Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes arose because I was speaking at an event in Boston and I had two days prior to this event phoned my American editor and my Australian literacy agent and said, “I’m not writing anymore.” In fact, I cried. I mean, I didn’t say I was sobbing.
So that was, I think, on a — on a Wednesday and on the Friday I was in Boston talking to parents who had babies with them and little children. And at the end of the event when they were asking me to sign books, they were leaning over the table with the babies.
And sometimes, you know, little babies’ fingers are so tiny you can’t believe how tiny they are and you’d look at these minute digits and then their little fists like this and you have to put your finger in those little fists. You can’t resist but put your little — finger in their little fist.
And some of the babies were black and some of them were brown and some of them you could tell were adopted because they were different colors from their parents, and some people were poor and some people were well off
and some people were young parents and some people were much older parents.
And yet all the babies, you know, had ten little fingers and ten little toes. It didn’t matter who they belonged to or what color they were. Now I didn’t notice that. I did not notice that objectively. But then I went home to Australia via a very long route. It took me forty hours to get home.
And I thought of these babies
and by then they were far away from me. And there was one little baby who was born far away. And then I just said to myself and another who was born on the very next day, “And both of these babies, as everyone knows, had ten little fingers and ten little toes.”
So I thought, ew, that’s the first verse of a story perhaps. This is a first verse. But I was still so drowsy that I couldn’t wake up. I could not wake up. But I was drowsy enough to dream the story, so I thought of the next verse and the next verse and the next verse.
And when I finally sort of slapped myself awake or when the flight attendant, you know, woke us all up and gave us food, I quickly got out a notebook and I wrote very, very fast — the whole story.
I was terrified I would forget it. I wrote so fast that the woman — a total stranger — who was sitting next to me, said when I finished, she said, “I-I-I know it’s none of my business. I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t interfere, but you were writing so fast and it seemed so urgent and now it’s over. What were you doing?”
And I said, “Well,” I said, “Actually, I think I’ve just written a divine children’s book.” And I laughed because my mother would have hated me saying that, you know, because she would never liked us to boast or, you know, build ourselves up. But I felt my mother — dead already — on my shoulder saying, “That was a disgraceful thing to say.”
So I laughed shamefacedly when I said, “I think I’ve written a divine children’s story.” And then I said to her, “Would you like a copy of it?” And she said, “Oh, yes. I’d love one. Then I’ll know what you’ve written.” So I wrote it again by hand. And I gave — and I signed it, you know, “With love from Mem Fox.”
And she had didn’t know who I was. And I gave it to her. I have no idea who she was, but she read it and she cried. And I thought, “Whoo hoo. We have got something here. We have got something here.” And strangely, you know, often when I read the book, adults will come up to me afterwards and say surprised, “You know, I don’t know what it was about that book, but I teared up at the end of it.”
They’re really puzzled and I think it’s because the book is so tender, but not sentimental. It’s not at all sentimental, but it’s very, very tender. And it means a lot to me because our daughter lived for a long time in France and we only have one child. This was when she was an adult.
And her sign off to me on the phone or on an e-mail used to be “I kiss you on the nose.” And she calls me Moppy because my hair looks like a mop. “I kiss you on the nose, Moppy,” and in e-mail, “I kiss you on the nose, Moppy.” So the last line, “But the next child born was truly divine. A sweet little child who is mine, all mine.”
“And this little baby, as everyone knows, has ten little fingers and ten little toes and three little kisses on the tip of its nose.”
