![]() ![]() Mackesy’s drawings and words, which encouraged kindness and support, found their way onto the sides of buildings people were getting his characters tattooed on their bodies. ![]() While the book was being made, Mackesy’s now-recognisable painting, in which the Boy asks the Horse what the bravest thing he’s ever said, and the Horse replies, ‘help’, was being put on notice boards in schools, prisons and hospitals. But his work was having an undeniable impact. Why Mackesy, and why his band of creatures? The artist’s name wasn’t well-known - even now, he could walk down the street and not be recognised. ‘The people who come queue for hours because they want to tell Charlie why they love his work and why it’s meaningful to them.’ The impact of his work was beginning to dawn on Higginson: ‘I’ve been to a few of the signings, and we’ve all ended up in tears at the end of them,’ she says. One woman bought 10 copies, even though she was too late to meet Mackesy and have them signed. ‘The book gave me strength, encouragement, laughter in the hardest of times.’Īt Mackesy’s first, sold-out signing, the queue went out the door. When it became clear that demand was exceeding expectations - people were pre-ordering copies in their thousands - Ebury hired extra drivers to ensure copies were delivered through the night, before the lorries immediately turned around for the next ones coming off the press. There were late-night meetings and creative juggling as each new page was delivered. Over the course of a whirlwind few months, they worked with Mackesy to capture the spirit of his work in a book. ‘Across the business, from marketing and publicity to productions, I had conversations with people who said, “Wow, what he’s doing is really beautiful,”’ Higginson tells me. Plus, there were barely any other comparable examples in book shops.īut the team at Ebury were convinced of the book’s emotional potential. Mackesy had a relatively small social media following, and even the artist himself didn’t know what the plot would be. The book’s editor, Laura Higginson, was introduced to Mackesy’s Instagram account by a friend, and admits to finding the drawings and words he posted there “really moving”, but The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse was still a hard sell. 'We had to hire extra drivers to ensure copies were delivered through the night.’ And yet, in the final dark months of 2019, the tremulous beginning of 2020 and the swirling chaos of the pandemic year, it offered hope to hundreds of thousands of people. It’s not aimed at any clear audience, and works as well for eight-year-olds as it does octogenarians. The four titular characters meet one another and share each other’s confidence. Rather than a linear narrative, it’s a collection of quiet musings and conversations. The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse isn’t a conventional picture book. Two years after release, and Mackesy's book is the longest-running Sunday Times hardback chart-topper to date. ![]() What nobody realised, then, was that this was the start of what would become the surprise hit of the year. Someone commented that the image took them ‘right back to the feel of my own storybook childhood’, another joked that the boy and the mole were discussing politics. Another mole day I think,’ the artist captioned it. The boy looks young, barely a toddler, barely the size of the mole, and the mole looks slightly concerned it adds to the cuteness. Three years ago, Charlie Mackesy uploaded a drawing of a boy and a mole to his Instagram account. ![]()
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