Author's Notes: The Original Version; The Tales of Copter Duck!

So, what to do with twenty-nine stanzas of rhyming verse? Essentially, these verses tell the story in a two -layered narrative. In the opening scenes Mama Duck is reading to her three offspring, Douglas, Dora and Little Dan, from a book called The Tales of Copter Duck (funnily enough!). She narrates two episodes in which Copter Duck saves the day by putting out a ferocious fire and then by rescuing the farm cat, Mischief, who has fallen down the courtyard well. Then, the twist, as the reader discovers that Copter Duck is indeed a reality on Featherdown Farm – our goggled hero squaring up to the scoundrel Felix Fox, saving the life of Hettie Hen, before leaving the villain literally tied up in ‘granny knots’ around a weathervane. Observant readers, young and not so young, will then of course work out the identity of Copter Duck, the final picture showing a slightly bruised Little Dan tucked up safely in his hutch bed!

The illustrations were drawn by the gifted Jeska Carey, a colleague of mine who relished the chance to collaborate on this mini project. As you can see from the example given, Jeska managed to capture the rawness of the characterisations, each picture naturally blending itself with the surrounding text. With the aid of two other talented people and the wonder of Photoshop we produced a hard copy format and an Amazon online version. Subsequently, a little money was raised for charity and Copter Duck was introduced to the world.

A couple of takeaways from this experience. I changed my surname to my wife’s maiden name – it sounded good at the time, Martis more ‘authoresque’ than Banthorpe perhaps, but ultimately this confused too many people! Secondly, and more prevalent was the case of the ‘missing stanza’.  Little Dan Duck could not fly, well not very well. Why? Because he was disabled, from birth. The original story did not clearly signify this, and so a 30th stanza was later added – sadly too late for the Amazon version but eventually the four lines below took their place on the back cover of the hard copy. An early oversight, but the theme of disability had finally found its voice, the back-story started to take shape, and the rest as they say, is history!

‘’Born with his left wing imperfect,

Flightless, young Dan roamed the farm.

So, his dad built him the pond hutch,

A sanctuary, to keep him from harm’’