McLeod Brothers launch latest children’s book, Knight Sir Louis and the Sinister Snowball
AS the festive season beckons and we all look forward to wintry scenes, there’s one fella you wouldn’t want to meet: Splint the Sinister Snowball.
He’s the latest baddie to be conjured by the Brothers McLeod, aka illustrator and animator Greg and writer and scriptwriter Myles, for their new children’s book, Knight Sir Louis and the Sinister Snowball, published by Guppy Books on 26th October.
It’s the fourth in the Stratford duo’s best-selling series that sees hero, young knight Louis, do battle with a string of alliterative nemeses. So far that has included the Dreadful Damsel, the Dragon of Doooooom and the Sorcerer of Slime.
The character of Louis began as a doodle to amuse Greg’s young son – also called Louis and now a teenager – and slowly morphed into a fully-fledged book.
“When my son Louis was aged around four I started drawing these little postcards and sending them to him so they’d be there every morning with the post,” explains Greg.
“One of them was this Knight Sir Louis character, and off the back of that I started doing little strip cartoons. So all the material existed and that was when Myles kind of took it upon himself to develop it into more of a story that he could read to Louis.”
After a rocky start, publishing the first one in 2020 at the height of the pandemic, the comic medieval adventure series, described as “masterclass in silliness”, has now built up a loyal following.
“One thing I heard when we first started was that it takes kids ten years to begin to recognise the names of children’s authors,” observes Myles.
The two have also become a bit of a hit on the school and festival circuit, which has seen them perform recently at the famous Hay-on-Wye literature festival, as well as Cheltenham, Holmfirth (Last of the Summer Wine country) and Wigtown in Scotland – where Michael Morpurgo shared his birthday cake with them.
Their school visits sound like a very pleasant riot.
“The kids have been great,” says Greg. “At some of the schools there are 350 children in the audience so you really have to turn it up. I visited Louis’ school at Broad Street and learned about keeping them engaged from that.”
He continues: “We introduce ourselves and we’ve got funny photos of ourselves form the 1970s. No one ever thinks we’re real brothers. We get asked why are you called the Brothers McLeod? Or they ask how we met – I say mum came home with a baby and said here’s your brother.”
After Myles does a reading, they get the schoolchildren to write a story themselves.
“We get them to create a character – and ask them seven questions: including creating a name and what secret they are hiding. Once a girl replied ‘they really hate themselves’, but usually it’s funny!”
Greg continues: “I show them how to draw Knight Sir Louis and then we do a six-panel comic with them: who’s the hero, where do they live, what magical item do they need to find, who’s the baddie, what kind of battle do they have, how does it end?”
After all that creativity, the brothers then show one of their animations and hold a question and answer session.
“We usually get asked who’s the eldest, and they always guess right,” harrumphs Greg. (It’s Greg by about four years.)
As storytellers, the McLeods are very much influenced by their childhood. “We grew up reading Asterix and Agatha Christie. Our dad was a massive Christie fan. So it’s the culmination of our childhood.”
For this fourth outing, it seemed timely to come up with a winter theme.
“Our other books have come out in June ahead of summer holidays, but as this was October we thought we would do a snowy one – we toyed with a yeti. We’ve slightly hamstrung ourselves by always having alliteration – Dreadful Damsel, etc, so Greg came up with Sinister Snowball.”
Myles continues: “For this one, we thought that it would be interesting if Louis went and learned some winter warrior techniques. He finds out in the future the world is all iced over, so they find out who caused it and try and stop it. It’s basically X-Men Days of Future Past but much sillier and with snowballs. Louis has to save the future from being turned to a snowball planet basically.
“Splint is the main snowball guy – but then he’s got his siblings: Flint, Hint, Mint, Clint and Sharon. Sharon turns out to be quite important.”
One final crucial question: which McLeod would win in a snowball fight?
“Probably Greg because he’s a drummer and got very strong arms,” confesses Myles.
“It’s all about planning,” maintains Greg. “Don’t start a snowball fight unless you’ve made at least 20 snowballs. So while your opponent stops to make a new one, you literally pummel them.
“And don’t use the yellow snow!”
