My name is Janna Hicks. I was a teacher and have taught in lots of different schools in the Peterborough area. Back in 2022, I taught a lesson where the children were doing science experiments. They had done a lot of work on the book by Julia Donaldson called  Stickman, and they'd all made a stickman and were looking at different materials they could use to float on the water and carry their stick man. They loved doing this experiment and it gave me the idea.

Some time later I decided I could write a story based on that day about a group of twigs and make it into a children's book. So I grabbed the nearest piece of paper – the timetable I had nearby (the seventeenth of October 2024 – it showed what I was supposed to do that day!) On the back of the paper I wrote down the beginning of a story, all about a bundle of twigs.

‘The Bundle Twig family lived at the bottom of the schoolyard, next to the school shed. There was Mr Bundletwig, Mrs Bundletwig. Albert Bundletwig and Twiggy Bundletwig. They had lived there happily for years. One fateful day, a girl called Chloe from Robin class was looking for a stick for a science experiment. She saw a bundle of twigs wrapped together with string. Chloe pulled a stick from the bundle. “This is perfect!” she exclaimed, and went running back to Robin's classroom…’

I wrote the story and then I thought I could actually make the characters. I had a Magnolia tree and I cut off some of the little twiggy branches and made the little characters. I went to the local craft shop and got the materials I needed and started fitting them together with bits of wire. I made them little moss coats and in no time, the Bundletwigs were formed. Then I thought of one more thing; I could put my dog in the story too, she is called Poppy. So I have, and you will see her in the first book.

There is lots more to show and tell you but for now, that gives you an idea of how the Bundletwigs came about.