A new children's book has hit the market, written by a 9-year-old boy from Chatham-Kent.
Oliver Howes' newly published book is titled "The Pug Adventure."
In his free time, he likes to write stories, and lately he's been drawing comic-style illustrations to go alongside them.
His parents, Alisha and Jordan Howes, thought this would be a good opportunity to surprise him for Christmas by bringing his story to life.
That's when they called 22-year-old family friend Izabella Purchase to help bring his drawings to life and bring a new creative look to the story. Purchase graduated from the Art and Animation program at Fanshawe College, so Howes' parents thought she would make the perfect person to redraw the original illustrations.
"They brought all the photocopies of the pages to me. I love looking at his work, though, because I used to make those little comics out of printer paper when I was his age. So I just had to relay out a lot of stuff. A lot of thumbnailing, then I sent it over to them for them to give it the okay," said Purchase.
Oliver explained that he wrote the story for fun and never really thought about becoming an author, but he thinks it's cool that he gets to share his story and love of dogs with others.
"We thought, 'wouldn't it be cool and really special for him if we could... bring it alive.' And so after we talked to Izabella, and we went through everything with her and tweaked this or that, and then we saw how beautiful the work was, and we were so impressed by it, and we thought we had to get this printed properly," added Alisha.
Purchase noted redrawing everything and making sure everything was perfect took around 80 hours. After everything was complete, they sent the book in to be printed and listed on Amazon.
On Christmas morning, Howes saw his book for the first time, with the moment being filled with "endless tears of joy."
"The Pug Adventures" currently has 7 five-star reviews on Amazon, including one from Minnesota.
***This story was written by Logan Bueckert-Charlebois. Logan is a student in the Fanshawe College journalism program, and is currently doing an internship with CKNewsToday.ca
