Itchy Coo is an imprint dedicated to publishing Scots language titles for children and schools. It began as a collaboration between three writers (myself, James Robertson and Matthew Fitt) and an Edinburgh publisher in 2001, and received Lottery funding from the Scottish Arts Council to publish its first range of titles. The imprint is still in existence, but most of my own titles in the series are now out of print. For this reason, I am republishing some of the texts here.

For the early history of Itchy Coo, see the Happy Birthday, Swatch! page, and also the following articles:
‘Mindin the Mither Tongue’ (Scotsman, 17 August 2002)
‘Scots Language for Schools’ (Contact Magazine, October 2002)

Sweetieraptors (2003)

‘Rennie’s rhyming couplets are great fun to read aloud and Lacome’s charming illustrations make the meaning clear, even for non (or lapsed) Scots speakers.’ (Scotsman, Hottest Reads for Summer, 2003)

Sweetieraptors is a poem about dinosaurs with names based on Scots words, such as the Birlosaur, Dreichosaur and Wheechosaurus. The book (with illustrations by Julie Lacome) is now out of print. An early version of the poem was published in a booklet called The Swatch (2000), which was brilliantly illustrated by bairns from Seabeach Nursery in Portobello. I have included some of their drawings in the Teachers’ Notes below. You can also view them in the picture gallery on the Happy Birthday, Swatch! page.

Download the full text of Sweetieraptors. Download Teachers’ Notes and Glossary.

Animal ABC (2002)
**Winner of 2002 TES/Saltire Society Prize for Educational Publications**

The first edition of Animal ABC was published in 2002, with illustrations by Karen Sutherland. It is the only one of my original Itchy Coo books which is still in print. Please see the Animal ABC page for the latest (2023) edition.

Please also see the separate pages for my other Itchy Coo titles: the Planet Books sci-fi series (featuring the adventures of Kat an Dug on Planet Fankle and Planet Perjink) and the anthology Hoose o Haivers, to which I contributed three stories inspired by Ovid’s Metamorphoses.