Tauranga creative duo bring winning story to life

Author Aimee McNaughton and illustrator Dominique Ford teamed up to produce I Can't Imagine How That Happened. Photo / John Borren

Two Tauranga women have combined their creative talents to bring an award-winning children's story to life.

Author Aimee McNaughton and illustrator Dominique Ford teamed up to produce I Can't Imagine How That Happened and the pair's project recently hit the shelves.

Ms McNaughton claimed the 2013 Joy Cowley award with the story about Grandpa and Meg which launched the publishing deal with Scholastic New Zealand.

"It's really exciting to see it all come together after a year and a half," the Otumoetai College English teacher said.

The story followed a girl called Meg on a classic Kiwi camping trip with her Grandpa.

"Grandpa is sort of based on my pop and my dad who played a lot of tricks on me and my sister, " Ms McNaughton said.

Mrs Ford said Grandpa was a special character to both the women, having drawn inspiration from her own grandfather for the illustration.

"We're both very happy with Grandpa. We've both put special people in our lives into the character."

Mrs Ford was brought into the project by Scholastic and having never met each other, the pair collaborated via email for months. It was coincidental that both women lived in Tauranga but both agreed it was a great combination of creative minds.

"I loved [the story] straight away," Mrs Ford said. "Her writing is so wonderful. Her characters were so full of mischief and I could imagine them straight away".

Ms McNaughton agreed the women had been a good match. "It was amazing. I loved Dominique's illustrations. I wanted something really lively and colourful and without any input the first sketches that came back were exactly what I'd imagined."