Celebrating Autism Awareness Month with accomplishment
By Noah Merritt, pictured
Who is Gruntbrush? That’s hard to explain, but simply put, he’s our protagonist. Not a hero perse, but he is indeed the character we follow. A strange little green creature, covered in thick slimy ball of something. It might be fur, but honestly, I don’t know, and that is kind of the point. He’s a simple, silent creature that goes on misadventures and digs through trash.
I’m lucky to have someone who would put with such an idea, let alone bring it to reality. My mother, Kimberly Merritt, made all the excellent artwork for both books. I’m blessed to be related to such a talented illustrator! The whole idea started late one evening, my mother and joking back and forth while she worked. We got stuck on the two words making up our titular characters name for a time, until I had to borrow her stylus and quickly draw what the creature this name belonged to.
His design didn’t change much since that first sketch, only colors and details being filled in. A weird, slimy cloud shape, a round nose in the middle, and two scrawny legs with a pair of sneakers at the end. He was perfect.
So, I have our central character, but what to with him? I’d been wanting to write a book for some time, inspired by my mother’s own published works, but not what to write about.
While we joked, inventing this horrible goopy character, she was working and I watched on. Working in her field, most children books are wrapped around some sort of message. Either lessons of ‘don’t do this, that, or the other thing’, or ‘look at how polite this kid is. Don’t you also want to be a polite child? Please?’
Not to say lessons or morals are bad. In my experience, however, those stories were not my favorite growing up. My favorites were Mercer Mayer’s “Little Critter’ series, and “How the Trollusk Got His Hat’. That’s what I loved the absolute most, stranger creatures, oddball situations, and often some level of manic chaos. I mean, truly, what was the lesson of Mo Willem’s ‘Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus’, other than not letting said pigeon drive the a forementioned bus?
That’s what I wanted to do with Gruntbrush, I wanted to make something fun, and funny, something that kids would ask to read again. Something that older kids and adults can enjoy as well, like the absurdity of “The Stinky Cheese Man and other Fairly Stupid Tales’ by Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith.
The core is, when Gruntbrush is around, things happen. They could be his fault, they also not be his fault, but in either situation, he doesn’t quite know what he’s doing ever. An innocent troublemaker, just as confused about this troublemaking as anyone else affected.
With the second book out now, we’re excited to make more books in the series! The trouble, as always, is getting myself around to it.
Diagnosed with Asperger’s when I was about 10, it helped explain a lot of my tendencies. It helped us find direction on how to deal with the less pleasant ones as well. But, all this time later, I still struggle here and there.
Doing things is hard. We are in a world that is fast and distracting, and I can distracted, fast. Planning the books is a struggle, writing the books is a struggle, making page descriptions is a struggle, even now, writing this post I found difficult to focus and do the work.
My brain doesn’t make it easy, pushing me towards work with a constant thrumming that I could be doing something important, and pulling me away with a desire to do anything else. I’ve tried calendars, reminders, everything, but it still is so hard to keep on track.
But hey, I’m two books in. That must count for something? Even more than that, I know what’s coming next, and I’m excited to make it. If you want to but the books in paperback or on Kindle, you can find the collection here, https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F2B5JT6Q .
Keep an eye on that link, as we should be adding more books, year after year!
