Lauren Davis & The Scoliosaurus

Hi Lauren and welcome to NE, can you introduce yourself to our readers and tell them a bit about yourself? My name is Lauren Davis and I’m a children’s book illustrator and author, I have trained to be an illustrator for over 13 years. I am from Sunny South Shields and I am a sister of 3! I have a little boy who is two, called Jesse – James.

The Scoliosaurus is not your typical children’s book, not only is it a great story, it also has a great message to teach too, but what is the Scoliosaurus? So, my first ever published book the Scoliosaurus, is about a T – rex who develops the condition scoliosis! Something which I have personally lived with for a very long time. It isn’t a very nice condition in which can deteriorate over time without the correct treatment. It is a curvature of the spine which can affect a lot of your body and majoritively a lot of people do need surgery to correct it. It shows in the book, in the sweetest way possible, how sonny the scoliosaurus manages with his condition with the help of his family and friends.

Are you a big Dinosaur fan, or was it more the fit of the character you created was better suited as a Dinosaur than any other animal? I am a massive dinosaur fan! Remember the land before time? I was obsessed with the films and would sit and draw the characters for hours. I love the notion of how dinosaurs would of looked like and behaved even though no one has ever really seen a real life dinosaur! I think everyone at a certain age goes through a stage of being obsessed with dinosaurs, I thought a lot of kids would relate to the dinosaurs in a fun way and what better dinosaur then to use but a T-Rex! Also, my two-yearold is absolutely obsessed with dinosaurs, that’s what he lives and breathes! A little like his mamma at an early age!

about? I realised that there was a cool new place opening in my hometown, one which like no other (all about dinosaurs) and I noticed on the owners Facebook page he mentioned how he would like some local talent who create dinosaur content alike to get in touch! So immediately on seeing the post I gave him a message and then it went from there!

Not everyone will have heard of Scoliosis, can you explain what it is and how it has affected you? Scoliosis is one of the main words I use and have heard a million times in my life, scoliosis, like mentioned above is a curvature of the spine. It can crush your heart and lungs if left untreated and just make your life absolute hell if there is no intervention. I have had six surgeries in total, Number one my main surgery to ‘straighten’ me out. My second one was there was a screw that had come loose so they had to go in and tighten it up, number three was a revision so they had to go back in there and fix a few rods and screws. Number four a screw had snapped inside my back so they had to open me back up and sort that out! Number five was a total revision of the whole spine metal work, I developed ‘flat back syndrome’ from being too straight from the previous surgeries and was having horrendous sciatica. So, what the surgeons had to do was, bend and snap me from the other way to make a forward bend (not a sideways one which is what scoliosis is) (so like a natural curve) revise all the metal work and fix me into the natural curve position. Last but not least was number six, which wasn’t supposed to happen, but when I woke up from my surgery number five, they told me because they had bent me into a natural curve, they had too much space between the vertebras’, so my number six surgery had to be six weeks after id healed from number five and they had to make a ‘cage’ basically, a fake vertebra they put in through the stomach (bearing in mind id had every other surgery through the

front!) and then there was the correct amount of filling for the curve, i remember first starting walking after number five and feeling like there was space missing. So, I needed that fixture put in there to make sure the whole thing didn’t snap! I could literally write an ‘adult’ book about the recovery, the pain, the self - esteem issues that come with it as I’ve dealt with it for more than half of my life now, I’ve had to learn to walk again, some of the surgeries have been more than 10 hours long and before every surgery your made to sign a form to say that your happy to go ahead even at risk of paralysis or death! However so far, I’ve steered away from them two outcomes every time!

Your book is a great way to teach children from a young age about how everybody is different in their own way, was that always the plan with your book or did the story just come to you as you were doing it? The reasoning behind my book was, when I was doing my master’s degree dissertation, I realised there wasn’t a lot of children’s books out there that had inclusion of disabilities. Yes, there was a few and some are very educational, however there was nothing from what I had seen doing my research that were fun or playful, really getting the child engaged. When I was a young age, I didn’t have a clue what scoliosis was and if I had of known what it was or had a book shown to me like that to explain it in a fun way, I would have dealt with it a lot better!

