“I have a daughter who’s about to turn 8,” says Wesley Bennett. “I like a lot of the music, movies, and TV shows she watches or listens to, and I’m never thinking that I could do better than that. But, there are times when she’s reading a children’s book where I think I could come up with something better.”
Wesley Bennett is a local author who has written The Kitty of Knoxville, a children’s book revolving around Knoxville. Bennett, although working in the tax department at 21st Mortgage, has a degree in communications.
With Knoxville’s lack of its own children’s book, Bennett’s audience is already built-in.
“The main breakthrough was when we went to a wedding in Memphis and they had a book called Goodnight Memphis, says Bennett. “It’s the type of book where they just say goodnight to all the city landmarks. Knoxville didn’t really have a book like that. There are mass produced books like Goodnight Tennessee, but they’re pretty generic.”
Along with authors like Dr. Seuss, Bennett’s daughter was a huge inspiration for the book.
“My daughter has a long lanky cat stuffed animal and I always called it Kitty of Knoxville,” says Bennett. “I thought, ‘What if we just made this the main character?’ Then, you’re doing a little bit more than just saying goodnight to all the locations.”
With Bennett writing the story, what he needed next was an artist to bring the story to life. London-based illustrator Finn Dean became an unexpected yet perfect match for the story.
Dean studied design and illustration and got his start working in TV and film in Soho in London. Dean had a second coming of his illustration career and won the House of Illustration and Folio Book Prize in 2012 for illustrating Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.
Dean says that his switch to doing children’s illustrations was an overnight decision.
“I didn’t enjoy my line of work and the joy had kind of gone from the work a bit,” he says. “I was working part-time at a bookshop in Covent Garden. I looked in the children’s section and was like ‘Hang on, children’s books have changed.’ I was really taken aback by how good they were.”
Benji Davies and John Classen are two of Dean’s biggest influencers for his work in the book and in general.
“My manager sent me a manuscript and it sounded interesting,” says Dean about connecting with Bennett and the book. “Living in England, I didn’t know much about Knoxville, but I thought ‘Yeah, that sounds intriguing. Let’s go for this.’”
Bennett and Dean both express that they want kids to enjoy reading the book and want to reread again and again. Despite having a main character, Knoxville is truly the focal point of the story.
“If [the reader] is not from Knoxville, I hope they want to visit after reading,” says Dean.
“Knoxville is a great place to live and we have a lot of interesting things,” says Bennett. “I’ve looked at other cities to see if we could do this, and, ya know, most cities don’t have things like the World’s Fair and the Sunsphere. They don’t have Neyland Stadium. It’s a special place.”
Learn more at www.kittyofknoxville.com. You can also find the book locally!
This post was originally published on here
