New children’s book from Holladay father-daughter duo has been 15 years in the making

Kangarooster. Flamingoat. Piguana.

No, those are not elaborate typos. They are names for some of the hybrid critters in a new children’s book, “Switch-A-Rooster,” a project by a Holladay father-and-daughter duo, Steve Driggs and Emma Driggs Roberts, that has been in the works for 15 years.

“My dad and I just had this idea we started bopping around for mixed-up animals,” Emma said. “That kind of snowballed into this whole idea of these fun [characters]. ‘Oh, what if there was a kangarooster? A chimpanzebra?’ All these random funny little things, and then that escalated into a series of sketches and then became a fully thought-out children’s book idea.”

Emma — a freelance copywriter who as a child loved to read and loved animals so much that she dreamed of volunteering at The Humane Society — said the idea came to a standstill, living only in the back of their minds. In 2020, though, Steve, who spent a career in advertising and is an adjunct professor at Brigham Young University, decided to move forward with it.

“There was a time where I was just, like, obsessed with it,” Steve said. “Anytime anybody would come over, I would just go, ‘Hey, what about this?’”

Steve said the sketches they originally made of their animal creations were in a black notebook. But when they came back around to the idea, they couldn’t find the notebook — so they started over, barely remembering the animal combinations they created then. Midway through the rewrite, they found the notebook.

“It was like the different versions of those sketches that had existed in both of our heads for so long,” Emma said. “You can see the sketches that were first there, and then these gorgeous oil paintings that my dad made. It’s just a metaphor for how the entire book and creative processes felt.”

Going by sound and logistics

They started with a few animals, Steve said, but wound up with hundreds of ideas of combinations. The finished book features 17 full-page animal creations, with a supporting cast of 24 other animals at the end of the book.

Picking animals to combine wasn’t an exact science, they said. There were a few considerations — such as how the new names sounded.

“Something like ‘chimpanzebra,’ that’s beautiful,” Emma said. “There’s, like, the wordsmithing of it all, and you want it to be clear enough that you could figure out [when] you can hear both of them.” (The end of the book includes a list of animal names, so readers can make their own combinations.)

Another consideration: The logistics of how the breeding of two different species would work.

“It was this delicate balance of, like, it’s got to be funny but not terrifying,” Emma said. “There’s the writing and illustrating, but then there’s the whatever [this] is — the Frankensteining.”

Emma’s favorite animal is the Pengupine (penguin plus porcupine). The book warns readers that to be safe around the cute, but pointy animals, “Repeat to yourself: I will not hug them.” Steve’s favorite is the Hedgefrog (a cross between a frog and a hedgehog).

What brings the imaginative concept together are the detailed, vibrant oil paintings, all done by Steve.

The process of making the illustrations, he said, was long, stressful and fun. Every time he made one, Steve said, he thought “I’m not really a painter. I only did that in art school. … There’s something about our modern world where you could just do ‘command-z’ and ‘undo,’ and I was, like, ‘No, this is the real thing. It’s like paint on the paper.’”

What’s more remarkable about the paintings is that Steve is colorblind — which, Emma said, meant putting the book together became a collaborative process for the whole family.

“He’s a colorblind artist,” Emma said, “and as poetic as that is, there were all these little moments of, like, OK, come here — is the sky blue?’”

Steve said he marked the names of the paints, and made sure one palette had the green on one side and red on the other. In the book’s acknowledgements section, Steve thanks his family for being patient when he “asked, ‘What color is this?’ a bazillion times.’”

“Our names are on the cover,” Emma said, “but, really, it wasn’t just a father-daughter affair. It was a family affair.”

What kept the dream of making the book alive, Steve said, was the storyline — about a boy, Leo, running to catch the school bus. In his hurry, Leo runs into a pole. When he later opens his animal book, he finds all the animals are jumbled. He tries to shake and bang the book to set it straight, and it isn’t until he runs into the pole on purpose that the book goes back to normal.

Leo, however, walks away with a tiger tail behind him.

“Right from the beginning, we had that idea,” Steve said. “Sometimes, whenever you have an idea, [you] just struggle at the end.” If not for that idea for an ending, he said they would have forgotten about the concept entirely.

Emma said her favorite part of the process was watching her dad’s paintings come to life.

“I went back in my text messages the other day,” she said, “and I found this text from my dad where he was, like, ‘I think we’re going to make the book work.’ He had drawn out a kind of a storyboard. And he was, like, ‘I’ll probably just hire an illustrator, though maybe I’ll try it.’’'

For Steve, the idea itself was the fun part — mixing up animals and making wacky, fun combinations.

Steve also had the idea to use the book to help real animals, by donating $2 from every sale to support the World WildLife Fund.

“With the world, habitats, less water and warmer [temperatures], we could do a little bit,” he said. “We’re just going to make a $10,000 donation, no questions asked.”