Let me tell you the book’s origin story that began way back in 2010…

I wrote the story in the back of my notebook on the number 86 bus between Chorlton Library and Manchester City Centre, when I was a tired 30-something parent, trying to make art on the half-hour commute to a job in arts administration. It was a job I hated. I wrote the rhyming story in a single week of bus rides. The words arrived quickly, almost fully formed. The cadence carving the path as much as anything. I would also race to Manchester Museum in my lunch breaks, sketching and illustrating from display cases packed with moths and caterpillars. 

It felt urgent and exciting to be creating art at the margins of my life. I knew the story was original and that it would appeal to others with weird and wild imaginations. My family and friends encouraged me to illustrate the story, to bring it into the world before I gave birth to my second child in 2012.

And then I stalled.

Everything I drew felt wrong. Too literal, too flat, too clumsy. Sketches fizzled. Ideas wriggled away. The moth went quiet. And so the story cocooned itself, waiting. Then, somehow, fifteen years had passed. When I was hospitalised in 2024, and when it looked like I might die, one of my immediate regrets was that I had not finished this book. And so, as part of my recovery last year, I carved out two dedicated illustration days each month, which I have been using to create the story’s visuals. 

Some stories take a long time to emerge. Some moths wait until the dark is right.

The Midnight Moth is an A4 sized picture book that will help children practise something most adults were never taught: how to respond to death with calm and care.

Through interactive worksheets at the back of the book, children are invited to design a memorial ceremony for the Midnight Moth. This immersive approach helps them learn that children can create goodbye rituals too, that grief can be expressed through action, and that loss can be held quietly and gently. This small, symbolic experience builds grief literacy, ecological awareness, and confidence around death long before most children encounter bigger losses. A lot of adults worry about talking to children about death. The Midnight Moth doesn’t rush that conversation. It softens it. It’s a book that can grow with them. It is designed to be read slowly and revisited often.