Just over three decades later I retired from the City and suddenly felt I wanted to write again. Firstly I wrote about sixty poems for greeting cards and then I wrote a book called Adventures of Bob, Fin and Honeybun together with a couple of other books, including a sequel to the Bob Fin and Honeybun stories. This particular book features friends Bob, who is a rabbit, Fin a squirrel and a water rat called Honeybun (Hun for short) who together, with their woodland friends, share many adventures. However, my manuscripts were put on a bookshelf and were completely forgotten for two decades until a friend was telling me about his experience of having a book published, and that reminded me of the stories I had written many years earlier. When I told him about my books he asked where they were but I  couldn’t remember where I’d stored them, but I found them eventually and dusted them down - there was a lot of dust- and my friend said he’d give them a read and give me his opinion.

 

Once he had read them, he told me he thought I would be mad not to get them published. So, to cut a long story short, a year later the book was published. It was a long, torturous process. But I learned a lot and I’m still learning.

 

A year on from then, I published my second book - Everyone Needs a Hero. Unlike my first book, this was written in prose not in rhyme. 

 

In September 2025, I published my third book, The Planet Sweet. Again, this book is written in rhyme.

 

I do prefer to write in rhyme for some strange reason but during my research this became especially important to me when I discovered that autistic/dyslexic children were able to read my books easier and absorb the stories better than when written in prose and with the increase in the diagnosis of autism related problems in children, this seemed so topical and relevant. I truly hope that they hear about my books and they find a place for them on their book shelves.

 

The Planet Sweet comprises five stories about the environment. The first covers the toxic sea: the second is about the global raging fires; the third is about unclean air while the fourth story talks about the litter that seems to be ever growing across our land. In the last story i cover the tragic loss of ice in the Arctic Circle and the effect this is having on the Arctic creatures who live there.

 

I was inspired to write this book by a close friend and I thoroughly enjoyed the research and work that went into producing it. It was an eye-opener.

 

What I’ve tried to do in this book is to encourage children to think about daily, routine things they do without thinking and how they could make small changes to them to help the planet...for instance, just turning a light off when they walk out of the room all helps to keep our planet a little safer.

 

It wasn't difficult selecting a story about the pollution in our seas as the first story. I’d heard and seen so much on television and radio about it and of course witnessed filthy beaches myself, knowing that the rubbish would eventually end up in the sea and the dangers this would pose for our sea creatures. Just because you can’t see pollution and toxic waste doesn’t mean it isn’t harmful to us on the planet and just because it’s under the sea does not mean it won’t affect us. 

 

I was inspired to write about the ‘forest fires’  when I read about the devastation in the US and Australia as fires raged across acres and acres of land -  killing animals, crops, woods, and forests and I realised it would be years before they could reclaim this land and make it useful again. Sometimes these fires are caused by carelessness. A small spark in the wrong place can have devastating consequences.

 

We all know that the air isn’t as clean as it was and a number of factors cause this - some of which we can’t do an awful lot about at the moment such as how we heat our homes in the winter. But there are things we can do and some of these are described in the book. 

 

The story about litter is because I have a personal distaste of such a practice. I think it’s a lazy, anti social habit for people to just dump their rubbish for someone else to clear up at someone else’s expense. Teaching children about what to do with their litter while they're still young will hopefully stay with them all their lives and so the practice of fly tipping will gradually stop. I can only hope so.

 

In the last story about the disappearing ice in the Arctic Circle, I write about Sarah Seal who loses her mother while she is still a pup. I’ll leave it to you to decide whether you think the polar bear who goes to rescue Sarah thinks she is a baby polar bear or whether he was just being compassionate.

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In this book I chose to design the illustrations myself and I am very pleased with the results. I hope you are too and you enjoy the stories. As importantly, I hope children can learn how easy it is to do small routine things a little differently to help the planet and keep it green, clean and sweet.

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Linda Lawrence

September 2025