Charlie's Ark
Charlie’s Ark is a collection of stories about a five-year-old boy and his toy box ark which contain many animals which magically come to life when he whispers a ‘Wordspell’. Engaging, charming and a moral within every story together with beautiful illustrations, this book is a delight. Created and written by award-winning artist Mike Payne who is also the creator and original artist of the grey, blue-nosed bear “Tatty Teddy”. “Classics, children’s classics in particular, endure because a child’s soul inherently recognises a communion we adults only faintly remember. Storytelling is an art. Story writing is a craft. What has been collectively accomplished here is the gem at the pinnacle of the creative crown – inspiration. May Charlie’s Ark join the classics of yore to be loved by legions of children as yet unborn and generations beyond that. Magic has been created here.” MARY JANE, NEW ORLEANS USA
Mike Payne, Adam Pescott
Award-winning international cartoonist and illustrator Mike Payne is perhaps best known as the creator and original artist of Tatty Teddy – the charcoal bear with the blue nose – from the Me To You concept, which he drew under the pen name of ‘Miranda’ for 17 years. He is also the creator of highly successful cartoon characters and licensed merchandise known across the world. It is estimated that greetings cards featuring his creations have sold in excess of one billion worldwide. Mike has just illustrated and published his first children’s story, Milo’s Lucky Sneeze, along with a coffee table book of the first 120 cartoons he created about a little girl, Little Else, to raise people’s spirits during lockdown. As a child, Mike was always drawing, inspired by Disney and Giles, but ended up spending 26 years in the civil service. When the art director of Athena International happened upon an open portfolio of Mike’s cartoons, Athena bought it all, and his career as a cartoonist was launched. When asked to create a bear with great depth of feeling for the then newly formed company Carte Blanche in 1987, it was then that he created the phenomenon that was Tatty Teddy, winning numerous awards in the USA, Europe, Scandinavia, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and, of course, the UK. He won the equivalent of an Oscar, called a ‘Henry’, for his artwork, and has travelled the world attending many signings. He was also cartoonist for Sky News – the perfect environment to entertain and promote the art of cartooning for which he is globally renowned. Mike created Charlie’s Ark in June 2004, after waking up at 3.30am with a poem going round and round in his head about a five-year-old boy named Charlie and his ark-shaped toy box full of animals. He got up, went straight to his art studio and started writing and drawing, and the book and the audio CDs – which Mike narrated – were born. There are 24 stories in book one of Charlie’s Ark, and Mike is still writing, inspired by the nostalgia and the moral in each of Charlie’s adventures with the animals in his magical ark.
