How to use this Page

I only took a patchy selection of photos at last night's #SketchbookSocial, part of London Book & Screen Week, but you can check the #SketchbookSocial hashtag to see lots more from other people!









I stopped by Atlantis art supply on the way there and got some big chunky pastels. Always best to use totally unfamiliar materials when you're doing a spot of live drawing, ha ha...



The #PicturesMeanBusiness campaign for people to credit illustrators got a good mention, and Society of Authors has just now posted a plug for it.




Thanks so much to Katherine Woodfine and Claire Shanahan for organising! I hope it happens again! :)

Sometimes I get invited to events in Brighton and I hardly ever go, unless I make elaborate plans to stay the night, because it seems far away. But people in publishing who live in Brighton are ALWAYS making the trek up to London for evening events. I started imagining I was like one of those north Londoners who won't go to events in south London, which is just silly. I felt like a wimp. So I finally went, just for an evening.



Here's a doodle of the Dartmoor Pegasus over Brighton Pavilion. (My Seawigs and Cakes in Space co-author, Philip Reeve, created the original fat Pegasus, is from Brighton and often tells me stories about it.) First stop was Liz Pichon's house, where I got to have a peek in the writing shed where she creates the Tom Gates books! She apologised about it being messy but I said she hadn't seen my desk. Liz's books are leading the way for books for so-called 'middle grade' readers in the way they bring together text and lots and lots of drawings.



Tom Gates is right up there with Wimpy Kid and Captain Underpants and if you haven't seen the books, definitely check them out. I suspect the success of Tom Gates is one of the reason our publisher was so interested in publishing my highly illustrated books with Philip. So Liz is a bit of a hero, really.




Here's Liz with her husband Mark, who's a sound engineer and does a lot of work with her on apps and things. It's great seeing such a fab creative partnership.



Next stop was Chris Riddell's house, where Liz had masks so we could dress up in Chris's 'The Doodler' Children's Laureate superhero costume.


Photo by Liz Pichon

He and his painter-printmaker wife, Jo Riddell, had a few people around to the garden for drinks to celebrate book number twelve in his Edge Chronicles series with writer Paul Stewart. (Also spot Adam Stower and Zoe Tucker.) Chris sometimes tells me he lives his social life vicariously through my blog, so hello, Chris, if you're reading this! I think being Laureate is going to mean Chris is much MUCH more social than me for the next two years.



Writer-illustrator Sue Hendra and I sneaked back in the woods behind his house to check out his studio. It was locked, but you can see another blog post I made about it here, when Chris gave me a tour.



After a lovely evening, the train ride back (full of sunburnt beachgoers) was a bit of a jolt. In fact, it was so totally undignified that it was rather hilarious. I coped by tweeting this photo:



So it CAN be done, Brighton in an evening. But I'm still tempted next time to pitch a tent on the beach.

The new appointment of Chris Riddell to the post of Children's Laureate means so many good things for illustrators and everyone who loves illustration! Not only is he hoping to get lots more people drawing - parents, as well as kids - but he's a big supporter of our #PicturesMeanBusiness campaign. Hurrah!



Here's an article by Charlotte Eyre in this week's edition of The Bookseller:


(You can read the rest of the article here. Thanks so much, Chris!!)

Here's a photo of me at the award ceremony with Chris's co-author Paul Stewart, who's worked with him on The Edge Chronicles. They're an awesome team and live just a few houses away from each other!




I didn't get to talk much with Chris at the Laureate ceremony because he, predictably, was mobbed by fans and press the whole time. You can spot former Laureate Malorie Blackman, who's a big supporter of #PicturesMeanBusiness.



It was a big change from 2010 when The Graveyard Book won the Carnegie medal and Neil Gaiman was getting mobbed in that exact same room, and hardly anyone was paying attention to Chris, so he was free to have a long chat with me. (Some photos here from 2010.)


Chris Riddell at the Carnegie-Greenaway ceremony in 2010 with David Roberts and Viviane Schwarz

Those were different times, when the illustrator wasn't even credited in the award listing, despite having a huge role in creating the book, and Chris Riddell was slightly forgotten.



