Hairy Maclary Collaboration. Meet Author Lynley Dodd

What (or who) inspired the look and design of Hairy Maclary and his gang of friends?
Hairy Maclary from Donaldson’s Dairy, the first book in the series, was inspired by an assorted gang of chummy and cheerful dogs who used to ramble up the road past our family’s home above Lower Hutt, back in the Seventies. It seemed to be their regular route and I would watch them as they sniffed their way up the hill. They became the inspiration for Hairy Maclary and Co!

Your Hairy Maclary books have been entertaining children for decades – what do you think is behind their enduring appeal? Why do children continue to love them so?
Why do the books appeal? I think you need to ask children! Probably because Hairy Maclary and his friends get away with mischief!

How do you feel about Hairy Maclary and his chums being part of a cloth nappy range – are you looking forward to seeing it, why is this collaboration a good fit?
It is good to be able to give parents choices, given the worries about the planet these days and also to accommodate differing needs and lifestyle demands.

As a mother, do you have any personal memories or experiences with nappies that you’d like to share?
My enduring memory is of a clothesline full of flapping wet nappies in wet weather, with me wondering how I was going to get them dry. (I didn’t have a dryer.)

Did you use cloth nappies when your kids were little? If yes, what was your experience like?
I used the old-fashioned washable nappies with my two babies, which always meant worrying about stabbing a wriggling baby with the nappy’s safety pins.

Do you plan to write another Hairy Maclary book? If yes, could you give us a hint about what readers might expect?
If I had a very good new idea, I might write a new Hairy Maclary story - but there are quite a few already!

Explore the Designer Bums X Hairy Maclary Collection here.

Images by Bob Tulloch and courtesy of Penguin Random House NZ.