Booomf! Introducing Jonathan the Magic Pony
... And our new fortnightly email via Substack!
Welcome back to The Naughty Step
You remember, it’s that parenting email you signed up for 50 million years ago, from knackered parents/writers Robyn Wilder and Stuart Heritage. Hiya!
We've been on a dealing-with-life break, but now we're BACK – coming to you now every two weeks, and via Substack instead of Mailchimp (which means Robyn no longer has to stay up, hand-crafting each issue of it in raw HTML, until 4am – which is especially helpful as our kids get up at 5am).
This week, two members of our family had birthdays, one member of our family threw two tantrums because it wasn’t his birthday, and Stuart published his first book for children.
Jonathan the Magic Pony is about one deluded pony’s magical misadventures: it's funny, silly; beautifully illustrated by Nicola Slater, and published by Puffin Books. Here’s a little trailer for it (did you know books have trailers now?). AND you can win your own copy of Jonathan the Magic Pony at the end of this email.
INTERVIEW: Stuart Heritage
I (Robyn) caught up with author and journalist Stuart Heritage at a bijou, tucked-away eaterie (our kitchen), and decided to interview him in the style of a male journalist profiling a prominent, respected actress.
Stuart Heritage is sitting on a beaten-up leather sofa, eating his lunch. Looking frail yet luminous in faded jeans and a vintage T-shirt, he tucks his feet under him, like a cat's.
"Imagine I am not your wife," I say. "And tell me about the genesis of Jonathan the Magic Pony."
"OK," Stuart purrs. "So when I first met my wife – WHO ISN’T YOU, REMEMBER – I used to try and make her laugh by being as obnoxious as possible.
“I can’t remember why, but one day I was insinuating that all children’s authors have it easy. “It’s a piece of cake”, I said, trying to think of the stupidest possible combination of words. “Jonathan the Magic Pony – there, that’s a book”. And then my wife laughed and I forgot about it.
"Then we had kids, and I read a ton of children’s books to them, and I started to see what our oldest son responded to the most (which was silliness, repetition, stupid noises and bait-and-switch reveals, mainly).
“And then my wife said “Write Jonathan the Magic Pony”. So I did. I would like to point out that children’s authors don’t have it easy at all. Writing for kids is really bloody hard, and I’m sorry."
Next, I ask what someone should do if, as in the story, they lose a beloved toy. Stuart regards me over the top of his Scotch Egg almost coquettishly before replying.
"The short answer is ‘buy a duplicate replacement’.
“The long answer is ‘search eBay for a Beanie Baby giraffe in a panic because Mr Giraffe has gone missing and our son is distraught. Then discover that the giraffe in question is rare and quite expensive, and buy it anyway because you’re panicking, and invent a long and complicated story about Mr Giraffe going on holiday while we wait for the replacement to be delivered.
“‘Then, when it arrives, sneak outside, place the new Mr Giraffe on the doorstep, knock on the door, run away and watch as your son disinterestedly scoops him up and then stops playing with him forever after about a fortnight’.
“The short version is better."
You workshopped Jonathan by reading the drafts to our two little boys at bedtime: was that a help or a hindrance?
"Massive help. A three-year-old will not hesitate to tell you that they don’t like something, which is why Jonathan clips along so quickly. A kid can’t destroy your sense of self-worth if you’re reading quickly enough."
As Stuart licks a paw and begins cleaning his fur, I ask how he thinks Jonathan spends his spare time.
"I might as well just admit that Jonathan is me here; he’s an idiot who swaggers into situations with an unearned sense of confidence, and then spectacularly fails to cope when things start to go wrong.
"So he probably does the same thing that I do in my spare time, which is falling asleep on the sofa during films he’s been waiting ages to watch."
Stuart finishes his Scotch egg in three small, cat-like bites. I ask him what's next for Jonathan –– are more children's books to come, or will Stuart go back to insulting family members for an adult readership?
"More Jonathan, I hope! I’ve been signed up to do two more books with Nicola [Slater, the illustrator], and I want one of them to be the Jonathan sequel that’s teased at the end of this book.
"And I already know what happens in the third story. I’ve had so much fun writing this book that I want to keep doing it forever. All my book ideas have loads of raccoons in them."
With that, Stuart Heritage, author of Jonathan the Magic Pony, stalks elegantly out of the door with his tail waving high in the air.
COLUMN: Happy Birthday, Rainbows and Sunshine, by Robyn Wilder
This week, our younger son turned three. Here’s a column I originally wrote for The Pool (RIP) about him turning one. Aside from his new habit of stealing my phone and chucking it in the garden, I still stand by every word.
Illustration, originally for a different Ned piece, by Naomi Wilkinson
This time last year, I was just finishing up a lovely nap on my sofa. I remember this quite clearly.
“What a lovely nap I’ve just had on my sofa,” I remember thinking. “Now, what combination of carbs and sugar shall I consume?” And that’s when it hit me that my sofa looked awfully like a hospital gurney today. And were there normally so many nurses in my living room?
As you may have guessed, I wasn’t at home. I was in hospital. I’d just spent an hour screaming my way through a surprise, back-to-back labour with no pain relief, and had ended up going under general anaesthetic for a crash Caesarean (category 1; immediate threat to life, deliver within 20 minutes).
“Where’s my baby?” I asked, wondering why I sounded muffled. “Where’s my husband?”