Thank goodness Joy Court and the Carnegie Greenaway committee were quick to see the error of this, and now illustrators are listed when an illustrated book is up for the Carnegie award. (Writers had always been listed with the books up for the Greenaway illustration award.)

But... dodgy book meta data is still creating huge problems. Here's a listing of the top book sales at Hay Festival, with the illustrators left out. (Chris even won a big illustration prize at the festival.) When I commented on the listing, the person who'd written the post edited it, but it was only later that the Dutch translator of The Parent Agency, Sandra Hessels, noted that Baddiel's book was actually highly illustrated by Jim Field. But I think the post was deemed too late to edit by then.



To be fair to the Hay bookshop person, I wouldn't have realised Jim had highly illustrated The Parent Agency either, and I'm a huge fan of Jim's work. He's not listed in the book data provided to Amazon, which suggests his publisher didn't fill out all the necessary boxes in the forms they submitted.



I wouldn't have realised the book was illustrated at all, and that's because his name's not written on the front cover. Eek, look, it's there in tiny letters under the bar code, on the back cover... there, under the pigeons.



With the way the covers are designed, big lights on the front, street pigeons on the back, it reminds me of that Pet Shop Boys song that goes: We're... the bums... you step over as you leave the theatre...

That's not right. Jim says he spent at least two weeks working on that cover alone, and he should be listed at least somewhere on the front cover. I know the HarperCollins marketing people see writer and comedian David Baddiel as the big attraction, but it's actually misleading; you wouldn't be able to know this book was illustrated if you just saw the cover. And the front cover is what most people see if they buy the book online, or pick it up in a shop. David was quick to point out on Twitter that he always credits Jim, but the Sales & Marketing people should have been more honest with the wording they put on the cover. As Jim's pointed out, this lack of cover credits is a HUGE problem in illustrated fiction, and just because an illustrator doesn't raise a big stink, it doesn't mean they're not completely gutted by the decision to omit their name. The Dutch publisher was clued in enough to include Jim. His name's not as large as David's, but at least it's there.


Photo of Jim Field from the United Agents website

Editors, designers, marketing people, this is a BIG ISSUE: please don't take the decision lightly to omit your illustrator's name from the front cover. Here's what you're doing:

* Refusing the illustrator the chance to build up their own name branding

* Denying potential buyers the information that the book is illustrated

* Telling the public that illustration is far, far less important than writing and denying readers a hero alongside the writer

* Making it hard for illustrators to take part credibly in Author Visits (denying them a further source of income and publicity)

* In the case of a television celebrity writer, you're saying that television people are much more important than book people. Is this something you really want to say, if you're going to try to sell more books? Aren't you shooting yourself in the foot by doing this?

Illustrators don't get salaries or pension plans like in-house publishing people. They need all the help they can get to build their brand and keep their career going. If you decide you can't possibly credit them (a lame decision), you should pay much, much, MUCH more money. Why not just credit them? Get with it, people.

So what's happening? I'm going to a meeting next week between The Bookseller, Nielsen, the Society of Authors and the Society of Children's Book Writers & Illustrators to discuss this problem. I originally thought Nielsen was the culprit, but it's looking more and more as though Nielsen are just dealing with the data they're given, and publishers are submitting faulty, irregular and incomplete data. Keep an eye on The Bookseller and Charlotte Eyre's articles for updates. But we need you to keep up the pressure on publishers to submit complete metadata, ask questions when illustrated cover art is revealed with no illustrator mention, reviewers leave out illustrators, and illustrators are left off front covers of highly illustrated books.

And I hope Chris will keep pushing for awareness about crediting illustrators; we're all in this together and as an illustrator, he knows exactly what it's like to be left out of listings where he should rightfully have his name. Visit picturesmeanbusiness.com if you want to catch up on what the campaign's about, and browse the #PicturesMeanBusiness hash tag on Twitter.



