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FACEBOOK<\/a><\/p>\n Hailed as Dr. Seuss meets Disney, new children\u2019s picture book Cheetah the Cheater is quickly becoming a household favourite for kids all over the country – but it started its life as a way for author Dr Jarrad B. Elson to prove a point \u2013 that being a writer of picture books is easy!<\/p>\n Dr Elson, 31, a dentist from South Australia, quickly learnt that this was far from the truth and that creating a quality children\u2019s book takes an immense amount of hard work and skill.<\/p>\n Cheetah the Cheater is a fun and enchanting rhyming story about the animals of the jungle, who all like to play games together, especially cards. However, they all get fed up when it\u2019s always the same one who keeps winning \u2013 Cheetah the Cheater.<\/p>\n After sending sloth to Cheetah\u2019s den to find out his secret, they discover tha t he invents sneaky gadgets that help him cheat. Needless to say, the animals are upset at his sly tactics, and hatch a plan to teach him a lesson that cheating can backfire.<\/p>\n Dr Elson says that what started out as a point to prove soon became a long labour of love.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019d watched a news story about a politician who had become \u2018a published author\u2019 because he had written a children\u2019s book. I scoffed, thinking that you can\u2019t consider yourself a \u2018published author\u2019 by just writing a children\u2019s story \u2013 it\u2019s the illustrator that does all the hard work! How hard could it be? So I decided to find out.\u201d Explains Dr Elson.<\/p>\n Seeing a gap in the market, Dr Elson set about to create a children\u2019s book that would be loved both by kids and adults and bring back some of the nostalgia of the books of his own childhood.<\/p>\n \u201cAs part of my research, I spoke to parents about c h ildren\u2019s books and the common story I heard was that parents often found modern children\u2019s books on the bland and uninspiring side, and often lacking in a real story. They longed to find new books that were immersive to read and that would bring back the magic of bedtime stories.<\/p>\n \u201cAlthough the storyline for Cheetah the Cheater came to me quite quickly the rest was so much harder than I anticipated. I was writing it in rhythm and rhyme and it took a huge amount of refining to get it right. My first attempts were woeful. It took months and months of obsessive writing to get it just perfect,\u201d explains Dr Elson.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s funny with children\u2019s stories. It takes a huge amount of effort to make them appear effortless.\u201d<\/p>\n Dr Elson now had a manuscript, but he soon learnt that publishing houses aren\u2019t even interested in looking at picture book manuscripts unless you are already well known. Not one to back down, he took matters in his own hands. He sought out experts to bring the book to life \u2013 Dr Virginia Lowe to refine his manuscript, Melbourne based book designers, Bruno Herfst and Sheryl Cole, to assist with the design, and a very talented illustrator from Russia, Erika Tcogoeva \u2013 and self-published.<\/p>\n \u201cCheetah the Cheater breaks the rules of picture books today.<\/p>\n \u201cFirstly, There are very few modern day children\u2019s books that actually rhyme sadly it\u2019s no longer profitable as the target market would just be limited to English speakers.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd it\u2019s the story that also sets the book apart. It\u2019s an actual, real story, with a beginning, middle and an end. Again, very few picture books do that today \u2013 most picture books these days seem to just have paragraphs that talk about a theme or idea. I wanted to bring back the \u2018story\u2019 into Cheetah the Cheater. And you know what? Kids, even as young as four or five, love the story. The illustrations are also just unbelievable – magical, you could say – and really complement the story.<\/p>\n \u201cFinally, the book is really special because it has been developed independently with much love. It\u2019s not a \u2018manufactured\u2019 book. It\u2019s a result of an unwavering quest to create a quality children book \u2013 painstakingly created from scratch through sheer persistence, hours upon hours of writing and not taking no for an answer! And I like to think it really shows,\u201d concludes Dr Elson.<\/p>\n The book has already been highly praised:<\/p>\n A bouncy, up-beat rhyming tale… The rhythm is read aloud regular and the illustrations are full of both character and entertaining touches. Katharine England, The Adelaide Advertiser<\/p>\n You can definitely tell that no stone was left unturned to create a world-class book. Everything about it – the story, writing, artwork, b o ok design, printing – is amazing. This is a book you’ll want to keep forever. Emma, Librarian<\/p>\n This is a delightful children’s picture book. The rhyming text is charming and entertaining. The pictures are expressive, colourful and full of life. The humour will appeal to children but also to adults. There is even a message and moral to the story. Perhaps we will see a whole series of our new jungle friends with lessons to learn? Heidi, Mum<\/p>\n Reading \u2018Cheetah the Cheater\u2019 brought back so many wonderful memories of reading picture books when I was young. It\u2019s been a very long time since a book has done that for me. Jan, Grandmother of 5<\/p>\n About the Author<\/strong><\/p>\n Dr Jarrad B. Elson spends most of his time looking after people\u2019s teeth. In his spare time when he\u2019s not dreaming up stories about jungles and animals, he likes to spend time with his girlfriend Tanyasha, take his dog running, go swimming, dabble in piano p laying and learn how to do things on YouTube. He loved writing from an early age and has always thought that he\u2019d perhaps write a book someday. Dr Elson lives in Port Lincoln where he has earned the reputation of being the nicest dentist in town! This is Dr Elson’s debut book.<\/p>\n Available at\u00a0https:\/\/cheetahthecheater.com\/<\/a> and on Amazon<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Cheetah the Cheater: a new children\u2019s book hailed as Dr. Seuss meets Disney! www.cheetahthecheater.com FACEBOOK Hailed as Dr. Seuss meets Disney, new children\u2019s picture book Cheetah the Cheater is quickly becoming a household favourite for kids all over the country – but it started its life as a way for author Dr Jarrad B. Elson […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":524473,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-524472","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-clubs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/524472","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=524472"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/524472\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":524477,"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/524472\/revisions\/524477"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/524473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=524472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=524472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=524472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/39454268_1601409486635622_8955545989469437952_n.jpg\")
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