The Bookseller – Author Interviews – Mikey Please

Mikey Please, the BAFTA-winning and Oscar-nominated animator and writer, is very excited about his first solo picture book. We’re speaking by video call, sitting in a book-bound study in Bristol, holding up an early handmade copy of his story about a cafe and its monstrous customers, which looks remarkably similar to the finished version that HarperCollins is releasing in September.

The café at the edge of the forest was born out of a game Please played with his wife and son during the Covid-19 lockdowns. It’s about a woman who builds a cafe and then hires a creature named Glumfoot as a waiter. When the customers she’s hoping for don’t show up, Glumfoot manages to persuade an ogre to get some food. However, problems arise when the ogre doesn’t fancy Rene’s truffle stew or gravlax and demands pickled bats and butter mice instead.

In the game of “please” he used to play with his son, he was the demanding mythical creature demanding something disgusting, or an elf demanding dandelion salad with raindrops from the sky, and his wife was a pompous cook. “It was my son’s job to mediate between those two parties,” he says. “It was lovely. He absolutely loved my disgusting requests and seeing his mother’s frustration and outrage.”

There is no clear answer to anything. Compromise and adjustment are a really important part of being a
happy person

Please is a successful animator and writer, and one of the creators of the Christmas film Robin Robin (released on Netflix and nominated for an Oscar in 2022). His Royal College of Art graduation film The Eagleman Stag won a BAFTA for best animated short film, and he is now developing projects for Aardman, the Bristol-based animation studio. So why is he trying his hand at picture books? Please says he has “dreamed and plotted” about making books for years, and is a huge fan of Raymond Briggs, particularly Briggs’ work in the “grey area between the classic picture book and the graphic novel panel,” and of Bill Watterson, the creator of Calvin and Hobbes. Watterson was “the jewel in the middle of the cave I grew out of” with his gross-out humor, emotional resonance and absurdism, all of which are in The café at the edge of the forest. It’s also a nice little reminder that life gets better when you adapt to 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-size-fits-all answer to anything. Compromise and adaptation are a really important part of being a happy person.”