I have partnered with Dougie Coop and The Children’s Book Review to bring you a special interview with Dougie Coop, author of The Snail and the Butterfly. Be sure to check out a special giveaway at the end of the interview for your chance to win a personalized signed copy of his book and some other goodies.

The Snail and the Butterfly

Written by Dougie Coop
Illustrated by CJ the Kid
Ages 4+ | 42 Pages
Publisher: Rare Bird Books | ISBN-13: 9781644283653

Publisher’s Book Summary: Have you ever wanted to do something great? Something no one else believed you could do? Well, here is your chance to learn how. Meet a little snail who wanted to fly and an old butterfly who questioned why. Travel with the little snail as he crawls up a mushroom determined to soar from the top. But every time, the same thing makes him stop: fear. Sound familiar?

Filled with inspiration and motivation, this magical conversation between an ambitious snail and a seasoned butterfly encourages us to pursue our dreams regardless of who we are or where we come from. 

With words by award-winning author Doug Cooper aka Dougie Coop, and illustrations by acclaimed Australian artist CJ the Kid, the rhythmic verse and playful style remind us all we can achieve the impossible as long as we believe, trust, and persevere.

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INTERVIEW WITH AUTHOR DOUGIE COOP:

Tynea: The Snail and The Butterfly is your first children’s book. What inspired you to write it?

DOUGIE COOP: I’ve had the story for many years—30 this year to be exact. I was living and teaching junior high math in Ohio and dating an amazing, wonderful girl who was in medical school in St. Louis. Just madly in love and questioning the long-distance thing. To follow capricious, young love and relocate there was not a logical, rational move, and obviously as a math teacher, my left brain had quite the influence in my decision making. I had a good job in Ohio, and she was the only person I knew in St. Louis. My half-measure solution was to send out resumes, and if I got an interview and a job offer, I would decide what to do at that point. Life, as it so often does, called my bet and upped the stakes by pushing a job offer into the pot.

Debating whether to accept it or not, I fell asleep one night on the living room floor of the apartment I was living in with some friends above a laundromat. I dreamt I was lifted high in the sky to the edge of a cloud looking at the earth below, contemplating whether I could fly, really thinking through all the how, why, what, etc. At some point, I just decided to jump and find out. I remember falling, freaking out, seeing the ground get closer and closer. I didn’t wake up though. Eventually I landed with a dull thud and just rolled over, unharmed.

I woke up and knew I should accept the job and embrace the adventure. I reasoned the worst that could happen is, like the dream, I would hit with a dull thud and roll over to start again. Making sense of that dream and the conversation I had with myself, I wrote a poem that evolved over the years to several different versions of a short story with angels then birds. Even as I settled into being a novelist with my three fiction books, the idea had always stuck with me. Once I saw CJ the Kid’s snail, butterfly, and mushroom drawings in a coffee shop while living in Vegas we both frequented, everything just came together.

TYNEA: What do you hope readers take away from reading this story?

DOUGIE COOP: The core of the story is three words: Dream, Believe, Achieve. We can all do great, seemingly impossible things, regardless of who we are and where we come from if we allow ourselves to dream, have resolute belief in ourselves and others, and commit and persevere to the achievement. The more sub-conscious, mythic meaning is something I really think is missing in our modern culture. We are encouraged to dream big and that anything is possible, but we’re not really equipped for what happens when we struggle or fail in the pursuit of the dream, which will happen to us all at some point. This is one of the reasons why escapism is so rampant, and we seek out comfort, often to excess, and much to our own detriment whether it’s food, alcohol, drugs, or whatever vice.

The little snail wants to fly, is determined to fly, but gets scared, doubts itself, goes through all the questions we face in our daily lives. What am doing? Why am I doing this? Is this even possible? The easiest course when faced with these questions is to quit or hide, whether that is actual physical isolation or in other activities, healthy and unhealthy. So, the meaning here is that it’s ok to fail, to be scared, to question. Just take a pause, rest, recharge, refocus, and begin again.

TYNEA: Tell us about when you were afraid and discouraged but took a risk anyway. How did it turn out?

