{"id":22474,"date":"2022-04-11T09:00:55","date_gmt":"2022-04-11T16:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=22474"},"modified":"2022-04-11T09:19:11","modified_gmt":"2022-04-11T16:19:11","slug":"camosun-alumnus-new-book-tells-endearing-story-about-love-loss-and-squirrels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2022\/04\/11\/camosun-alumnus-new-book-tells-endearing-story-about-love-loss-and-squirrels\/","title":{"rendered":"Camosun alumnus\u2019 new book tells endearing story about love, loss, and squirrels"},"content":{"rendered":"

Local children\u2019s book author Troy Wilson has just launched his ninth published work, Hat Cat<\/i>, a story about an old man who loves his cat and enjoys feeding squirrels in a creative way. The book also features Eve Coy\u2019s beautiful hand-painted watercolour illustrations. Wilson, a Y2K graduate of Camosun College\u2019s Applied Communications Program, says this new book is inspired in part by his grandfather.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s no way that I could capture anywhere close to all of the person in a picture book, but he definitely did feed the squirrels out of his hat like the man in the book did, and he was definitely a very gentle, kind, and welcoming soul,\u201d says Wilson. \u201cI was lucky enough to grow up in the same town, so I saw him a lot. I know a lot of people don\u2019t have that luxury growing up, but it was great.\u201d<\/p>\n

Years later, as an adult, Wilson realized that he and his grandfather shared something unexpected: the love of spinning yarns.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Camosun College alumnus Troy Wilson just released his most recent book (photo provided).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cIt strikes me that something we had in common, that I didn\u2019t realize at the time, is we\u2019re both storytellers, it\u2019s just that we did it in different ways,\u201d says Wilson. \u201cHe was always a spoken-word storyteller: he would tell stories about the past and really bring it to life, whereas I\u2019m more of a written-word storyteller.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wilson says that while he tried his hand at many kinds of writing over his career, picture books resonated with him the most, and a large part of that is the collaborative aspect of creating them.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you get to write something that is as beautifully illustrated as these are and can be enjoyed by everybody from four years old to 104 years old, to me it\u2019s almost like, what\u2019s not to love about it?\u201d says Wilson. \u201cAnd to be able to collaborate with such talented artists, I think that\u2019s a big part of it for me, honestly. That gives something to me that\u2019s more interesting than if it just ended up being my words on the page alone. It makes it a more rewarding experience.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hat Cat<\/i> is different from Wilson\u2019s prior work in that it gently deals with the idea of loss. Wilson says that being able to present difficult concepts to children in a softer way is valuable.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s really hard to [write about tough topics] without being too heavy-handed or too depressing,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s difficult to do but I don\u2019t think it should be shied away from. You can shape those concepts in such a way that can equip [kids] to deal with those things in a way that life itself doesn\u2019t always. I think stories sometimes can offer ways to deal with or discuss it that are maybe a step removed from the actual thing, but can kind of help to work through it.\u201d<\/p>\n

An unexpected effect of Hat Cat<\/i> is that it has allowed Wilson to share another moment with his grandfather, many years after their final goodbye.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy grandfather was always taking me places I otherwise never would have gone, some fishing hole he knew about that I had no idea about, or some past event that he would tell of that I would be transported to,\u201d says Wilson. \u201cWith this book, with this story, long after his passing, he has done that again. It\u2019s really actually sharing another moment with him at this point, which I wasn\u2019t expecting at all. So many years after his passing, it\u2019s kind of a delightful surprise that there\u2019s still new connections to be made and new places to go.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Local children\u2019s book author Troy Wilson has just launched his ninth published work, Hat Cat, a story about an old man who loves his cat and enjoys feeding squirrels in a creative way. The book also features Eve Coy\u2019s beautiful hand-painted watercolour illustrations. Wilson, a Y2K graduate of Camosun College\u2019s Applied Communications Program, says this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":22475,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,267],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22474","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-campus","category-april-6-2022"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22474","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22474"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22474\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22476,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22474\/revisions\/22476"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22475"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}