I’m absolutely delighted to welcome Paul Morton to the blog today for a very special guest Q&A. Paul is the creative mind behind the brilliantly inventive Bug Belly series. As both an author and illustrator, he brings a wonderfully playful energy to everything he creates.
With a background in illustration and graphic design, Paul has a real gift for combining lively storytelling with vibrant, character-filled artwork. His passion for drawing, animals (especially frogs!), and sparking children’s imaginations shines through in his work. He also loves sharing that creativity beyond the page, visiting schools, libraries and bookshops to inspire young readers and writers.
Today, Paul is chatting all about his first book, Bug Belly: Babysitting Trouble, which is published by Five Quills. He reveals how the character first leapt into his imagination, and what we can expect next from Top Pond’s most chaotic and loveable frog. Let’s dive in!
********
Tell us a bit about your first book, Bug Belly: Babysitting Trouble.
The book is the first in a new series of young fiction titles, aimed at readers age 5-8 – both for children who still enjoy being read to as well as those venturing out on their own.
Bug Belly is an ingenious, inventive and super fun froggy uncle to lots of little tadpoles and froglets in Top Pond. In the first story, he’s supposed to be babysitting all the taddies, but his hungry belly distracts him and causes a bit of a disaster, resulting in all the water draining from the pond. Bug Belly must race against the clock to save all the tadpoles. He loves a challenge, though, and comes up with an inventive plan to save the day, with the help of three young frogs, Splish, Splash and Splodge. It’s action packed, fun and exciting!
What do you hope readers will enjoy about the book?
I hope they will enjoy the humour and action in the story, and I’ve included lots of illustrations throughout the book to introduce the characters, highlight the action and show the funny scenarios Bug Belly finds himself in. The text is great for reading aloud, too, so I hope will be shared in classrooms as well as at home.
I enjoy reading out loud at book events, schools, libraries and bookshops – sharing tips on writing and firing children’s imaginations. I’ve created 100’s of activity sheets and resources to engage children with the series, so they can have a lot of fun exploring the stories in different ways.
How did you first come up with the idea for Bug Belly?
I was playing a game with my 18 month old nephew. Bug Belly was a rubber frog that had lost its tummy squeaker, so paper insects could be stuffed into its tummy. I thought, ‘there’s a great idea for a children’s book!’ I’ve always been interested in animals, though, and have drawn many frog characters in my career as an illustrator and graphic designer.
As a child I owned a green super-bouncy ball, that I kept in my pocket and pretended was a frog that could jump! Now, I’m lucky enough now to have a pond in my garden that is full of frogspawn, tadpoles and frogs every year!
How did you develop Bug Belly’s character, and the stories for this book series?
I started by imagining some busy scenes from the story, for example the one where Bug Belly is planning to bag more bugs for his breakfast. I began wondering about all of the gadgets that Bug Belly might use to help him catch the bugs, and I developed his kit bag which you’ll see drawings of it in the book – and developed various scenes from there which I stitched together into what I hope is an exciting story.
How do you plan and develop the illustrations for your books?
First, I draw the main scenes as rough pencil sketches in my various notebooks and sketchbooks. Then I draw them in more detail on A4 sheets, before scanning them into my computer to add the colour digitally. In total, I produced around 1,000 drawings for Bug Belly: Babysitting Trouble! One of the biggest challenges was all the individual tadpoles! I drew 2,000 of those for this book!
What can we expect in future Bug Belly stories?
More fast paced fun and even trickier challenges for Bug Belly. At the moment I’m working on a ‘scary’ Halloween Bug Belly story but in the form of a graphic novel. So even MORE pictures. I’m thoroughly enjoying creating this.
Activity sheets downloads from www.bugbelly.com
********
You can find out more about Paul and his books from his website: www.bugbelly.com
Much To Do About Writing 