A gift.

I’m still coming down from the high of last week’s Brisbane launch of Henry Hoey Hobson.

Marj Kirkland, National President of the Children’s Book Council of Australia, did the honours at Coaldrake’s Books, in front of a home-town crowd of writers, friends, family and book-lovers.

She told the crowd that she had fallen in love with a twelve-year-old boy, and I know how she feels.

Books are like children. We all love our own and we want others to love them too.

They’re all beautiful in their own way, but oh my giddy aunt, so so different, sometimes it’s hard to believe that they all share the same blood.

Leonie Tyle, Woolshed Press, with CBCA's Marj Kirkland

My first-born, Dust, was all sweat and tears. Delivered after an elephantine labour dogged by every conceivable complication. When I finally held it in my hands I marvelled that such a small package could have caused such anguish and such joy.

Twelve months later, I’m welcoming Henry Hoey Hobson into the world. The unplanned second-born. My little surprise.

Perhaps because he arrived unannounced to an uncertain reception, he was different from the word go. His story came out with so little prompting, it was as though he had been here before, an old soul who had come into the world fully formed.

[caption id="attachment_1649" align="alignleft" width="225" caption="Me and Marj Kirkland, Coaldrake's Books, Brisbane launch"][/caption]

After the grief that his predecessor caused, I think of Henry Hoey Hobson as my gift from a good-hearted muse.

He slipped out so naturally, so sweet and true, that I wondered if he would forever spoil me for the next (I’m currently tussling with my third in three years, so I hope not!)

When I rub his glossy cover against my cheek, I tell him the same thing that I plan to tell every last one of them: ‘Of course you’re my favourite …but don’t tell the others!’