Did you know that Hilary love, the illustrator, likes to include a tiny blue snail in most of her paintings?
See how many you can find in the illustrations for this book, then let me know by going to my contacts page.
All the donkeys named in the book were actually residents of the Isle of Wight sanctuary on the day we first visited.
Lucas, my grandson, chose them especially for the book, and their characteristics were used to build the storyline.
The basic structure for story took just over twenty-five minutes to write, but the book itself took over a year to publish.
The sanctuary began its life in 1987, when a local postman called Charlie Clarke and his wife Cheryl bought a small piece of land in Betty Haunt Lane on the outskirts of Newport.
Their very first donkey was called Dillon. But as more people left abandoned or mistreated donkeys in their care, the sanctuary eventually outgrew its original plot and they were forced to relocate to its current 55-acre home at Lower Winstone Farm, Wroxhall, in 1994