{"id":64393,"date":"2025-08-13T06:07:12","date_gmt":"2025-08-13T06:07:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/64393\/"},"modified":"2025-08-13T06:07:12","modified_gmt":"2025-08-13T06:07:12","slug":"weipa-mum-adds-author-to-credentials-with-colourful-childrens-book","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/64393\/","title":{"rendered":"Weipa mum adds ‘author’ to credentials with colourful children\u2019s book"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

While his initial response may not have suggested it, we\u2019re pretty sure four-year-old Declan is proud of mum Denica Bowden\u2019s first effort as a published author \u2013 especially since he\u2019s the star of the children\u2019s book. Photo: Supplied.<\/p>\n

A man\u2019s love of motorbikes has morphed into a heartwarming story of a little boy who just wants to explore the world on two wheels thanks to a Weipa mum who can now add \u201cpublished author\u201d to her resume.<\/p>\n

Denica Bowden surprised her friends and family this month when she used her son Declan\u2019s birthday party to unveil Away With That Trials Bike, which stars the four-year-old as the protagonist who adores his trials bike but cannot find anywhere to ride it without people telling him to put it away.<\/p>\n

Ms Bowden explained the concept for the book had grown alongside her son over the past few years.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt kind of came about by chance,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen my son Declan was born, my husband was mad, he still is mad, into motorbikes, and had not long before bought a trials bike, and no one really knows much about them.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe got talking one day, and I was like, \u2018oh, maybe I\u2019ll write a little story\u2019, but I didn\u2019t really know if it would turn into a book; I sat on it for a while, a couple of years, and then gave it a bit more attention \u2026 before I sent it to a couple of different publishers and got three different offers.\u201d<\/p>\n

The colourful children\u2019s book is illustrated by Laura Wood, and Ms Bowden said it still felt surreal to see her story idea in print.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hadn\u2019t told anybody about it apart from one friend and my family a long time ago, because it was a two-year process from contract to book, and I thought I\u2019d just let my family forget about it and then give them a surprise at the end,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I revealed it to my friends, we did a surprise reveal disguised as my son\u2019s birthday party on the weekend, and they were like, \u2018where can we buy it?\u2019 and I realised I actually didn\u2019t know, so I googled it that night; I just googled the title and there were all these bookshops listing it and I was like, \u2018oh my goodness, how crazy is this?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was my book, and my name, and all these places like Booktopia and Dymocks and that were selling it \u2013 that was a bit of a crazy moment for me.\u201d<\/p>\n

And what does the star of the story think of his mum\u2019s literary effort?<\/p>\n

\u201cHe has such a skewed reality,\u201d she laughed.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe opened the book, and I hadn\u2019t told him that I\u2019d written it, and I started reading and the first couple of lines are \u2018my name is Declan\u2019, and he goes, \u2018why do we look so different?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd then when I asked him if he knew I wrote it, he\u2019s like, \u2018yeah\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Weipa author Denica Bowden says seeing her story Away With That Trials Bike transform into something people can touch and read has been a bit of a \u201ccrazy moment\u201d. Photo: Supplied.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While his initial response may not have suggested it, we\u2019re pretty sure four-year-old Declan is proud of mum…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":64394,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[64,63,457,134],"class_list":{"0":"post-64393","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-books","11":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64393","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64393"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64393\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64394"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}