What has the response been like? The response to my book has been absolutely amazing, I did actually release it last year, but due to covid no one was doing any book events so I couldn’t really go in the public eye with it and tell people about it. However, it is available on amazon so people could just buy it online, I’ve had sales in China, Germany, America, Dublin

and all over the UK! I’ve had parents messaging me thanking me for the book explaining how scoliosis and being different isn’t necessarily a bad thing! It just makes you unique!

Not only did you write it, but you also illustrated it as well, did you prefer doing both rather than having someone else bring your book to life? I illustrated and wrote it myself, yes! I absolutely loved doing both. Reason being is that when I wrote it, I had already imagined what the characters would look like and I know the style of art I work with and I could see it all coming together whilst writing it! If anyone is familiar with ‘Dinosaur train’ the series on Netflix, that is where in which I got a lot of my inspiration from too! My son could watch that show every day!

Have you always wanted to be a writer and illustrator? Truthfully, I have not always wanted to be a writer, I didn’t think I had it in me! I’m also dyslexic and I find that I tend to over explain things! My creativity though has always steered towards illustration. I love old style Disney books and animation, there is nothing better for me than seeing the thousands of hours put into a character in a film just simply walking through the woods for example, it would take so much time and effort and how it comes to life is so magical! My favourite children’s book illustrator though would have to be Quentin Blake, who illustrated the Roald dahl books. I love the scattiness and movement you can see in his illustrations! They are absolutely brilliant.

What advice would you give to anyone who would like to be a writer, illustrator, or, like yourself, both? I would simply say do not ever give up what you’re doing, I was told a lot throughout my life that doing art of any kind would get you nowhere! Which is simply not true, everything around us has art in it, buildings, clothes, fashion, advertisements, books... You name it! Some people also can be selftaught, I needed that extra push of my two degrees though to find myself and develop myself as an artist, I had some amazing lecturers and the guidance was second to none. I wouldn’t be where I am today without them.

What has been the hardest part of making your book? The hardest part of making my book was to make sure I didn’t offend! I didn’t want anyone to look at it and be offended by what I’ve tried to represent scoliosis

to be and how I’ve portrayed it in my character sonny. So far everyone’s said positive feedback though! Also, when making the book, and when I did publish it, I made a disclaimed underneath stating that there was to be no punctuation used throughout the book! I took a pretty big gamble as I knew a few people would comment on that, but the font worked so well and it wouldn’t let me use punctuation or take down the caps size! I wouldn’t have released it if I wasn’t happy with it and I did do a disclaimer! The message was supposed to be about everyone being accepted about being different and that’s okay, not about the punctuation!

And was it easy to get it published and out there? So, as one of the questions above I stated that this is my FIRST published book, I have created other books before but not put them out to the public, one of them is very personal to me and another was a Christmas gift to my nephew, I made a book called ‘The Christmas wish’ for him with my nephew and his dog Tinkerbelle (Tink, that is sadly no longer with us was great to draw alongside him and they had adventures together going to the north pole) it was pretty easy to get it published with the help of amazon! They do everything from dispatching and binding my book and it gets sold pretty much everywhere! All I did was create the book and send the PDF to them!

You have another book in the pipeline, can you give us any teasers about that, or is it a secret till it comes out? After all, we don’t want to give too much away. For the reasoning stated above, I want to make an impact with my books and I want to make none disability inclusion in children’s books, a thing of the past! So, my next book will be called ‘The rainbow snail’ about a snail that has autism! He is very fast, carefree and doesn’t do the everyday things like the rest of his 49 brothers and sisters! He is a very cool snail and is one of a kind! That is all I’m giving away for now!

When you are not busy writing or drawing what do you get up to in your free time? I have a two-year-old so I don’t get much free time to myself! However, we go on lots of adventures every day! He is my world and I love him dearly and we love getting out and about, going to museums, checking out local events and our very favourite exploring nature!

Tell us 3 random facts about yourself? 1. I have broken nearly every part of my body (my bones aren’t very good to start with) 2. I eat chocolate every single day! 3. I am obsessed with history, I LOVE anything to do with Vikings, love learning about old ruins, temples and anything to do with other cultures!

How can people follow you and keep up to date with future projects? I have a Facebook page and Instagram page, I pretty much post all of my content on my personal Facebook page however!

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