Ashington girl has illustration included in new children’s book about the importance of mental health

Georgia Hutchinson, who has always had a passion for drawing, will see her artwork in print for the first time ever in a new book written by Holly Taylor named ‘The Magic Inside of Me’ that aims to educate children on the importance of mental health and how to better understand it.

The 15-year-old from Ashington set up her own business drawing cards at age 13, and since then her business has grown.

Now, Georgia creates her very own stationary, bookmarks, postcards and designing commissions for other businesses, as well as starting her own book illustrating career.

She will soon be sitting her GCSE’s, and having gone through two years of the Covid pandemic, Georgia has plenty of personal experience with anxiety.

Holly, a first time author who has worked with children and their families for over 18 years as a trained youth and community worker and mindfulness instructor, has worked as a mentor in a secondary school for the last 13 years, gathering a huge amount of knowledge when it comes to the mental health and wellbeing of children.

However, when she started to notice a rise in anxiety and general worries among young people around the country, Holly decided that she would play her part in supporting the next generation of children by penning a book which would teach children how to manage and understand these mental health issues.

However, it was ultimately the birth of her daughter Imogen, who’s name stars in the book, in 2020 that served as her inspiration for the premise of the book, which centres around the story of a young girl who is learning to deal with ‘mind monkeys’ – a representation of inner mental health struggles.

The pair met in a Facebook group named the ‘Northern Lass Lounge’ which is an online business forum that seeks to bring women together to support one another,

After meeting up and having a chat, Holly decided to ask Georgia to be the book’s illustrator, and later sent her a general rundown of the story so that Georgia could illustrate accordingly.

Holly said: "I dealt with a lot of anxiety over lockdown, so much anxiety, and when my daughter was born in 2020, I realised I wanted her to grow up in a world where young people have the tools and the magic inside of them to deal with anything that comes their way.

“It [the book] is saying that it is okay to be calm and it’s okay to suffer with those thoughts because you actually can control them, you can deal with them.”

Georgia said: “I couldn’t believe it, when I had my illustrations on my Ipad it was kind of just a digital thing, it didn’t really seem real.

"When I actually got to see it on paper, it was amazing.”

She added: "I think the book will help the parents to help their children because sometimes you don’t know what to do, but just being there and helping them breathe and telling them their worries are normal, I think it will be really helpful for parents to know that.”