jnewman@wiltonvillager.com

WILTON — Richard Spalding anticipated the question before it was asked: What's a finance director at UBS doing writing a book for children?

"I think it was a combination of circumstances," he said with a laugh.

A 35-year-old native of England, Spalding grew up mostly in Australia and Bahrain, traveling with his father, who was an engineer in the oil industry, his mother and his younger sister, Julie.

On trips back to England, Spalding's grandmother would tell stories to him and Julie while giving them bubble baths. The most memorable starred a witch named Winnie, known for being a neighborhood prankster.

Years later, after Spalding, his wife Melissa and young son Lachlan moved to Wilton, he channeled these stories while baby-sitting a family friend's daughter.

"She loved these stories so much, she wanted another one and another one and another one," Spalding said. "Being in America, where there's more of a 'can do' spirit, I thought, 'Why not put a pen to paper?'"

The first Wanda the Witch book — the name Winnie was already taken — was born over a year later. In rhyming stanzas, Wanda plays magical tricks on a couple of woodland creatures, leading them to strike back with a prank of their own.

Instead of ending with a direct moral lesson, Spalding asks readers to consider what Charky the cat's advice will be. Ema Whittaker, whose daughter Jasmine inspired Spalding to write, read the story to Jasmine's first-grade class, and said they got the gist.

"At the end, 20 pairs of hands shot up," Whittaker said. "They were saying you should be a good witch, you should be kind to others."

Maybe it's the bright colors, but the book has a noteworthy effect on Spalding's 1-year-old daughter Sarah as well. "If this is lying around anywhere in her grasp, she'll go for it," he said. Lachlan, now 4, loves the animals in the story, and enjoys when Spalding reads to him.

Jasmine Whittaker, who first listened to Spalding's stories, wants to know when the book will become a movie.

Spalding published the book himself though an Amazon subsidiary called Booksurge, which helped him with the editorial process, provided marketing materials and distributed the book through Amazon's Web site.

Collaboration happened almost entirely through e-mail. "I've probably only spoke to Booksource human beings twice in the entire 15 months I've been working on this project," Spalding said, and he's never met Sarah Davis, the illustrator of the book, who lives in Australia.

Overall, Spalding spent about $10,000 on the project. He keeps 25 percent of the royalties and retains publishing rights.

Spalding only sold 23 copies after two days, but if he can sell 500, he figures that's a big enough audience to continue the series. Over time, he hopes to mature the Wendy character as his children's generation grows. And who knows, maybe the concept will catch on and become a film after all.

Either way, Spalding wants to reach 100,000 children with Wanda over the next five years. That's also a lofty goal, but if it doesn't work out, he's happy just to leave something behind besides his day job.

"No one's going to remember that budget I did for UBS in '99," Spalding said, "so this for me is a way of fulfilling more of a personal dream."

For more information, visit www.wandathewitchbooks.com.