A Bit Lost: meet author Chris Haughton

A Bit Lost, Chris Haughton’s debut book, has achieved what the best children’s books aim for: to be loved by its readers. It follows the adventures of a little owl, fallen from the nest and in search of its mother, aided by a helpful squirrel.

The simple story is aided by bright, bold and slightly psychedelic images of the forest and the animals in it.

Its creator is not a typical children’s author. He trained as a graphic designer and made the book as an experiment and a labour of love. But he has now changed his profession, from mainly graphic design to a mixture of “books and rug design”. He has a second book due for release next year and a third nearing completion.

Haughton (pictured) is a 32-year-old Irishman who has lived a rather peripatetic lifestyle. He has spread his life over Hong Kong, Nepal, India and South Korea during the past decade before recently taking root in London, mirroring somewhat the exploits of the owl in his book.

“My Korean editor made the same remark about my travels,” he says.

Ireland has produced several notable children’s authors and illustrators over the past few years. Haughton joins Oliver Jeffers, author of the classic Lost and Found, and Kevin Waldron, who recently illustrated Michael Rosen’s Tiny Little Fly.

Haughton is enthusiastic, engaging and clearly surprised by the success of his book. “The original version of A Bit Lost was published in Korean and I was not even able to read it for 18 months,” he says.

To get the book to where it is today, a multiple award-winner and mass-seller, Haughton first globetrotted. “I first went to the Bologna Book Fair with the story, looking for a publisher,” he says.

“The original story was of a bird on the top of a tree that wants to eat, and meets animals on the way down that want to eat him. But he’s a clever bird and finds clever ways to get out of his predicament. At the end you see all the animals as the sun sets.

“The problem I had with this is that the story had a menacing, slightly sinister tone. It is a long project and took almost a year to refine both the art and the story. It took a long time to get the story right.”

With obvious parallels to the Julia Donaldson favourite The Gruffalo, Haughton abandoned the work as was, and moved to South Korea under the guidance of Borim Press, a publisher specialising in picture books he met at Bologna.

“I was in Korea for five months, living with Cho Sunkyung, who has been creating picture books for more than 20 years. He has worked in New York and gives lectures on creating picture books. He is something of a legend.

“Borim agreed that the story was wrong. So I turned it around and had the bird lost and the other animals helping him back to the nest. It took more than ten months to complete.”

Those familiar with the book will know that it has an interactive element. As the squirrel helps little owl find his mother, he takes a few wrong turns, his squirrel friend sure he has found the owl’s mother. We are instead introduced to a bear. My son takes quite a lot of delight in shouting “That’s not his mummy”.

“I liked the pantomime element here,” says Haughton. “I have used this when teaching kids English in Hong Kong. I learned how to gauge the interest of kids, and learn works and what doesn’t. I knew that unless you kept things interesting, people’s attention starts to wander and then you have lost it.”

As for the theme, rather than mirroring his globetrotting lifestyle, he says, “I liked the idea of being lost – everyone can be lost. And the quote at the beginning of the book from Robinson Crusoe, which is paraphrased as ‘you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone’,  appealed to me.”

When Haughton was a graphic designer, he worked in Nepal for the People Tree group, initially an NGO but evolved into a fairtrade organisation selling textiles and clothes. From there he travelled around India with his girlfriend, a travel writer.

His other profession is, perhaps bizarrely, rug design. He works with the Nepali Kumbeshwar Technical School (KTS), where his modern rug designs are made in an ethical environment. The workers are educated and use traditional techniques. The rugs are sold through Node Rugs, and has created his own fair-trade versions of the Little Owl from his book with the Mahaguthi group, influenced by the work of Nepal’s Mahatma Gandhi, Tulsi Mehar.

His work with NGOs suggests a preoccupation with environmentalism. Did he consider including an environmental message?

“I am passionate about environmentalism, but find it difficult to get the message into a story. It has to be the story first, or the story suffers.

“But my third story does have something of a message in it. It is about three idiots trying to catch a bird, but failing. They fall off a ladder, fall down a hole and there’s a message about appreciating nature rather than catching it, but unfortunately the idiots don’t learn it.

“All the books I hope to make will explore something. Oh No George is about a bad dog and temptation, and uses the same pantomime formula, with the dog trying to be good but then succumbing as we turn the page.”

Compared to A Bit Lost, the new book has a comic, anarchic quality that will appeal to younger readers. It perhaps reflects his new life in London, which still seems rather atypical – his editor at Walker books, David Lloyd, worked for more than a decade as a clown.

The influence of technology has made this a golden age for children’s writers and illustrators, he says. “It is because of the computer, which is such a powerful tool. People are now writing and illustrating themselves. Before, finding illustrators has been something of a difficult job.”

Back in London, Haughton has settled down to concentrate on his new life as an author and rug designer. But expect to hear much more from this unprepossessing Irishman.

Chris Haughton’s ten authors/illustrators to look out for

• When I was young, there were not a lot of picture books. I was a big fan of Richard Scarry’s Busy Busy World, but I came to this world of picture books retrospectively.
• In Korea, Cho Sunkyung introduced me to Italian-born French artist and author, creator of Un Lion A Paris, Beatrice Alemagna. I really admire her but she has hardly been translated.
• I also like Eric Carle and particularly Leo Lionni, who I understand got Eric Carle into picture books in the first place. All his characters, especially the mice  in his book Frederick, are beautiful. Very expressive and deceptively simple.
• Kevin Waldron, Claudia Boldt and Salvatore Rubbino: I have met them through being nominated as one of the Book Trust’s ten illustrators to look out for.
• Quentin Blake is amazing. His loose line is so expressive. He’s appearing at the South Ken Kids Festival next month (24-27 November), and I’m looking forward to seeing Marc Boutavant, a French illustrator.
• Jon Klassen would also be one of my favourites.

Meet Chris or see his rug work at Digital Handmade in the So far the future gallery off Lambs Conduit St in London from December 1-7. The private view will be at 6-9pm on December the 1st.