Tom Smith
In 2021, my daughter was born, bringing with her a wealth of new experiences for a first-time parent: changing nappies, sterilising bottles, and spending hours pacing back and forth while holding a baby and wondering why this tiny human. Would. Not. Sleep.
In an effort to get her to drift off, we’d shush, sing songs (All Star by Smash Mouth – it was the only song I was confident I knew every single word of), and tell stories. When I ran out of stories I knew, I started making them up.
That was the beginning of Tom Smith Books.
In 2026, baby number two arrived. Like his big sister, there were nappies to change, bottles to sterilise, and feeds at all hours. But there was one key difference: at four months old, he slept better than his older sister did at four years old.
Unsure what to do with my newfound free time in the evenings, I began taking the ideas I’d come up with four years earlier and finally putting them down on paper.
These stories are for both of my kids: the one who kept me awake long enough to create them, and the one who slept long enough for me to write them down.