Mikey Please, the BAFTA-winning, Oscar-nominated animator and writer, is very excited about his first solo picture book. We are speaking over video call, he from a book-linked study in Bristol, and he holds up an early handmade copy of his story about a café and its monstrous customers that looks remarkably like the finished version that HarperCollins is releasing in September.
The Café at the Edge of the Woods grew out of a game Please played with his wife and son during Covid-19 lockdowns and it is about a woman who builds a café then hires a creature called Glumfoot to act as a waiter. When the hoped-for customers don’t arrive, Glumfoot manages to persuade an ogre to come for some food, although problems ensue when the ogre doesn’t fancy Rene’s truffle stew or gravlax and asks for pickled bats and buttered mice instead.
In the game Please used to play with his son he would be the demanding mythical creature asking for something disgusting, or a pixie asking for dandelion salad with raindrops from the sky, and his wife was a pompous chef. “It was my son’s job to mediate between these two parties,” he says. “It was delightful. He would absolutely love my repulsive requests, and seeing the frustration and outrage of his mum.”
There is no one definite answer to anything. Compromise and adjusting is a really important part of being a
happy human
Please is a successful animator and writer, and is one of the creators behind the festive film “Robin Robin” (released on Netflix and nominated for an Academy Award in 2022). His Royal College of Art thesis film “The Eagleman Stag” won a BAFTA for best short animation and he is now developing projects for Aardman, the Bristol-based animation studio. So why turn his hand to picture books? Please says he has been “dreaming and scheming” about making books for years, being a big fan of Raymond Briggs, especially Briggs’ work in the “grey area between the classic picture book and the graphic novel panel”, and Calvin and Hobbes’ creator Bill Watterson. Watterson was “the jewel in the centre of the cave I grew out of” with his gross-out humour, emotional resonance and absurdism, all of which can be found in The Café at the Edge of the Woods. There is also a nice little reminder that life improves when you bend with the circumstances you find yourself in. Rene’s restaurant is a success when she adapts to her monstrous and mythical clientele, because, as Please says, “change is important”. “There is no one definite answer to anything. Compromise and adjusting is a really important part of being a happy human.”
