Wild Child: Behind the Book

There are some days when Minnow wakes up and she feels wild. She roars as she dances and shrieks as she prances – she’s a wonderful, tremendous party of wild! But sometimes people aren’t fond of this wild Minnow …

We caught up with debut author-illustrator Annabel Tempest to find out what it was like bringing the character of Minnow to life in Wild Child.

In your own words, what is Wild Child about?

Wild Child is essentially about an animal loving little girl with a wonderful imagination - a picture book hopefully full of energy, colour, and spirit. There’s a tension in Wild Child between stillness and noise, between rules and freedom, and I think the lessons you can learn from that.

Tell us about your writing process, what inspired you?

As an illustrator, I think it’s really important to just ‘play’ and make pictures for the love of it rather than always for commissioned pieces. So I do a really fun art club with the marvellous Ella Beech called ‘Gather Filter Make’ where, among other things we practice intuitive drawing and mark making. It’s just having fun and keeping things fresh, trying out new things, often, in my case, making a mess! The initial idea for Wild Child came from one of those sessions. I then went away and drew her lots and lots until she eventually became Minnow! I think the only thing that really changed from my initial drawings to the minnow we meet in Wild Child was that instead of Minnow morphing into the animals she was being and feeling, you can see the animals from her imagination dancing around her in the loose pink line.

And actually once I had her as a character, writing the story came really quickly - which I hadn’t expected. The final draft isn’t massively different from the initial concept thanks to a few nudges in the right direction from the glorious Holly Tonks.

What inspired the character design?

I think also Minnow was also inspired by my three sons, when they were little they were like a pack of bear cubs—boisterous, physical, noisy, and full of wild energy. I hope that, that spirit comes across at the heart of this book. Wild Child is little bit of a love letter to the untamed energy of childhood, and to the fierce independence children often have.

Illustrating my own story turned out to be much harder than I anticipated, I had so many ideas. I was incredibly lucky to have the brilliant Pooja Desai from Hardie Grant in Australia helping me shape those ideas and push the work to be the best it could be.

I work primarily in Photoshop which I love as it gives me lots of freedom to collage my images together. I’m very partial to a very sharp Blackwing Pearl pencil and a pile of cheap printer paper. So I scan in my hand drawn line of the characters and handmade patterns and textures etc and I use them in Photoshop.

What have you discovered you love most about writing and illustrating books?

With this book I particularly enjoyed doing the large splashy loose drawings of Minnow’s imagination. I did these on large lining wallpaper in black ink with sticks and brushes. Big messy drawings full of energy that once scanned in and tamed slightly, contrast and combine with Minnows real world.

I think making a picture book is a big messy collaborative thing and I was very lucky to be helped along the way by some brilliant people and of course my fabulous agent Nicky Lander at Bright.

Is there anything specific you hope readers take away after reading Wild Child?

Wild Child is a story about being yourself, a celebration of individuality—of that spark that makes each child wild in their own way. It’s about curiosity, courage, and the joyful noise of being fully yourself. And maybe, it’s a little bit about me too!

I’m so excited that my debut author illustrated book Wild Child will literally be released into the wild Australia on June 3, 2025.

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To work with Annabel, get in contact with Agent Nicky Lander here.

Wild Child is available 3 June 2025 in Australia. Available in the UK 7th August and US 5th August 2025. Published by Hardie Grant.