Here's another photo from the Children's Laureate ceremony: fab writer-illustrator Liz Pichon with her predictive fingernail.



Our Oliver and the Seawigs and Cakes in Space OUP publicist Harriet Bayly took my co-author Philip Reeve and me out for lunch after the ceremony. Funnily enough, that 2010 Carnegie Greeaway ceremony was the first time I ever met Philip, although we only exchanged a few words when I snapped his photo.



Philip was the person who originally came up with the Pegasus for the #PicturesMeanBusiness logo. It started out as a piece of wood he painted:



And together we turned it into an illustrated online story called The Dartmoor Pegasus, which you can read in full here.



I also did a lengthy blog post about visiting Chris's studio, way back in 2011, which you can see here. Congratulations on your new role as Children's Laureate, Chris!



You can follow Chris on Twitter (@chrisriddell50) and Instagram.

Huge congratulations to the excellent Chris Riddell, Britain's new Children's Laureate! And well done to Malorie Blackman, for being an awesome laureate for the last two years!



I need to go to Glasgow to do a Scottish Booktrust event (in, uh, six minutes), but I'll come back and add to this blog post, since Chris being laureate means EXCITING TIMES. :D



In the meantime, you can follow Chris on Twitter (@chrisriddell50) and Instagram.

I've read stories about princesses who have rooms in 'the highest room in the tallest tower' of a castle, but I never thought I'd actually get to live that story for a weekend!



When former Irish Children's Laureate Niamh Sharkey got in touch to see if I wanted to be part of a new festival at Lismore Castle called Towers and Tales, of course I said yes. And I brought along my trusty Jampire (knitted by Ann Lam). I'd been asked to do some picture book events for Jampires and There's a Shark in the Bath (but sadly, I seem to have lost my inflatable shark). Here's a drawing inspired by one of the Van Dyke paintings on the wall in the dining room:



It was better even than staying in a castle; we got to stay there with the family who own it, and they were so kind and gracious and provided HEAPS of food! Here's my writer friend Philip Ardagh, tucking in. (We did a lot of tucking in.)



And I wore a lot of hats. But not one with Philip Ardagh on it, unlike Lady Betty Compton, who couldn't resist:



(Ha ha, here are the two paintings the drawings are based on.)



And here I am in the entrance hall with lovely writer-illustrator Chris Riddell, when we first arrived, both of us looking slightly overawed and massively excited.




But I really ought to go back and start chronologically. What's it like, going to visit a big fancy castle? Well, here's Ardagh with his leprechauns, about to board the flight at Gatwick Airport.



And Riddell, who really does draw all the time.



Look, he drew me!



I sketched him, but I was slightly intimidated. Both of us had met book deadlines the night before we left - I finished Pugs of the Frozen North and he finished the third Goth Girl book - and we were both a bit shattered and had packed in a big rush.



Chris let me borrow his super-duper brush pen and I liked how the lines came out on this drawing a bit better. (Note: must order myself a Japanese Kurtake Million Years brush pen.) It's nicer than my Pentel brush pen and I can get more control with it.





After a driver brought us from Cork Airport to the castle, one of the first people we met was William Burlington, who owns the castle with his wife, Laura. He was so kind and down-to-earth and made us feel utterly welcome and at ease.



He and Laura are really into art (that's how they met) and have added some beautiful pieces to the family collection and set up a gallery in the castle and another in the town. But William's also a photographer and I found his website here, with some beautiful portraits. Here's a lovely picture he took of painter Sir Terry Frost (who, coincidentally, had a solo show in 2001 at the gallery that I used to run with friends).



I couldn't believe it when the footman helped me haul my suitcase up the stairs to the bedroom where I would be staying. Here's Jampire sitting on our bed, looking a little bit amazed.



And looking out the bedroom window:



We regrouped for drinks in a beautiful sitting room. Here's Philip, looking rather magnificent.



And Chris on a very flumpy sofa:



Somehow Chris managed to draw a picture of us while he was talking, which is something I find very difficult. I either make a bad drawing or I have the most spaced-out conversation, but he manages to be articulate AND draw, which is quite a skill.



