HAPILOTS!
and friends
About The Author
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
BARBARA FOWLER
Barbara was born in Dublin, Ireland and is known to her friends as “Babs”. She now lives in Bournemouth on the south coast of England, with and her (very) crazy Boxer dog “Lottie-Jay”.
She left school at 14 years of age and by 16 she had left home and was off to see the world! Her journey started with a job in catering at Chorleywood College for Blind Girls, Hertfordshire. From there Babs went into the hospitality industry – a career which took her to Switzerland to be a barmaid and DJ!
After a few years at the Local Echo newspaper in Bournemouth, Dorset, she set off for Toronto to work as a nanny looking after one little girl for a wealthy Canadian family who travelled extensively between their various homes. Babs returned to Bournemouth to get married and raise her own family.
For the next 35 years, she helped her husband David to run a motor accessories business from a number of branches and also bought a rather run-down hotel with great sea views which with time, love and money was turned around and enjoyed loyal customers season after season.
Since retiring Babs has pursued her own projects creating a range of baby products (ranking as high as 14th of Amazon top sellers in Baby Products) and appeared on television programmes including BBC’s scripted-reality series “Close To The Edge”.
Over the decades, Babs has given up her free time to help others, volunteering at St Ann’s Psychiatric Hospital and her local Tenovus Cancer Charity shop, procuring and donating a life-size “Sully” (Monsters Inc.) to Bournemouth University Arts Department and was named “Networker of the Year” at both regional and national level.
Babs was made an Honorary Member of Radio Hospital Bedside over 20 years ago, volunteering to work the maternity units and won an award for collecting requests for the broadcasts.
HapiLots is one of her “bucket list” items… bringing him and his friends to life is a dream come true.
ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR:
HUW-J MATSUMURA
Illustrator Huw-J Matsumura currently lives in Kyoto, Japan with his family, where he works as a director and producer. As a veteran of the entertainment and media industry, he was trained by some of the best at Warner Bros., Disney and by Joe Kubert (1926-2012) who is perhaps best known for his work on both DC and Marvel comics.
Huw J was also mentored by Stan Winston (1946-2008) and Ron Shelton.
The former, was a a special effects and make up effects creator who won two Emmy Awards and four Academy Awards (nominated nine times). He worked on movies such as Iron Man, Jurassic Park, Edward Scissorhands and Terminator.
The latter, Shelton, is a film director and producer working with names such as Wesley Snipes, Woody Harrelson, Lucy Liu, Kevin Costner, Rene Russo and Will Smith.
However, despite his illustrious teaching, storytelling remains Huw J’s first love… bringing smiles to children’s faces with his illustrations.
When Barbara approached Huw J, through a mutual friend, about being part of the HapiLots journey, it was an easy decision to make.
He worked with Barbara in bringing her vision of the character to life, drafting different versions until HapiLots was finally looking back at Barbara from the page rather than from inside her imagination!