It had been a shit-show of a few months. My mother-in-law had died just a few weeks earlier. My husband was broken.
We were all stumbling around our lives, numb with grief, trying not to frighten our two-year-old. My own estranged mother was six months into a terminal diagnosis. Work was overwhelming. Our finances were in the toilet.
And I was in and out of hospital week on week with pregnancy problems. It seemed only fitting that I should then have a labour so excruciating that I wanted to die. And that I should wake up alone and frightened in a strip-lit room.
“Where’s my baby?” I asked again.
And then my husband appeared, smiling, in blue scrubs, his arms full of something chewing-gum pink, pissed-off-looking and wriggly. My baby. My number-two son. We put him in my cleavage and he stayed there for about three weeks, while I drank tea and got biscuit crumbs in his thick, dark hair.
I’ve heard that newborn babies reflect the general mood of the house and that was certainly the case with our older son. My husband and I were sleepless and petrified of everything when he was born, whipping up medical emergencies out of everything, from minor falls off the sofa to his “weird-looking” belly button.
Although he is, thankfully, not a neurotic mess himself now he’s three, he will give you a 21-scenario answer to any single question you ask him and I think we’re entirely to blame for this.
But, with our second son, I think he has reflected on us. The boy is entirely rainbows and sunshine. He only has two modes: delighted and ecstatic. He coos at his toes. He waves at everyone he sees. I’m pretty sure I once saw him giggling at a lamp post.
In fact, the more dour and shut-down and disengaged you are with life, the harder my younger son will work to catch your eye, mash his little fat hands together in a weird applause and honk out his weirdly deep, Sid James laugh if you so much as blink.
To take him on a train is to win him a carriage full of fans. He turns the full force of his laser-beam smile on to crotchety old farts in the queue at Marks & Spencer and has them blowing raspberries into his buggy while he squeals and wriggles. He’s even coaxed smiles out of grouchy teenagers. It is impossible not to have fun with him.
As you might imagine, having such a ray of fucking sunshine in our lives has made a dramatic difference. He can lighten the weightiest of days with a well-placed head on a shoulder, or a little hand caressing the face.
When his father is feeling low, our son will play peek-a-boo until he cheers up. When I’m tired, he crawls into my arms and shoves his toes into my face to make me giggle. And he’s even melted the heart of his older brother – until now, a confirmed baby-sceptic – through sheer force of will.
He’s just so happy to see us all the time; he is a relentless force for good.
And now, with giggle and a drooly grin, our little boy has turned one year old. He’s a boy now; not just a baby. He’s days away from walking and his fringe is so full that any member of The Stone Roses would have been proud to wear it. As he grows, he’s finding more and more things funny, and discovering more and more ways to interact with the world.
I just can’t wait to see what will make him smile in the year to come. Happy Birthday, Our Ned.
Mini-Interview: Nicola Slater
Nicola Slater is the children’s author and illustrator who brought Jonathan to life. She lives in Cheshire with her family.
Hello, Nicola. Do you believe in magic?
Yes. Magic is what happens in the moments between the big things… or the big things that happen in a moment.
Jonathan the Magic Pony features a supporting cast of very idiosyncratic animals. Do they all have names and back-stories?
I do like to have a little scenario going on for the secondary characters. Jonathan can’t have ALL the limelight. The platypus is a morose tennis player, directly inspired by The Royal Tenenbaums. The cow, Édouard, has been transported straight from the beach in Mykonos where he would work the promenade in his Speedos. And let’s not forget the permanently gobsmacked stoat in a beret. I imagine it says “O.M.G!” a lot. It like, can’t even.
What was your first step towards becoming a children's illustrator?
Scribbling on my dad’s rare LP covers. He was so proud. It was all I wanted to do from then on, so I did an A-level equivalent art course at Burnley College, then did an Illustration degree at Buckinghamshire University. Of course it’s different now with the Instagram, but I would simply personally pester people until they gave me work. My lovely agent, Doreen at Good Illustration, saw potential in me, and we're still going strong 20 years later!
ASIDE from Jonathan, what is your favourite animal to draw?
Anything but raccoons. Actually, the animal that seems to pop up again and again in my work is this tiny aardvark. I think his time in the sun will come eventually – he doesn’t look so sure.
COMPETITION: Win your own Jonathan!
To win your very own copy of Jonathan the Magic Pony, simply answer this question.
Q. Robyn had a pony when she was a child, because of course she did. But what was her pony's NAME?
Pepsi
Ribena
Robyn 2
Email your answer to naughtystep.inc@gmail.com for your chance to win!
That's it for this issue! We'll see you again in two weeks, with MORE actual content and LESS aggressive book-selling. In the meantime, please enjoy Stuart trying to read the book to our children who, in a stunning display of genetics, react with whatever the very opposite of “destined for the stage” is:
Get some sleep! x
Yay👏🏼 So happy for you both & the younglings but selfishly happy for me getting to tuck in to your delicious brains 🧠🧠 again! We will adopt 📖Jonathan, of course, but he will most certainly be a lost soul here, too. It’s all a bit (post?)Apocalyptic here but zombies 🧟♀️🧟♂️ do their best🖤
Sincerely,
S & J + P (which aptly is also Pyjamas: PJs 😴 or Jacket Potatoes: JPs 🛋 🥔) XXx