We were given lovely customised festival welcome packs. Check out my hand-drawn shark!



Here's writer Archie Kimpton holding up Jumble Cat from his book with illustrator Kate Hindley.



I share an agent with Kate and absolutely ADORE her work, so I shall have to look out for these two books:



Then we had Afternoon Tea, looked a bit around the gardens, and pottered down the road as a group to see an art exhibition at St Carthage Hall, which is part of the Lismore Castle Arts project. Then it was time to get dressed for dinner. (Actually, William and Laura were so easygoing that I don't think we really had to worry about what we wore, but as you know, I like a good frock.) Here I am at my dressing table, feeling like I'm on the set of Gosford Park.



Such a fabulous dinner! That's Laura, standing on the right, and the butler, Denis, standing next to her. I'd heard about the super-efficiency of Denis, but I sat next to William on the second night's dinner and he said he'd been working for the family for over 30 years. And I got a sense of just HOW quick-on-the-mark he is when I was being filmed on the second day and said I needed to go get my ukulele. And seconds later, Dennis suddenly appeared with another ukulele from a cupboard, in case I wanted to use that one. I was massively impressed.



Here's William's sister, their actor friend Dominic West and Elaina Ryan from Children's Books Ireland.



Then lots of people chilled out on the flumpy sofa. Here's Brown Bag animation director Norton Virgien, Elaina, writer Marie-Louise Fitzpatrick, Niamh Sharkey, and Niamh's husband.



I finally couldn't keep my eyes open any longer, and also, I had ambitions of trying out the huge bathtub in my room. But I ended up going to sleep quite late because there was so much to look at, even in my room, including a bunch of old copies of Vogue:



Funnily enough, there was even a long 1935 feature article about Bryn Mawr College, where I'd gone to university, and the article was hilariously anti-feminist. There were loads of funny bits but here's one:



I was talking later to Laura, and she said that they'd found the magazines after the room had been derelict for awhile and was being rennovated. They've been bought by Adele Astaire, the sister of Fred Astaire. And she said that when Fred and Adele had started out, she'd looked even more promising as an actor and dancer than he had. So I did a bit of research on Adele before falling asleep and found this video, with the Lismore Castle link. How cool that we'd been reading the same magazines!



The next morning was FESTIVAL DAY. And the sun shone brightly on the castle's towers!



I reached out the bedroom window to take these photos.



Fortunately we didn't have too early of a start - the festival didn't start until 11am and my first event wasn't until noon - very civilised! I'd seen a small staircase next to my room and heard from secretary Ed Lamba that the Gruffalo had been doing a photo shoot earlier on the roof. So I made a little foray up it, to see if it was the roof staircase. It wound up a very long way.



First I came out on a high platform where I met a friendly plasterer named Pat, who was fixing the crenelations by replastering them and drilling metal strengthening rods through them. He took me up a level higher to the very tip of the tallest tower. WHOA!



Then there was a great comedy moment when I had to go back down the ladder through the little trap door but I went down and my skirts and petticoats didn't, with a great FWOOMP, and billowed out around the top of the stair hole. So Pat fought back laughter as I had to go around tucking all the bits of my skirt back down the hole, so I could at last descend and go to breakfast.



Once again, it felt like something out of Gosford Park or Rebecca. I remember this one scene in Rebecca where the second Mrs de Winter has a huge breakfast buffet to choose from but only takes a boiled egg (or was it a little bit of fish?) and worries about all the food going to waste. Philip and I did our bit and I don't think anything will have gone to waste.



It was fun to see the castle courtyard gearing up for the festival, with lots of people in costumes.



I got to draw some characters on the library bus:



I did a big of song warmup (Photo borrowed from CBI on Twitter):



And then it was time for SHARKS! I read There's a Shark in the Bath to the big assembled crowd of kids and parents at the Heritage Centre and we sang the Shark song. (It was a bit tricky, not having my stage show buddy Philip Reeve there to lead the kids in the song motions and do all the Papa Shark voices, like we did at Mountains to Sea festival, but we did all right.)



