Hammie Goes to School: Book One - The Adventures of Hammie

By Cathie Whitmore and Cathy McCulloch

“Hammie Goes To School” is Book One and the first in the series titled "The Adventures of Hammie" and begins with Hammie pursuing his dream of becoming a schoolboy. Having the same sweet gentle nature as Wilbur from Charlotte’s Web and the charm and innocence of Babe, Hammie is an adorable little piglet, with the persona of a real life child, in the fashion of Porky Pig, without the stutter.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: May 23, 2013
• ISBN: 9780980661750

Cathie Whitmore

My love of rhyming began at the tender age of eight, when I won a Poetry Competition at school in 1960. Over the years I dabbled in light hearted rhyming verses on greeting cards etc but never really expanded beyond this. Then in August 2006, my writing began to emerge in a way I never believed possible. Writing a children’s story had never entered my head, until I was asked by a friend’s daughter; a university student studying teaching, to write a children’s story for her to market as an assignment. Consequently, my fascination for pig ornaments, collected over many years, made a pig my obvious character choice for my very first children’s story. With a vague idea of a story plot, I began to type. Some hours later, “Hammie goes to School” was on paper. I have no idea where it came from; once I started, I just couldn’t stop. A whole new world had opened for me, as one by one the stories continued to emerge over the following eight weeks, until I had written ten stories about this adorable little piglet named Hammie. These stories became part of a series titled “The Adventures of Hammie.” In September 2006 I began my quest to find an illustrator and soon came to the realisation that writing is the easy part ... but finding an illustrator ... that’s a story in itself. “Hammie Goes to School” was my first story, but the second to be published, due to illustration problems. In November 2006 I wrote Twinkle the Christmas Star and Twinkle Meets Santa for my grandchildren, after an endless search of book stores for a Christmas story. I longed for a story that would bring to my grandchildren the same magic and wonder of Christmas I experienced as a child from reading “The Night Before Christmas.” To me, nothing came close to that wonderful story. I guess you could say it was an omen in a way, as it gave me the inspiration I needed to write my own Christmas story. At that stage, I was working with an illustrator for Hammie, but Twinkle never went any further until my chance meeting at the Yamba Library, with Cathy McCulloch, in 2007. Meeting Cathy changed Twinkle’s future forever, as Cathy, a Graphic Designer for many years, shared my passion for children’s books and together we began to bring Twinkle’s story to life with pictures. By Christmas 2008, with Hammie’s illustrations still an unfinished project, (two illustrators later) my husband Phil, sensing my disappointment at still not having a book published, suggested we self publish “Twinkle the Christmas Star,” in time for Christmas 2009. I am so grateful to Cathy McCulloch for her dedication to Twinkle and her gorgeous illustrations, finally making our dream a reality. By this time, three years after writing Hammie, the hand drawn illustrations were still a long way from completion and I had long given up hope of it ever happening, so I offered Hammie to Cathy McCulloch. Cathy took the project to a different level, creating amazing digital illustrations for “Hammie Goes to School,” which we finally published in July 2011, five years after the story was written. In June 2012 my third children’s title, Long Legs Daddy was released, with the incredible illustrations of Sarajane Hinton. My fourth title Pusshycat Tails, also illustrated by Sarajane, is being released in print version just prior to Christmas. As an author, I have enjoyed every minute of my time spent writing and hope one day to publish all of my stories, not only for my eight grandchildren, but for children everywhere to enjoy.

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