It’s been a minute. Well, actually it’s been four years since our last Elphie book, but who counts, right?
With the pandemic shutting down the world something opened up inside me. I guess it had to do with my schedule, which had turned into a Zoom safari.
Have you noticed how your mind wanders at zoom meetings? Or is it just me? Around the second or third time someone unmutes their mic and interrupts the speaker with a random cough I go to one of my happy places. I have a happy place for every occasion. Sometimes it’s not even a place but an image. Like the smile on my daughter’s face. This memory makes my heart expand and clench at the same time. This terrible outbreak has sealed me away from her. While I’m being quarantined at my little heaven in the north of Israel, my daughter and son in law are tucked in their tiny dorm at Portsmouth, UK.
So, I was casually missing my daughter when I remembered that manuscript hanging in my drawer for about four years. It was an Elphie story, where the little protagonist tries to wrap his head around the ‘end of the world’ concept. Next thing I know I was on another zoom meeting. This time with my beloved illustrator aka my daughter, Or.
Do you remember that fourth book I wrote back in 2016?
Yes. She said.
How about we make it happen. I asked. Hesitantly. Because I know how busy she is.
But she said yes.
Elphie Meets the End of The World was born.