Saying Goodbye to the Original Yabbit the Rabbit Story
Archiving the original story for Yabbit the Rabbit was one of the hardest moments to accept.
When I sat at my mother’s bedside, I was able to read to her the version I had completed in September 2024, and for that reason, I was deeply attached to it. That story carried so much love, urgency, and memory that letting it go felt almost impossible.
The Characters We Created Together
That version of the story included characters that my illustrator, Rod, and I developed together. He created the earliest sketches of Yabbit the Rabbit and the mother character, who was inspired by my own mom.
🎥 You can watch the original character sketches and hear more about this version of the story in my latest YouTube video:
The First Yabbit: Human Traits and Emotion
In that version, Yabbit was anthropomorphic, meaning he had humanlike features, emotions, and gestures. It worked perfectly for the story I had written at the time. The tone, emotion, and structure aligned beautifully with that portrayal.
But when I began researching and writing the new story, I made an intentional creative choice: to let the characters remain in their true animal forms.
This meant embracing their natural instincts, traits, and physical limitations, allowing the illustrations to carry much of the emotion and the language to stay lyrical and rhythmic, rather than overly descriptive.
Restructuring and Restarting
That change required a lot of rethinking. I had to restructure my illustrator agreement with Rod and restart the illustration process from scratch.
It wasn’t just a logistical shift, it was an emotional one. The first version represented closure; the new one represents continuation.
Seeing Time from a New Perspective
I often reference time in my writing, because time defined this entire journey. Before my mother’s death, I felt an enormous pressure to finish quickly so she would know I had brought her idea to life.
Taking a step back from that urgency was incredibly difficult. When I finally gave myself permission to view everything from a 30,000-foot perspective, I realized something important:
Instead of writing a children’s book that could become legendary, I had written a goodbye letter to my mother.
That realization broke my heart, but it also freed me.
The Courage to Start Again
Once I understood that truth, I was finally at peace with starting over. The new version of Yabbit the Rabbit, and eventually The Rabbit in the Moon, isn’t just about memory; it’s about legacy.
It’s a story that honors my mother not by preserving grief, but by transforming it into something that children can carry forward with joy, courage, and wonder.
Now, I’m creating characters and a world that I believe can last through generations, a world where bravery, kindness, and curiosity continue to echo long after the final page.
