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The belief that geckos are good luck
By Betty Shimabukuro
holds true for a man who followed
his muse and scored a
national book deal
Star-BulletinBRUCE Hale owes it all to a little lizard with very sticky feet, "I was driving up the Pali one day and happened to look at the hood of my car and there was a little brown gecko holding on, being buffeted by the wind," Hale recalls.
"He was such a noble character."
Well, every artist has his muse. The noble hood ornament inspired the creation of Moki, the surfing star of "Legend of the Laughing Gecko," which grew into a five-part series of picture books that sold 95,000 copies.
Now Moki has an older cousin and Hale has a national book contract.
Thank you, little brown gecko.
The Moki books were self-published and written for young children. Hale's new book, "The Chameleon Wore Chartreuse," is the first being published under a six-book agreement with Harcourt Inc., and is aimed at older elementary kids.
The star of this series is Chet Gecko, fourth-grade private eye.
"Chet's world is fraught with danger," Hale says. "He's surrounded by bullies and mean teachers and school is always getting in the way of his detective work. Just as he gets close to solving the mystery, he has to go back to class."
Bruce Hale will sign autographs and read from his books: MEET THE AUTHOR
Tomorrow: Noon to 1 p.m., Bookends in Kailua, 261-1996
Here is the list of the next books in the Chet series:
The character has been optioned by Harvey Entertainment for possible development into an animated television series, Hale says.
Chet is the older second cousin of Moki, streetwise and with an actual job. He speaks in a choppy manner adults will recognize from the film-noir detective genre. You can just see him in black and white, cloaked in a cloud of smoke, teased by a dame.
"She was cute and green and scaly," Chet narrates. "She looked like trouble and she smelled like ... grasshoppers."
Hale has always drawn pictures, although he has little formal training. In 1988 he produced his first children's story. "It was a 'Cat In the Hat' kind of story. It was pretty bad. It was called 'Pony in the Kitchen" -- and it earned Hale a stack of rejection slips.
He was running a small business with a friend making gecko items -- you know, the stuffed toy with suction-cup feet -- when he had the encounter with his muse and Moki was born. That was in 1989.
This time he approached a book agent with a 15-page outline for the Chet story. The agent liked it and sold it to Harcourt, where Hale's editor, Michael Stearns, helped him develop it into a 50-page manuscript for publication. "He completely got the humor," Hale says of Stearns. "We're both in a fourth-grade state of mind."
Hale also teaches story writing, does free-lance illustration work and acts in community theater and occasional commercials. And he draws a comic strip that appears on his Web site, http://www.brucehale.com. But his primary occupation is Chet Gecko.
Hale has just returned from a three-week tour of California and is finishing three more Chet books. He works on the stories about three months, he says, and another month on the drawings. Two more books will follow under this arrangement with Harcourt.
The series is targeted at children 8 to 12, an age group not well-represented on bookshelves. Pat Banning, owner of Bookends in Kailua, says it's especially hard to find a book that appeals to both boys and girls.
"He's hit the nail right on the head with this one," Banning says.
It's the mystery in the stories that draws kids, she says, and the parody that makes it fun for adults, too. Plus, "people love geckos one way or the other."
It's another mark of their appeal that the books have been selling well without the benefit of publicity, Banning says. She has invited Hale to her store tomorrow for book-signing and story telling, but up until now, the books have had to speak for themselves.
"They've done very well on their own merits -- just sitting on the shelf."
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