Life was breathed into the characters within 'The Turtle Who Ate the Balloon' by author Andrew Stevenson and illustrator Peter Woolcock.

The pair will be signing copies of the new children's publication tomorrow from 10.30 a.m. at Brown & Co.

So how did these masters of their trades come together to collaborate on this project?

Mr. Woolcock says that they had already worked together for some years with him illustrating Mr. Stevenson's articles in Bottom Line and the Family Man pieces, which run in the RG Magazine.

"We enjoyed working together and over time had developed a friendship," he said. "When Andrew suggested the idea (of the book), I jumped at the chance."

The illustrator went on to say that the pair share the same work ethic.

"We're probably both perfectionists when it comes to our craft," said Mr. Woolcock. "We like to have our work completed ahead of time and, if we say we will do something, we mean it. We gave ourselves a month to complete each chapter, for Andrew to write it and for me to illustrate it.

"Having it serialised in the RG Magazine kept us to that schedule."

Mr. Stevenson admits to falling slightly behind in the spring of this year, due to another project he is working on.

"I was often spending nine hours a day looking for whales for my film documentary and Peter would be biting at the bit to get the next chapter's illustrations done," he said. "I gave him the storyline for a chapter or two without having actually written the chapter and he illustrated it. Of course, I had to then look at Peter's illustrations to make sure I didn't go off base when I wrote the chapter.

"There was nothing major, just a few details that I had to alter to fit the illustration."

'The Turtle Who Ate the Balloon' came about after a dinner in January. After discussing what they wanted to achieve with a children's book, they were off. The publication, which was funded by the late Pat Steinhoff and her husband Bob, is dedicated to her memory.

Mr. Stevenson wanted to write a children's book with an environmental theme, but one in which the message was edible.

"There had to be a degree of subtlety," he added. "I think the book will appeal to children who are as young as three, and will have the story read to them, up to children who are 12, who can read the story for themselves."

Asked what was the major difficulty in writing the book, Mr. Stevenson stated what is a common dilemma for many writers — beginning.

"The hardest part was starting, getting the voice right, the initial characters," he said.

"Once the first chapter was done, my wife took Elsa (his daughter) off my hands for an evening and I lay in the bathtub with a bottle of wine beside me and worked out the storyline and the rest of the chapters, the remaining characters.

"Fortunately, I wrote it all down on a soggy piece of paper otherwise I might have forgotten. We broached the idea with the Bermuda Zoological Society and they seemed keen on the idea of a children's book that would have an underlying environmental theme."

While Mr. Woolcock added that he was concerned that doing an environmentally correct book on Bermuda's skinks and toads and the animals from the Bermuda Aquarium and Zoo wouldn't be the 'up-up and away' kind of ride he was hoping Mr. Stevenson would take him on.

"In the end I shouldn't have worried, he threw in Mr. BUTT — the Bermuda Underwater Terrifying Troll — and the Sea Monster of Harrington Sound and Umbriago El Dragon of Castle Island to stir things up."

Mr. Stevenson said the characters Mr. BUTT and Umbriago came about as a bit of an accident.

"The Troll was supposed to live under Flatts Bridge and, when I came over to Peter's to see his illustrations for the first chapter, I noticed the Troll's long hair was flowing, as if he was underwater," he said.

"'It looks as if he's underwater!' I told Peter. 'You told me he lived under the bridge,' Peter replied.

"I laughed. 'Yes, but not underwater!' So that's how we got the Bermuda Underwater Terrifying Troll, or Mr. BUTT for short.

"Umbriago El Dragon was an evolution as well. Originally he was supposed to be Herbert the Dragon."

At that point, they did a reading at North Rock Tank at the Aquarium.

"I realised that Peter's skills as an illustrator are matched by his skills as an actor," Mr. Stevenson said of his friend. "We decided to do an audio book. Peter plays all the parts of the different animals except for the narrator and the green turtle.

"When I told him about adding Herbert the Dragon, his main concern was he had used up his gamut of different voices and how was he going to distinguish Herbert from all the other creatures?"

But this was all sorted after Mr. Stevenson figured Herbert could be Spanish instead.

"Peter, being born in Argentina, can do a wicked imitation of a Spanish-speaking person trying to speak English," he added. "Herbert became Humberto and then Peter suggested something more rakish, like Umbriago. I did a quick search on the Internet and found that Umbriago was a character from the film 'Music for Millions' by Irving Caesar and Jimmy Durante, so we borrowed a few lines from their songs.

"Of course having a Spanish dragon who had been shipwrecked along with Juan de Bermudez was entirely appropriate to the Bermuda story."

When asked whether he ever had designs on becoming an actor, Mr. Woolcock replied: "As an illustrator, I act through my pencil every day.

"I have to be an actor. I have to mime the faces, act out the body language of the victims of my political cartoons. Sometimes, I catch myself gesticulating or talking, or grimacing as I try to imagine how the illustration should work.

"It's the same thing with illustrating a children's book, you have to put yourself into the skin of the creature you are illustrating to get it right. You can't be a good illustrator without being a good actor."

Some of the other characters own names such as Darth Vader and Spike, Smee and Casper, O'Bleep and they are the real names of the older sea life residents of the Aquarium.

Mr. Woolcock says that his favourite character would have to be Umbriago El Dragon.

"He is very old, very wise, and very gallant," he said.

While Mr. Stevenson's is the baby whale.

"When I started to write the book he was just a figment of my imagination, but after swimming and sleeping with whales in March and April there was a level of intimacy with the baby whale that I hadn't experienced when I first started writing the book."

Mr. Stevenson writes a regular column in the RG Magazine about being a stay-at-home-dad, so when asked if his daughter played a role in the completion of the book, he said: "If it weren't for Elsa, the book couldn't have been written.

"I've been telling her 'stories by mouth' as she calls it for years and it's mental gymnastics coming up with an endless supply of intriguing stories for a three- and then a four-year old.

"Finding the right voice was relatively easy after all that because I just had to do what I'd been doing every day for a couple of years. 'Once upon a time, long, long ago, in a faraway land, there was a...'

"She listened to the drafts of the book and saw all the different versions as we started slotting in the illustrations with the text."

By the time he actually did the audio book, Elsa knew the story by heart.

"One early evening, we came home and the first printed draft of the book was on the doorstep," he said.

"It was in a three-piece binder. Elsa grabbed it and said, 'It's a book!'

"The fact that it was neatly bound and not pieces of paper scattered around our home was impressive to her, and me. "She knelt in front of the sofa and started 'reading' almost verbatim, including some of the sound effects like Mr. BUTT's creaking door. She can't read yet, but she didn't miss much of the text.

"She'd heard it a million times, not only as I practised reading it aloud to her to make sure I had it right, but also when I started doing the audio book, which took much more time than I anticipated, and which meant she heard our voices over and over and over again.

Now, of course, she is completely blasé about it and isn't in the remotest bit interested in hearing the story again, although she perked up the other day when I started 'reading a story by mouth' that was clearly a sequel."

So will there be a sequel?

"We'll see. Let's get this one out the door first and then we can make an informed decision," says Mr. Stevenson.

"If 'The Turtle who ate a Balloon' goes up like a balloon, we'll obviously consider it. We'd both like to. And if children stop buying helium-filled balloons that drift over the ocean to be swallowed by unsuspecting turtles, who probably die from it, then we'd definitely be encouraged to do a sequel."

Mr. Woolcock's answer was simply: "If we are both up to it."

The book comes out in bookstores tomorrow and the author and illustrator will be in the Bookmart in Brown and Co at 10.30 a.m. where the audio book will be playing on the store's PA system.