Hairy Maclary… famously of Donaldson Dairy… was created only because he fell out of a book.
Author and illustrator Dame Lynley Dodd had been asked by her publisher for a story quickly — so she went to her “ideas book”.
“I opened the ideas book and out fell a bit of paper that I’d written a very brief bit of rhyme and done a drawing of Hairy Maclary and that’s what happened. It fell on the floor… So I thought I’d better hurry up and get on with this.”
First published in 1983 the scruffy little dog and his rag tag bunch of friends quickly became firm favourites with kids everywhere.
Author and illustrator Dame Lynley Dodd opens up to Melissa Stokes on the creation of the lovable pooch, famously from Donaldson’s Dairy. (Source: 1News)
Dame Lynley was an art teacher before she became an illustrator and then author/illustrator.
She told 1News she thinks of characters and then the words and pictures follow.
“I’m thinking of the characters and what the characters are going to be doing, then the words are starting to gel a little bit in the brain.
“I don’t do a lot of drawing to begin with because I’m trying to work on a text. I wait until I’ve finished — well pretty much finished — the text before I start doing the little dummy pictures.”
The “dummy pictures” are the first vision of Hairy Maclary on the page and there can be to 25 drafts before they’re ready.
Hairy Maclary has changed a bit over time. Dame Lynley says the movement is important to his character.
“He was a bit squat to begin with. He got a bit more elegant after that. His hair was a bit more flowing afterwards.”
Her love of words began as a child.
“I was an only child so there’s a great deal of conversation between my parents and me and so I love words because they love words. I think and we had a lot of laughs with language.”
She admits she made more work for herself by having a rhyming style.
For more on this, and other Newsmakers, go to TVNZ+
“Rhymes seem to suggest itself and, of course, I gave myself a double job with that in order to make rhymes sound nice and easy to say. You’ve got to work terribly hard to get that right — otherwise it’s just crashingly awful.
“I would never use those words just for the sake of using a big word. I always use them because they’re the right context that they do make sense to a child. And I’ve had proof of that back from feedback from children really using them, which is great.
“If you ever find the book you’re reading is uncomfortable then that’s because they’ve not put it together very well, the words don’t hang together nicely.”
She says she conducts herself like music when she’s writing, and her “music” is a best seller.
She’s written 31 books, Hairy Maclary has appeared in a musical, as a cartoon and he’s been read by prime ministers and royalty. Queen Camilla is said to particularly like reading the books to her grandchildren.
He’s on a stamp and on a commemorative coin and, when Dame Lynley was given an honorary doctorate, he got a DOG-torate too. A toy of him in cap and gown sits on her windowsill at home.
Dame Lynley believes sales stopped being counted when they topped the 10 million mark and while she’s admired the world over for her contribution to children’s literature, she remembers the delight of meeting her own writing hero, Dr Seuss.
“I did a drawing of his cat in a hat in my cat in a box, so there were two cats in the box, and he turned out to be exactly as I hoped so I gave it to him. He let out a big squawk and said, ‘she draws my cat better than I do’, which isn’t true.”
She says she’s got ideas for another book but finding the time is difficult as she busy answering emails and dealing with the business of Hairy Maclary, but she’d like to think she hasn’t quite finished yet.
The best part of being Hairy Maclary’s creator?
“It’s a tremendously exciting thing to know you’ve worked very hard to get this thing done and, for goodness sake, all these people want it.
“It’s not just parents who enjoy them, the children do too, and they quote them which is what I like even more because it means that all that hard work with the words has actually got through to them which is lovely.”
