It could be said Diane Johnson’s new book, The BAD MANOR GIRLS Save Picturia, was about 50 years in the making.
Released in June, the picture book follows five girls who move into Bad Manor, located in Picturia where the dreaded Ig has unleashed THE HAZE upon its unsuspecting citizens. The girls use their special powers to help people better connect with the world around them and drive back THE HAZE.
“I actually wrote this story back in the early 1970s,” said the Salmon Arm author. “Somehow I retained it all those years, thanks partly to my mom who typed it out for me back in the day. It was originally hand-written.”
Johnson said the book, her first, is set in the Oak Bay home she shared while acquiring her BA Honours in psychology at the University of Victoria.
“I was living in a 6-bedroom character house in Oak Bay with four other students, and that’s the setting for the book,” said Johnson. “That’s Bad Manor – we called it that then. So it was the experience of living in that house in the idyllic municipality of Oak Bay… a growing awareness of Eastern spirituality and the growing environmental movement was the original inspiration.”
Those sources of inspiration certainly shaped the book’s antagonist, Ig, the Evil One, though Johnson noted the handle could now be seen as reflection of the pervasive haze that is social media.
“At the time that was actually short for ignorance because, in Buddhist terms, ignorance is unknowing, making mistakes not intentionally, just unknowing of what the right path is,” explained Johnson. “Fast forward, when I first approached the publisher, they were going well, ‘Ig is short for Instagram’. That sort of tied in too because people are distracted by their phones.”
While The BAD MANOR GIRLS is suitable for kids transitioning from picture to chapter books, Johnson explained the allegorical story also offers a message for “grownups.”
“It’s almost like a picture book for adults,” said Johnson. “It has a surface story which we’re hoping kids will enjoy, and then there’s actually more depth to it for people that are into present-moment awareness and that kind of mindfulness aspect of things. And of course saving the planet – it has a little bit of green in there too. First you have to be aware and then you have to take action.”
Johnson said having the book published was “kind of a bucket list item,” a sometimes gruelling process that took about two-and-a-half years to complete. But she is thrilled with the end result, that includes artwork by her daughter-in-law (and Salmon Arm Secondary grad) Lauren Kate Johnson, award-winning artist Catherine Anne Tower (grand-niece of Emily Carr) and FriesenPress illustrators Patricia and Robin DeWitt. Johnson said she connected with Tower after reading about a Kelowna author who’d recently published a story they’d written decades prior.
“I just reached out to her to say I was doing the same thing and she said ‘oh, maybe my illustrator would be interested in helping you with your book, and that was the grand-niece of Emily Carr,” said Johnson. “So I reached out to her, she was living in Mexico and she said she’d love to. I was really pleased to have sort of a modern take on the characters which were loosely based on the students who lived in the house way back when.”
The BAD MANOR GIRLS Save Picturia is available in Salmon Arm at Bookingham Palace, in the Mall at Piccadilly, where Johnson will be doing a book signing from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 16. The book is also available through FriesenPress, Amazon, Indigo, Barnes and Noble and bookshop.org. Ebook versions can be purchased through FriesenPress, Amazon, Apple and Google Play.
For more information, visit badmanorgirls.com.
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