As a writer and Illustrator you spend a lot of time trying to come up with original thoughts… It was months before I finalized the name Benny as the lead character in my book, and I largely chose it, because I thought it had a nice ring to it, children seemed to like it, and my research couldn’t turn up any previous case of there being a “Benny the whale” in fiction. So when just weeks after releasing the book I read news headlines from around the world of a “Benny the whale” that had turned up in the River Thames over in England it brought a smile to my face!
Mark Twain once wrote:
“There is no such thing as a new idea. It is impossible. We simply take a lot of old ideas and put them into a sort of mental kaleidoscope. We give them a turn and they make new and curious combinations. We keep on turning and making new combinations indefinitely; but they are the same old pieces of colored glass that have been in use through all the ages.”
And while I don’t necessarily want to believe in that, when my father sent me an article on Whales & Narwhals playing together in the St Lawrence I definitely did a double take… It is certainly not typical, and in the illustration below, which is one of the first pages in my “Benny the whale” book I had mainly added the Narwhal because I though the idea of him heading the beach ball with his tusk was hilarious! But according to this article it turns out they can be friends, and are in fact playing together, in of all places the St. Lawrence River! This article goes into detail on how a pod of beluga whales appears to have adopted a lost young narwhal.
People have asked me, why I chose a whale as the lead character for my first book? And I have always answered that it is the perfect character for a book about myths, Legends, and cryptids, as nobody would believe a creature as big, beautiful, and unique as the whale could exist, unless of course it actually did! I definitely think the same could be said for the Narwhal which in many ways is kinda like the Sea’s unicorn!
you can read the full article here:
