Behind the Book: Ug Wants a Hug with Nancy Leschnikoff

Ug Want Hug by Nancy Leschnikoff is out now, published by Hachette Children’s Books. We sat down with Nancy to find out all about her debut author-illustrated picture book, where it came from, what it was like to wear both hats and what’s coming next for Ug and his best friend Og.

Congratulations on your debut as author and illustrator! How does it feel to have Ug Want Hug out in the world?

UG WANT HUG is my first author-illustrated book and I’m very excited about it being published this week!

Where did the idea for the story come from?

The original idea came from a chat that I had with my daughter Robyn when she was almost eight (she’s thirteen now!) where I’d been thinking about making a story about a caveman, and combining that with an overarching idea about manners, which eventually became about consent. Robyn immediately said the caveman should be about Ug who wants a hug. We brainstormed some ideas and I went away and extended this into a board book concept initially. I worked on this very slowly in my spare time and concentrated on using a more simple paired down loose style to appeal to pre-schooler and KS 1 ages. As it was initially a personal project, I think I was much more experimental with the artwork and really enjoyed letting loose! I’ve always loved bold bright colour, and really went to town with it. Quite a while later I was ready to shelve Ug, as it hadn’t had any real interest from publishing houses. However, right before Bologna Children’s Book Fair in 2024, realising last minute I needed something (anything!) half decent to show publishers, I very quickly made some changes to Ug and added in Og his doggy best friend and took a sample with me, thinking it was a long shot. I nearly didn’t bother! My friend told me to go for it, and it turned out to be the best advice. A few days later I got multiple offers from some dream publishing houses. It was amazing. And I was super proud this had started as a joint project with my clever daughter. So it will always be a special title for me.

This is your debut as both author and illustrator, how was that different from your illustration-only work?

Having started in the children’s publishing industry many, many moons ago as a children’s book designer, it was a bit of a revelation to not only be illustrating it all myself in the way that I wanted, but also writing and laying out the text, which felt incredibly liberating and also a little bit scary making all the decisions myself! But I think I must have done an ok job as the publishers (Hachette Children’s Books) came back with hardly any changes, after we had extended the whole idea further into a picture book and it still looks very similar to my original full colour samples. I should also say the Hachette designers added in an amazing Pantone pink spot colour and it completely elevated the artwork, I was after bold bright colours and they definitely helped me get those, (thank you Izzy and Anna!)

What was your favourite part of creating the book?

My favourite part of creating this book was coming up with the characters — even with illustrator-only projects, I find this side of things really fun. I particularly loved illustrating Og — and took a bit of reference from my own dog Lolly who has an extremely expressive furry face!

What’s next? Any hints about what’s on the horizon?

I’m currently working on the second book in the series for Ug and Og alongside a few other illustrator-only titles, so it’s a busy crazy time but my brain is still buzzing with many new ideas that I’ll obsess about for a bit and then overshare with Nicky Lander. Sorry Nicky!

---

Get your copy of Ug Wants a Hug here.

To work with Nancy, get in touch with her agent Nicky Lander here.