Stacy Johnston never imagined she would be a children’s author.
She’s spent years hosting storytime for kids at the Quyon library, so is well familiar with the common narrative arcs, themes and cadence of children’s books – Robert Munsch’s books have always been a favourite. But her time has otherwise been dedicated to her job as an HR coordinator in Ottawa, working at Gavans part-time, volunteering wherever she was needed, and raising her kids.
But this fall, when she was invited to host a storytime at the Shawville library, instead of choosing one of her classics to read to the kids, she and her daughter Maddy Belland decided to come up with their own story.
Inspired by their family dogs Beau and Boomer, Johnston came up with an adventure tale that saw the two pups set out on the town of Quyon for a day of shenanigans.
They take a ride on the ferry, they say hello to some local kids playing soccer on the fairgrounds, they even visit Quyon’s 150th Community Day celebrations, and they stop by Gavan’s for some karaoke.
“The owner of Gavans has this cranky cat that lives upstairs but doesn’t come downstairs. We just always hear about Fred,” Johnston said, giving some background on the cat that appears in the book’s Gavan’s scene.
Johnston said the story came easily, but that bringing it to life with images was more challenging. She tasked Belland with the job of illustrating the book, which Belland did using artificial intelligence (AI).
She said she first started playing around with the technology in Grade 12 at Renfrew Collegiate Institute, where she had to use ChatGPT to make cartoon-like characters for a school project. This gave her enough confidence with the technology to use it to illustrate her mom’s story.
“You have to be super specific [with the prompts], and if you’re not, it will do something completely different, or if you keep editing the same photo it will make it look completely fake,” Belland said.
It took some time for them to perfect the images they wanted to include. The chatbot would sometimes carry over commands from one image into another – an exploding ketchup packet from one scene appeared in another where it wasn’t meant to be. But they slowly got the hang of it.
“Yes, AI was used but what people don’t know is that it’s quite a feat to use AI to create pictures,” Johnston said. “It actually takes longer to create the pictures you want than writing the actual story.”
Johnston printed off the first copy of the book to read at the Shawville library, and it was a hit.
Pretty soon, she had a list of people who wanted their own copy. She found a printer in Toronto, placed her order for 50 copies, and hoped they would arrive in time for Christmas. But before the order had even arrived, she had sold out, and had a growing waitlist for a second batch. So she ordered more, and the demand has kept up.
On Saturday, Johnston read the book to a small crowd at the Quyon library. Before she had opened the cover, a keen customer stopped by with hopes Johnston had books on hand to sell, and he was in luck. As she was signing his copy, he even double checked whether she would have more for sale around next Christmas time.
“I’ll have these ones and then I’ll have my sequel,” Johnston assured.
The community has responded so favourably to her first book, with many friends and neighbours making requests that their pets be featured, that she is already working on a second.
“So for the next one, literally I’ve got my friends cats in it, friends dogs in it, because now [the dogs] are meeting up with people. They come to the library, and they come to storytime, and then they go to the Legion and they meet up with veteran cats over there.”
Those interested in purchasing a book can email Johnston at stacyjohnston30@hotmail.
