Learning to tie a bow is very difficult for some people but Cleo remembers how to do it from a cute story she once heard. It is about a little rabbit with very long ears and a very helpful fox who shows her what to do to keep them clean. This is the story of how Cleo learns to tie a “bunny ear” bow.
“Teach a child a useful skill. Build confidence and self-esteem that lasts a lifetime.” This fun picture book is intended to be a family bonding parent-child activity. It’s a great way to learn to tie shoe laces.
It is also a great way to introduce your child to the world of bows and get them interested in making bows themselves. You can start by teaching your child how to tie his or her own shoes. This book seems to be aimed more at girls than boys with all the pink. However, Sybina Durant has also written two books on tying a tie which would certainly appeal more to boys, ‘Ned Knows How To Knot a NeckTie’ and ‘Learn To Tie a Tie With The Rabbit and the Fox.’
I highly recommend ‘Cleo Can Tie a Bow’ give it 5 stars.
Hi Sybrina, thanks so much for agreeing to
this interview.
Betty: Please tell us something about
‘Cleo Can Tie a Bow’ that is not in the description.
Sybrina: Thanks for your interest, Betty.
This book inspired an online bow-themed store called the Girls Love Bows Gift
Shop. While researching inspiration
ideas for the book’s illustrator, Pumudi Gardiyawasam, I realized that there
are millions of things that are decorated or embellished with bows. Since I am
an Amazon associate, I decided to create a store on my blog that features
hundreds of gifts for all of those bow crazy girls out there. My
blog Link I now include that gift shop as part
of my book marketing and promotions process.
Betty: ‘Cleo Can Tie a Bow’ is part of
your ‘Rabbit and Fox’ series. How does
it tie in with the series?
Sybrina: The “Learn To Tie With The Rabbit
and Fox” series was born out of my desire to help parents teach their children
some simple manual dexterity skills. Learning the intricate moves of tying a
neck tie or a bow can seem really tricky. But when you have a story to refer
to, it becomes fun and easy to remember the steps. The first book was “Learn To
Tie A Tie With The Rabbit and The Fox”.
It was very simple and didn’t contain any back ground information about
the boy character. It also has an accompanying song containing lyrics with the
exact steps it takes to tie a neck tie. You can see the video on YouTube.
After publishing that book, I decided I wanted to make the boy more interesting
to readers so I wrote “Ned Knows How To Tie A Neck Tie”. Ned knows all kinds of knots including
fishing knots, rescue knots and other fun knots, like the monkey’s paw. He also
loves to wear neck ties because he thinks they make him look good. After Ned’s
book was published, I wrote one for girls titled “Nellie Knows How To Knot A
Neck Scarf”. Nellie loves dressing up. I
kind of based her character on the idea of the Fancy Nancy books. Nellie has a
massive collection of frilly dresses, fun hats and neck scarves. She’s familiar
with lots of different ways to knot a neck scarf but her favourite is the
“necktie knot”. From the beginning, I
wanted to write a “how to tie a bow” book but I just couldn’t think of a way to
make it work the same way the others did.
I was stuck on the idea of a fox chasing a rabbit around to tie the
knot. After nearly 30 years, Cleo’s story finally made itself known to me. Her
story includes a friendly fox that helps a little bunny with its extra-long ear
problem. I envision this fox as the forest beautician.
Betty: Where do you get the names for your
characters? Are any of your characters based on real-life friends or
acquaintances?
Sybrina: Cleo is the only named character
in the story…but there’s a little secret that some people might like to know
about the snail. When writing a character introduction for him recently, I
revealed that his name is Clarence. You can read it here
if you’d like. I decided on his name
because it just seemed to compliment the name Cleo. Cleo’s name was much more difficult for me to
settle on. I wanted something that would easily flow with “Can Tie A Bow”. I came up with all kinds of names that
started with T, B and C before I finally thought of Cleo. Now, I can’t conceive of a better name for
her.
Betty: What kind of messages do you try to
instill in your children’s books?
Sybrina: My main message is “You can do
it!” I want children to realize that if they put their mind to something and
practice enough times, they will achieve great things. I also want to encourage
parents to take the time to help their children overcome obstacles. When parents and their children engage in
projects together, the final outcome is likely to be much more positive than if
the child is left to figure out things on their own. Another thing is that
children learn most of what is right or wrong in society from interacting with
their parents. That is why I placed a message in the Dear Reader section of the
book, for parents to read to their child, about how important it is to never attempt
to tie a live bunny’s ears into a bow. It’s a way to begin some very important
dialogs about the differences between cartoon fantasies and reality.
Betty: Tell us about your cover.
Sybrina: It a collaboration with illustrator,
Pumudi Gardiyawasam? Also, what was it
like working with Pumudi Gardiyawasam? Cleo’s story begins in her bedroom but I
wanted readers to get a clue from the cover that the book was going to take
them on an adventure. We worked very closely on every aspect of each picture
and after the illustrations for the rest of the book were mostly finished, I
expressed my idea for the cover to Pumudi. She took off with it. I love how it turned out. She is a wonderful
person to interact with on a children’s picture book project. I thought her
technical abilities with the knot tying illustrations were pretty impressive,
too. This was actually Pumudi’s first
full picture book and I really hope that she gets a lot more illustration work
as more people are introduced to her creative abilities. Her instagram profile
is i_doodling.
Betty: What draws you to the children’s
book, educational genre?
Sybrina: There was a time, when I was a
very young girl, that I thought I’d like to be a teacher some day. Even though
I work at an engineering firm and not at a school, I find myself in the
teaching mode all of the time. I like helping people and showing them better
ways to accomplish tasks. If my “Learn
To Tie With The Rabbit and The Fox” series of books help kids (or even adults)
overcome some of their frustrations and give them the desire to keep trying to
become accomplished at simple knot tying, then one of my missions in life will
be happily accomplished.
Betty: What writers have you drawn
inspiration from? What other inspirations do you draw from?
Sybrina: My inspirations for the “Learn To Tie With The Rabbit and The Fox”
series of books were drawn from the need to come up with a simple solution to
the problem of teaching the skills of tying a neck tie knot or a bow knot. The
illustrations in this book show Cleo tying a bow around her waist, and the fox
tying a bow above the rabbit’s head. I wanted to show, through the different situations,
that this simple method can be used for any bow use, including shoe laces.
Surprisingly, there were really no books available to me for inspiration of
this kind 30 years ago, when I first thought of the idea.
Betty: What are you currently working on?
Sybrina: I have a few other book ideas for
the future but I don’t believe there will be any more “Learn To Tie With The
Rabbit and The Fox” books now that I’ve finally published “Cleo Can Tie A Bow”.
However, I will be spending lots of time and energy on promoting and marketing
the books that I’ve already published.
In addition to the “Rabbit and Fox” books, I’m also the author of “The
Blue Unicorn – Journey To Osm” series of books. You can find the online store
inspired by those fantasy stories on my blog as well. Sybrina’s Unicorn Book
Store contains at least 1000 unicorn books written by many different
authors. There are hundreds of
unicorn-themed gifts there, too. The books and gift selections are categorized
by Little Kid, Middle Kid and Teen. If you are a unicorn aficionado, come take
a look. Link
‘Learn To Tie With The Rabbit and The Fox’ won the Pinnacle Book Achievement Award and the Indie Bragg Award.
Website: https://sybrinapublishing.wordpress.com/cleo-can-tie-a-bow-book/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NedandNellieKnowKnots
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Sybrina_spt
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/sybrinad/bows-bows-girls-love-bows/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sybrinapublishing/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLybqF-7D4W3EQfLRqnDC1AQBM7cQadooN
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