Hare & Ruru, Laura Shallcrass Photo: Laura Shallcrass
Laura Shallcrass is an illustrator and graphic designer based just outside of Queenstown, now she can add published author to her list of achievements, with a beautifully illustrated story book called 'Hare and Ruru', that Laura describes as a 'mindfulness book for children'.
'It addresses anxiety in a way that children can digest and understand and without being too scary, because I think, when you when you talk about anxiety, that's quite a stressful topic for kids."
"So I did a few things in the book to try and keep it really nice and digestible, I guess, to help the kids through these kind of tough things. It's a story of a hare who suffers from anxiety tension, it could be noises in hare's head and so hare goes on a journey to try and find a solution."
"The things that that worked for hare are talking to someone, focusing on breathing and connecting with nature so there's a kind of mindfulness thing coming through."
Being an illustrator a children's book is always a goal, I kind of had it turning over in my mind for a long time and then when I had my own kids, my first was born shortly after the first Christchurch earthquake. And I was reading a lot about anxiety levels and children and how in New Zealand, I don't know if people were more aware with so many stressful things going on. And I think that definitely continued, with covid and everything that's going on in the world at the moment. I think children are really affected by a lot of that and so I was quite conscious that I wanted to write a book that was beautiful and interesting, but also that addressed some bigger things. So that's why I chose that. I've had an anxiety disorder myself since I was a child and it's something quite close to my heart and something that I thought that I had something to say on."
You can find her and her beautiful designs online here: https://www.laurashallcrass.co.nz/
And follow her on Facebook and Instagram.
Hare & Ruru, Laura Shallcrass Photo: Laura Shallcrass
Hare & Ruru, Laura Shallcrass Photo: Laura Shallcrass
