When the first review came in for The Spots and the Dots, it was prefaced with this sentence: ‘I truly wish every child, school and library could own a copy of this incredible book’ (Rachael Davis). As the wife, daughter and grand-daughter of teachers and as someone who’s loved libraries since my first visit, aged four, that sentence means a lot.

The Spots and the Dots has an unusual format for a picture book, in that it’s a double-cover, topsy-turvy book that tells the same story twice. From one way up, we hear the red Spots’ side of the story: how, for generations, the little Spots have been scared to go over the hill because they were told the Dots would take them away. And from the other way up, we hear the identical tale from the blue Dots’ side of the story.

By literally repeating the same story twice, this book takes the old adage that ‘there are two sides to every story’ and exaggerates it to the extreme. The two identical stories then serve to expose the misconceptions and prejudices that have been passed down from the adults to the children on both sides of the hill. Hopefully, this repetition and the topsy-turvy format help to highlight the dangers of ignorance and prejudice in a fun and child-friendly way, but the origins of this book were far from fun or child-friendly.

Whenever people ask me why I wrote The Spots and the Dots, a series of images flash through my mind’s eye. They’re photos or film footage from news reports and they’re mostly of children. We’ve all seen similar images, I’m sure, so I won’t go into details, other than to say that various different countries, races, ethnicities, religions, conflicts and wars are involved. This real-life violence is represented by the play-fights that take place in the book.

Having said all that, though, it was very important for this book to have a playful touch that young children could engage with. The message, after all, is a simple one - that although we may be different in some ways, we all have much in common at heart (like the love we feel for our children and our instinct to protect them). The challenge arose in how best to convey these themes of difference and similarity to little ones.

The topsy-turvy format was key to making the book and its message accessible to all, I think. And I hope that the bouncy, rhyming text also helps. But it’s Marion’s bright, bold illustrations and hand-lettering that really set the tone of this book. Who knew that little red and blue circular shapes could become such appealing characters and express so much with only their eyes and mouths?! Marion’s legendary hand-lettering has been used to great effect many times before The Spots and the Dots, of course. I think my favourite is her ‘LOVE’ poster for the #standup4humanrights campaign (below).

Ultimately, The Spots and the Dots is an uplifting, hopeful and optimistic book. The littlest Spots and Dots of all, with their fresh eyes and open minds, see things as they really are when they accidentally meet at the top of the hill. Generations of ignorance, distrust, misconceptions, prejudice and fear are overturned in an instant, and everything changes.

The notions of ‘us’ and ‘them’, which are so divisive at the start of the stories, have become obsolete by the end. And the symbolic hill - which might initially be seen as representing barriers between people, whether psychological ones such as fear, or physical barriers such as walls or barbed wire - has now become a shared playground.

Thank you, Youth Libraries Group, for giving me the chance to share our hopes for this book - in essence, that it helps to promote more tolerance, respect and empathy. And thank you, librarians, for being the gatekeepers to all the books that help us see life from perspectives other than our own.

A big thank you to Helen Baugh for this fascinating blog article and for a brilliant book!