Dotty has been with us since Stringtastic began. Her debut came in Dotty dog dance, which was an instant hit with all of our students. Spot came along later. He was inspired by our friend, Jim, who sent us lots of photographs during lockdown, in which a cat was subtly hidden, with the caption Spot the cat. We then pointed out that Jim's cats are called Stripy and Black cat, not Spot! At this point, Spot the cat, as featured in Stringtastic, was born!
The big question is, what do Dotty and Spot bring to Stringtastic? Their main job is to be companions to anyone using our books on their learning journey. We see the lyrics in our tunes as being spoken by both characters, helping everyone learn through their words. Dotty and Spot encourage everyone to practise daily, help with technique, make playing fun and tell stories that capture the character of the music. We hope that this is done through a gentle sense of humour. Putting the technical advise in the lyrics enables the teacher to put ideas across using words as pictures. In the air is a lovely example of this idea, where we introduce retakes:
In the air
that is where
my bow flies
past my eyes,
making slow
circles in the air.
We are delighted that Sarah Leigh-Wills drew our lovable characters for us. She perfectly captured the essence of Dotty and Spot and brought them to life. We thought that you might like to see how we described Dotty and Spot to Sarah:
Dotty is warm, friendly and a bit crazy. She's full of fun and energy and is always innocently getting into mischief! Spot thinks that he's really cool, but he's actually very cute. He's a good friend to Dotty and thinks the world of her and they are very loyal to each other. And, of course, they both love music, unlike most cats and dogs, which tend to leave the room whenever an instrument case is opened!
The illustrations went through numerous versions to make sure that the playing positions were as close to perfect as possible. Sarah did an amazing job to make a cat and a dog look so convincing as string players!
Dotty and Spot have another important job to do in Stringtastic, which is to explain the books' structure. Because they have two jobs (explaining the structure of the books and giving the students lots of tips), we kept the advice to the lyrics of the songs and the structure of the books to the thought bubbles. By doing this, we have tried to keep the look of the books simple and clean.
We hope that both teachers and students like Dotty and Spot as much as we do. We are very fond of our furry writing companions!
We’d love to hear your experience of how you and your students are finding our books.
Stringtastic Beginners is available from Faber.
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