Once upon a time…

A sleeping Doughnut

Doughnut, the inspiration for my bedtime story

These mummy bloggers are an enterprising lot – when they’re not re-tweeting the Leveson inquiry or quizzing Nigella Lawson about her Christmas plans they’re raising money for charity. Well, Nataliya Delleva is, and congratulations to her for a wizard wheeze she has come up with to raise money for Save the Children. Nataliya who is the mother of four year old girl and blogs as greenkiddie.co.uk invited 17 mummy bloggers (yours truly among them) to write a bedtime story for children. The brief was simple – it must start with the words “Once Upon a Time” and it must be upbeat and give hope to children whose lives were in turmoil that things can and do get better. The idea, she says, was to harness the creative energy of the mummy bloggers out there to create something beautiful which would make a great Christmas present for their own and other children, and would also help Save the Children’s work all over the world. “Let’s collaborate in an effort to change the story of those kids, born with the challenge to survive, and help them write together a better story of their life, one that will make them smile,” she said. So Katy and I got together to write the story of Doughnut, the Save the Children sniffer dog, and Sofia, the little girl he discovers on a rubbish dump. (I didn’t say it was Christmassy – just uplifting…)The book does look absolutely lovely (you can see a preview of part of it online at http://blog.greenkiddie.co.uk/once-upon-a-time/) and costs £15.99 in paperback and £24.99 for in hardback and the more she sells the more money is donated to Save the Children. Have a look and let me know what you think and drop me a line at [email protected]