So, I don’t know where to start. It’s been such a busy time over the last few weeks. Since the summer, the Save Our World Team has been visiting schools, doing talks and printing and launching our first book.  It’s been really fun, really busy and also a bit stressful at times.  Thankfully, everything finally came together on time after some late nights and some frantic last minute trips to the printers. We are delighted to say that ‘The Eco-heroes Recycling Trip Trouble‘ launch event on 14th October went really well and the book is now on SALE!   (Visit The Eco-heroes page on our site to purchase your copies.)

It was important for us to keep the story local, the characters local and the printing local on recycled paper. Keeping everything local means that we are supporting other local businesses and doing things sustainably and ‘the UAE way’. It would have been much cheaper to print our books abroad and import them, but we wanted The Eco-heroes to represent something more than just some stories. We want our books to mean something to the children of the UAE.

We used a printer in Ajman Liberty Printing and travelled there to see the final print run coming off the giant industrial offset printers.  The printing press was in a huge warehouse building where thousands of books and leaflets were being sized, printed, cut and packaged. Leona had to make sure she was happy with the colours because the industrialised printers can print colours differently to regular digital printers. Using recycled paper also means that the saturation levels of the colours is much greater (i.e. the paint sinks into the pages much more easily and therefore, the colours change slightly).  It was all very interesting for me as I had never been through any process like this before. It was quite exciting to see all the additional work which goes on behind the printing scenes and to finally see The Eco-heroes become a reality.

The printing process was one of the best parts of doing the book for me as it was so new and real. You could see the characters and the final end product coming to life. Watch this! (Is it just us who find this awesome?)

Editing the stories after writing is a necessary process in writing any story or book but it is definitely less fun than the printing stage because depending on who is doing the proof reading or pilot reading, parts of the story need to be cut or changed slightly. Then there is the grammar which also needs a bit of help (I got my help from some Year 4 and 5 children! It has been a while since I’ve been at school!). So I can definitely say that the actual printing of the books was a really fascinating part of printing and publishing a book.

After finally approving the colours and prints and a few trips backwards and forwards to Ajman (mostly for Leona), the book was finished. All we needed to do was wait for all the boxes to arrive.

If you want to ask us any questions about writing stories, illustrating or printing please get in touch with us as we’d love to hear from you.

All the very best for now and thanks for reading,