these characters being woken-up, one by one, as Mole reached higher and higher. So I chose a rabbit that slept below ground, a hedgehog that slept on the ground and a squirrel that slept high up in a tree.

I often discuss story ideas with my son, Max. When I first told him this story (he was two years old at the time) I kept stopping and asking him what he thought Mole might do next. When I got to the bit just before Mole was going to build the ladder, I asked Max what he thought Mole would do – and Max suggested that he should climb a tree. This struck me as a much better and straightforward solution, so I decided to use it in the story. This is why the book is dedicated “To Max, for the use of his tree.”

Walker Books bought the story and Vanessa Clarke, my editor there, set about turning it into a book. Finding the right illustrator was important. The story takes place at night, so a subtle use of light and colour was needed to bring Mole’s dark woodland world to life. Vanessa showed me some beautifully-toned illustrations that Vanessa Cabban had just done for another book and we quickly settled on her.

Like all good illustrators, Vanessa Cabban has enriched and extended the story. One of my favourite examples of this is her final end-paper illustration, which shows Mole staying up to admire the moon, long after his friends have gone back to bed.