As you can imagine this book is designed for adults to read to young children. It is about a very inquisitive and young grub called Girlie and her Grub family and her journey on a blue balloon to visit Grandma and Grandpa Grub in Bali! And that’s where her adventures really start; a magic cave, getting lost, and fleeing pesky chickens.
Annette White has not only written and illustrated her Girlie Grub books – there’s 2 and more on the way – but she also designed her own font and now Girlie Grub has her own website! and, as you’ll see, merchandise! Click and take a look.
Grandpa Grub is particularly fond of silly jokes:
“Why do elephants wear striped pyjamas?”
“I don’t know, Grandpa, why do elephants wear striped pyjamas,” giggles Girlie.
“Because they don’t want to be spotted,” laughs Grandpa.
Annette and Ian White live in a village just north of Ubud, Bali. Like a lot of grandparents, the pandemic has been hard on Annette as she hasn’t seen her grand-daughter, Abi, back in Sydney, since December 2019, and now Abi has a baby brother, Will, who Grandma hasn’t even met yet. Annette, and husband Ian, have produced these sumptuous hard cover books and had them printed in Ubud. The pages are glossy, the illustrations colourful, and diverse. Older children will enjoy them too as they can read them for themselves.
I started drawing and scribbling in a small notebook a simple little tale for Abi, my 3-year-old granddaughter.
I would photograph a few pages and message them over to my son who would print them out to read to Abi. As the days and weeks went on, the story grew and grew and Billy kept running out of colour ink so said..get it printed into a book in Bali and post it over!
And that’s what happened!
Here is an animation video of the latest Girlie Grub adventure: Book 3, Girlie Grub Goes to New Zealand!
The books 1, Girlie Grub Goes to Bali and 2, Girlie Grub and the Grub Family go to Australia, are on the website now for you to browse; 3 and 4 are already in production but you can order the books direct from Annette at girliegrub@gmail.com
Michael K Freundt 