Latesha Randall
Author of Abigail Knightly Illustrated by Esther Tattersall Published by RSVP Publishing |
BIOGRAPHY
Tesh Randall is a women of many hats (literally & figuratively!), with her love of words happily co-existing alongside her love of business. She has become known as ‘Mrs Coconut’ after starting Raglan Coconut Yoghurt in her home kitchen nearly 4 years ago. Raglan Coconut Yoghurt went on to win a NZ Gourmet Food Award and now supplies over 500 stores around New Zealand, Australia, Singapore, and Hong Kong. Tesh self-published her first children’s book, Button Thief, at age 19 using all her savings, and sold 1,200 copies going door to door around NZ shops. Her second book, Abigail Knightly, was published by RSVP Publishing in 2015. She has been to all sorts of interesting places around New Zealand in her position as editor of Arrival travel magazine, and gets a lot of inspiration from travel. Tesh lives in Raglan with her partner Seb (Mr Coconut) where they love surfing, hosting glamping enthusiasts in their yurt and tiny house, and being part of the tight-knit community. Selected Bibliography Button Thief – Author Latesha Randall – Illustrator Esther Tattersall – Self-published 2009 Abigail Knightly –Author Latesha Randall – Illustrator Esther Tattersall – RSVP Publishing 2015 The To-Be List – Authors Latesha Randall & Sebastian Walter – Blue Mountain Arts 2017 About Abigail Knightly Abigail Knightly loves creating fun, playful outfits in her tree-house. Sally Pepper, the meddling neighbour next-door, tries to get Abigail to dress ‘sensibly’ for a change, and Abigail learns the importance of staying true to herself. A story about self-expression and the wonder of play. How the idea for the book came about As a child I also shared Abigail’s dislike of uniforms and all looking ‘the same’. My sister and I loved to spend afternoons creating interesting outfits from our dress-up box, and playing characters in different games. We dreamed of having a real tree-house like in the Swiss Family Robinson stories to play in. So Abigail is a character close to my heart, based on personal experience. What happened next The story came to me quite quickly, but took months of tweaking the wording to get the flow how I wanted it. Esther and I had worked together on my last book, Button Thief, so I asked her if she’d like to do the illustrations for Abigail Knightly and she did a fabulous job – first sketching the outlines for each page and then completing them with charcoal and water colour. We wanted the book to have a slightly dreamy, magical feel, which I think her illustrations achieve. We also had fun with using different fonts to emphasis certain words. For my pitch to publishing houses I created a dress-up box, decorated inside with fun pictures of children playing dress-up – some from my own childhood and some of friend’s kids. I wrote the submission letter in different coloured fonts to bring across the playful aspect of the story. RSVP Publishing loved Abigail Knightly and it was accepted for publication and printed in 2015. I have lots of ideas for other stories starring Abigail! |