By Lu Fraser, Picture Book Author
Heroes are easy.
Baddies are even easier, I think.
The tricky characters to create are the quiet ones that stand back a bit, a little in the shadows, just behind the hero’s cloak (or who pass the villain the instruction manual) – the ones that are pivotal to the plot. Usually wise (but never smug), always encouraging (but not too pushy),long-suffering (but endlessly loyal), to name just a few of the qualities that we’ve come to expect from them. But the very best of them are, (at least, in my mind), the ones that also display empathy, too. Thoughtful, more complex, subtle. Like I said…tricky to write.
If I’m being honest, I never feel like I ‘write’ my characters (they sort of write themselves) so I’m not sure that I can take any credit for our gently empathetic Moth in ‘Basil Dreams Big’ (my latest picture book with brilliant illustrator Sarah Warburton). Unlike Basil the bat (our hero), Moth has mastered ‘fluttering’ – she’s someone who knows how to fly to the ‘far-away stars’; Basil, on the other hand, has only mastered ‘whooshing’, ‘swooshing’ and, ultimately, falling. Moth’s words may be encouraging (they may even offer gentle advice) but, first and foremost, what Moth offers is empathy; Moth knows that ‘Sometimes there’s DOWN-NESS before you start flying…’. Fuelled by her own memories, combined with her own imagination, she can stand in Basil’s shoes, she can understand the tides of Basil’s emotions. It’s a powerful thing…
But turn the page and…here come ‘The Bats’! A swirling mass of fuzzy flappers with not a jot of empathy between them! The opposite of Moth, The Bats embody all the behaviours that we humans so often exhibit when faced with someone like Basil; they have forgotten what it’s like to cling to a branch, to take a leap of faith, and, what’s worse, they don’t even try to remember (or imagine) how Basil might feel. Not surprisingly, when they swirl away, their lack of empathy means that our hero is still clinging tightly to his tree!
I love the interplay of these two opposing forces in the story – I love the triumph of Moth’s gentle empathy over the loud and energetic (but completely ineffectual) bats. Moth doesn’ttry to fix Basil, she doesn’t tell him that life will be ok or that the flapping will sort itself out, she doesn’t relate her own flying journey, she isn’t frustrated at his ineptitude. She simplylistens – and she listens well.
As I turn the final page in ‘Basil Dreams Big’, I have to admit that I’m left wondering whether I’m more like Moth…or more like one of The Bats. I’m not sure I do half as good a job with my own loved ones as Moth does with Basil…but I know which one I want to be.
#BeMoreMoth…
‘Basil Dreams Big’, written by Lu Fraser, illustrated by Sarah Warburton and published by Simon & Schuster – publishing 24th April, 2025.
