Gatehouse of Fleet gets New Year's Day radio name-check - in the Czech Republic

dailyrecord.co.uk:

Gatehouse of Fleet got a name-check or the radio on New Year’s Day – in the Czech Republic.Radio Prague broadcast an interview with town provost Helen Keating about her new book, Andyel and his Magic Daddy.A Czech resident living locally, Helen thinks, alerted the radio station after reading an article on her book in the Galloway News.Under the title “Children’s book inspired by Czech fairy-tale character of Water Goblin released in Scotland” the three-minute piece was broadcast in English across the world.Helen came across the Water Goblin – Vodnik in Czech – when she visited Czechoslovakia in 1989, shortly before the Velvet Revolution.“I was involved in a school exchange, when we took a choir over to Prague,” she told Radio Prague.“I met a family of one of the teachers involved in the exchange and we have been friends ever since.“I am familiar with the Waterman and I have always been interested in the story, so I devised the idea of writing stories not directly about him, but about his descendants.“There are seven little stories and in each one Andyel takes a problem to his father Grimble, who goes to his workshop and solves it with his magical powers.”The book has another Czech connection – it features illustrations by 13-year-old Sidonie Procházková, the granddaughter of the Czech friends Helen got to know during her first visit to Prague.“She is in a school in Prague, which has a special art department,” Helen told listeners. “I just casually asked her if she would like to do some drawings.

She has done a whole selection of them and they are just amazing.“And I found a very good publisher who has used them really well.”