Many moments from childhood follow us through life, evoked by a familiar place, smell or feeling, and transporting us back to that treasured time. For Canberra author Samantha Tidy, moments spent on the ocean with her father have always held a special place in her heart; moments she has captured in her newest children’s book, Cloudspotting.

Hitting the shelves mid-March, Tidy and Canberra illustrator Susannah Crispe worked together to bring the vision to life, intertwining their important moments. The women say it is rare that an author and illustrator will be in the same city, and appreciated the time they could spend discussing ideas and memories.

“The page where they’re having their lunch was from one of the pictures that Sam gave me. She had a big sort of rectangular plate of crabs on the lunch table. I thought that needs to be in the book,” smiles Crispe.

Growing up in Perth, Tidy recalls being the only one of her siblings to go crabbing for blue manna crabs with their father, spending precious time in those early mornings quietly sitting together.

During the pandemic, Tidy visited her father during one of the travel windows. Whilst back in her hometown, someone offered to take the pair crabbing, something they hadn’t done since the author was young. She and her 79-year-old father boarded a boat and set out together; the expedition planting the seed for her new book.

Tidy says the book is a quiet and patient reminder of how important it is to cherish moments with family when you’re young.

“I used the idea of clouds because when you look at clouds, they move on pretty quickly. For me, that captures the ephemeral nature of childhood,” she says.

Crispe says marrying the nature of clouds to art was easy; the two go hand in hand. Coming from a background studying art history and zoology, the illustrator and her young son spend a lot of time in nature looking for faces in bark and trees and shapes in the clouds. She has brought her love of finding creatures in nature to the pages, where they may only be a hint of them in the illustrations.

“There are a lot of creatures if you look at the clouds; there’s a dragon on the front cover. So, a little challenge for kids to go back through – a stegosaurus sleeping, a cat chasing a mouse,” the artist says.

While the story was Tidy’s, there is a glimpse into Crispe’s life through the images. In all her illustrations she likes to include something personal, like one of her son’s favourite toys or an item of clothes, such as his beanie. In Cloudspotting, there’s also one of her previous books and a favourite work of art.

“It was really nice being able to have a family in this story because most of the books I’ve done haven’t really had that many people in them. Being able to do some sort of internal shots of the house and, if you look carefully, there are bikes under the deck and things like that,” says Crispe.

The book is recommended for children aged three to seven years. Both women are big believers in reading 1,000 books before kindergarten and the wonders that does for children’s development and vocabulary. Throughout the book, they are encouraging children to take their time and see the small details, even the colours of the crabs.

“That’s a wonderful way kids need to read books, they need to have visual literacy and take the time on pages, when an illustrator puts in that attention to detail, because kids see it, the parents don’t,” says Tidy.

Both with five children’s books to their names, Tidy wrote her previous title, Our Bush Capital, as a way to capture the childhood her kids get to live here in Canberra, while Cloudspotting is the story of her own and how wonderful childhood can and should be.

“It’s not the words on the page, it’s not the pictures, it’s that marriage together and how that brings something out in you. That’s what a good picture book is,” smiles Tidy.

Cloudspotting hits the bookshelves mid-March. For more of their work, follow Samantha Tidy at samanthatidy.com and Susannah Crispe at ohsusannah.com.au

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