DOUGIE COOP: I’ve always had big dreams and hoped for great things from life, from being a pro athlete as a young boy to the happily-ever-after relationship & family to writing impactful books. All dreams begin with a vision of an idyllic ascension and ultimate culmination. Even when we have success, it is rarely the path and outcome we envisioned. If we look back at how we got to where we end up, there is always a course of fear and failure with crumbs along the way to keep us satisfied and engaged. Putting ourselves out there to achieve something we really want is so scary and painful when we fall short. These feelings are difficult to live with.

When the doubt and fear descend, we, like the little snail in the story, just want to hide and cry and yell. What I have learned over countless years of failing and hiding and crying and yelling to comfort myself is to accept and live with the fear and failure. Recognize it for what it is: the greatest teacher we will ever have.  Lean into that pain, the dejection of things not turning out how we imagined. We must not run from it or mask it with something else. Sit with the feelings and understand why things happened and what there is to learn from it and how we can get better. Once we do that, like any storm, the clouds will eventually pass, and we’ll have clear skies and a new, enhanced perspective and stronger foundation to launch again.

TYNEA: What advice would you give someone afraid to try something new?

DOUGIE COOP: Enjoy the beautiful sunrise of the experience. That initial phase of overcoming the fear and pursuing something we have dreamed of doing is so thrilling and exciting. We really need to remind ourselves to enjoy the infatuation phase and not rush through it. We get such a dopaminergic rush from new experiences. When we get a little, we want more and often so much more that we don’t appreciate what we have and rush through it. We think, well, if this is good, what lies ahead must be better.

I can say with absolute certainty that our stories never go as follows: we try and live happily ever after. There is always hardship in between, so in the beginning or at any point in the journey, don’t be in a hurry to get to the obstacles. They will come and present themselves when they are needed. Enjoy the novelty, freedom, and discovery of the new experience. Bask in the sunlight.

TYNEA: How have you been impacted by the encouragement of others?

DOUGIE COOP: I have had tremendous teachers and guides along my path. The world and the people in it are mirrors for us to see what we need to see when we need to see it. This can come in the form of the traditional positive motivation we think of with encouragement, but I view encouragement more in an absolute sense of someone moving us forward, sometimes that is with a soft, warm urging and others with a stark shove.

Some of the best encouragement I have received is someone confronting or challenging me. Sometimes we need discomfort to move forward. This can be the most powerful motivation and another core message of the story. We need to learn to trust and listen to the butterflies around us, believe in ourselves, and take the leap. It’s easy to get caught up in the solitary journey of life, believing that we are in this alone, and each need to forge our own paths. The reality is the journey is shared. We can learn from one another’s journey and, at the same time, exist to help each other. We are both seeker and guide – student and teacher – snail and butterfly.

TYNEA: You have done a lot of traveling. Do you have a favorite travel destination?

DOUGIE COOP: That’s a tough one. I love so many of them for different reasons: people I’ve met, food I ate, experiences I had, etc. Three of my favorites are Japan, Italy, and Brazil.

I love the order and simplicity of Tokyo with its underlying chaos and complexities. Really fascinating and intriguing. Appeals to both my right and left brain.

Rome, I’ve been to many times, by myself, with my mother and sister, with friends, so I have had very different experiences there but all so special. Italian food is my favorite, and I love cooking, so just eating your way through the city is a wonderful vacation on its own. But the history and architecture are so inspiring and people so welcoming, it’s like wandering in a conscious dream.

For Brazil—São Paulo & Rio, specifically—great food cities as well, the people are what made my visits there special. So strong and passionate. They love you one minute and despise you the next, but you always know where you stand. Love the lifestyle and landscape as well.

TYNEA: What is something you enjoy about seeing new places?

DOUGIE COOP: The different spaces and faces of traveling create a displacement in our mental, emotional, and physical states, opening our senses and consciousness. Something a professor of mine at Saint Louis University, Belden Lane,  said that always stuck with me: “We don’t choose sacred places; they choose us.” I have had that experience many times. Whether it was watching a sunrise over Lake Erie at Perry’s Monument on South Bass Island or walking lost in Rome and turning down an alley to be standing in between buildings over a thousand years old, that arresting feeling when we, our environment, and time are all one is so life-affirming and fulfilling. In those moments, there is no other place we want to be and nothing else we want to be doing. Just total flow state. If we go looking for that, we never find it. We must be patient and open and let it choose us. Such a gift of our human experience.