Simple Sayings being released in early 2024
The third and final volume, following Life Lessons from the Bad Rabbit and Wise Words from the Bad Rabbit.
About The Bad Rabbit books
Life Lessons from The Bad Rabbit
Life Lessons from The Bad Rabbit
Life Lessons from The Bad Rabbit
The Bad Rabbit and his friends impart universal truths and simple wisdom on how to live one’s life for children and their parents. These are individually presented through situations the Bad Rabbit and his friends find themselves in, which in turn can be humorous, loving, scary or profound.
Although the Rabbit and his closest Rabbit conf
The Bad Rabbit and his friends impart universal truths and simple wisdom on how to live one’s life for children and their parents. These are individually presented through situations the Bad Rabbit and his friends find themselves in, which in turn can be humorous, loving, scary or profound.
Although the Rabbit and his closest Rabbit confidants can be mischievous or downright naughty, there is always the constant thread of love and loyalty across all the friends. As we know, life can get a little bit too serious without a healthy dose of humour and the ability to laugh at ourselves.
Wise Words from The Bad Rabbit
Life Lessons from The Bad Rabbit
Life Lessons from The Bad Rabbit
The Bad Rabbit and his friends continue on their adventures.
The intention in this book was to provide short sayings and lessons that children could resonate with through the circumstances that the Bad Rabbit found himself in.
Although for children, I did try to put some humour or interest in them for parents or adults.
Wise Words from the
The Bad Rabbit and his friends continue on their adventures.
The intention in this book was to provide short sayings and lessons that children could resonate with through the circumstances that the Bad Rabbit found himself in.
Although for children, I did try to put some humour or interest in them for parents or adults.
Wise Words from the Bad Rabbit is the second volume, following Life Lessons from the Bad Rabbit.
Famous Friends of The Bad Rabbit
The Creator of The Bad Rabbit Books
In 2014, my family and I were living in the wonderful City of Cape Town, under the shadow of Table Mountain, surrounded by the scents and sounds of both forest and ocean.
My daughter, Islay, was four years old and attending the School in the Woods, the junior version of the local girl’s school, Saint Cyprians.
It was an idyllic upbringing and environment for a wee girl – surrounded by her local friends all dressed in ladybird patterned pinnies.
One of her teachers introduced the idea of placing a small “love note” or letter into our children’s lunchboxes. It was to provide a small connection and expression of love while the girls were away from us - for the few hours during the morning. The first few of these notes comprised of a small doodle with a small expression of love from mummy and daddy.
Amazingly, these initial attempts were greeted by Islay with tremendous enthusiasm. And so, a pattern and a ritual emerged. Whenever Islay went to school, her lunch box contained a rough sketch of a dog or a rabbit or a mouse with a “I love you” message.
Why a dog or a rabbit or a mouse? Because they were the easiest to draw.
After a month or so, my wife presented me with my own set of colour pencils. I had been an enthusiastic but very modestly talented drawer in my school years. However, the joy of putting pencil to paper had been drained from me during to a series of unfortunate incidents. I had not actually drawn with pencils in colour for 30 years.
By the second month, the long dormant experience of joy about not only drawing but also of presenting something unique and special for my daughter started to appear. I started to produce enough drawings at the weekend to cover me for the school week to safeguard ever having Islay leave empty handed.
One day, I drew a primitive picture of a bear – Islay loved it and held it in her hand for the entire morning until wind, play and being a regular five year led her to drop it. Well, it was the end of the world as far as Islay was concerned – apparently it was her favourite drawing ever!
From that point, Islay took a much more hands on and active role in managing me both in the creative process as well as shipping and handling.
Islay also increasingly expected a greater variety of pictures, animals, situations as well as humour. For the first two or three years, this habit remained intact with over 200 love letters being produced each year for Islay. At the end of the year, these love notes would be collated into a printed book that I made for her.
By the fourth year, I started to add recurring characters starting with a badly behaved rabbit and an incredibly greedy dog. The first few Bad Rabbits showed a particularly menacing version of the current rabbit. I had not quite managed to portray a slightly mischievous but ultimately good hearted rabbit. Instead the early Bad Rabbits were bad to the bone.
Once I had started with these two core characters, the rest of the Bad Rabbit family slowly emerged – the rather sweet cow, the confused sheep, the love lorn hedgehog and lastly, a companion to the Bad Rabbit – the Very Naughty Bunny.
The idea of actually publishing them had never been a serious intention or thought until my wife, Nic, who has an amazing ability of conjuring magic from thin air, made this a reality with Austin Macauley as publisher.
The concept was very simple as it was for the love letters for lunch boxes.