Worcester’s Ben Hayward has penned The White Red Lechwe which follows Sunblessed, a bright white lechwe calf living on the plains of Sub-Saharan Africa.
Eight-year-old Ophelia Hayward has provided the illustrations.
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After getting separated from her mother Sunblessed searches for a place in the world to hide from a determined predator and meets a variety of animals along the way.
The target audience is children aged between six to 10 years old.
Ben, who released self-published book WIRP: The sewer bot last year, said: “I’m a self-employed gardener and write books in my spare time.
“The story was inspired by a visit to a safari park where we saw red lechwe — a type of small antelope — and were told by the zookeeper that the leucistic lechwe they had would not survive in the wild.
“I thought that was a story worth exploring and Sunblessed has proved the zookeeper wrong!
“My eight-year-old daughter (Ophelia) did the illustrations for the book.
“I told her the animals involved. She looked up an image on the internet and then just drew what she saw.
“She made them so characterful, helped bring them to life and she really enjoyed doing it too.
“This is the second animal book that we have worked on together following The Umbolo Valley — available as a book or audiobook on Amazon.
“The White Red Lechwe is available on Amazon for £9.99 and is the third book I have published in the last two years.
“It follows hot on the heels of the humorous children’s book and international seller WIRP: The sewer bot.”
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