Then I led them in making paper sharks! I usually just have the kids draw sharks, but wonderful organiser Maura O'Keeffe provided quality paper and craft supplies, so we were able to make them look extra special. I loved how they all had such different personalities!



Then the Heritage Centre coordinator hung the sharks out front on the railings, which hopefully did not intimidate any passersby TOO much. (Photo borrowed from the Lismore Heritage Centre Facebook page.)



I came back to the castle for a quick costume change, and William's brother-in-law decided he'd play the Queen of Hearts, so I helped him out with a hair pom-pom and lipstick.



His real name's Nicky but he made me guess his name, so I called him Colin all weekend.



And I got to sit in for a story about a dragon from Dominic.



I didn't manage to get a photo of writer Darren Shan, but I said a quick hello to writer Shane Hegarty between events:



And writer Sarah Webb, who'd organised Mountains to Sea festival in Dun Laoghaire. (You can see my blog post from that here.)



My next event was a Jampires Hat-making tea party. (http://www.jampires.com">Jampires</a> is the book I created with David O'Connell and featured creatures who suck the jam out of doughnuts.) I'd never actually done this event before, but Maura said she could supply all the materials, so I decided to try it.



The hardest thing was drilling holes in the paper plates and getting everything to stick on; the Pritt sticks and glue weren't so helpful but we made good use of the elastic, staplers and pipe cleaners to anchor everything.



The hats came out very nicely! I loved the netting, it made everything bigger and frothier.



And the pom-poms were good fun.



We even had a couple adults making hats, such as this one:



And here are some of the finished hats!















Then I had a big tired flop in this beautiful room (I could live happily in this room), and Mike Skinner from The Streets came and filmed me for a documentary video about the festival.



Then another lovely Afternoon Tea with the festival volunteers, and pre-dinner drinks:



William gave great kudos to Maura O'Keeffe (pictured here) for all her excellent planning work.



After dinner, I took photos of Niamh and her daughter, who was proudly wearing the hat she'd made at our workshop. (Yay!) The whole festival idea came about from a conversation one evening in this room, when William, Laura, Niamh and John Huddy from the Illustration Cupboard were having dinner. Lismore had hosted lots of arts events, but no children's book events, and this was a first.



I desperately wanted to stay awake so I wouldn't miss anything, but by 1am, my eyes just wouldn't stay open, I was babbling like an idiot and I had to go to bed. So I was quite envious of Philip, who managed to stay up with the gang until 5am! Many fine drinks and tower-climbing shenanigans. But we had an early flight back to London and Philip didn't look quite so hot when he came down to breakfast at 6am. It was hard to leave. I wrote a message in the guest book:



Chris made a drawing:



Jampire flat-out refused to go.



When I finally got him out of bed, he took long, weepy looks out the window at the sun rising over the Blackwater River. I knew how he felt, this was a storybook I didn't want to close. There were so many things I'd missed and still wanted to do: explore the gardens more, catch a glimpse of the kitchen, take a walk in the woods and see all the follies, see the castle art gallery. But I felt tremendously lucky to have been able to do and see as much as I had.



Jampire was not so mature and the only way I could convince him to come out of the room was to leave a copy of Jampires, so at least some of his friends could stay.



But then he threw a final tantrum on the lawn and could not be consoled.



Thanks so much, William, Laura, Maura, Niamh, John, Denis, Ed, and all the staff and volunteers who made this festival happen. You were amazing!

PS It's not inexpensive, but if you have a party of 16 people or more and want to hire Lismore Castle and its 21 bedrooms, you can find details on its website. And if you want to see an earlier blog post I did about visiting Chatsworth (where William's parents live), you can visit it here.

A few weeks ago, I got an e-mail from Chris Riddell, asking if I'd like to visit him in Brighton, meet up with his writing partner, Paul Stewart, for lunch and then, something I'd always wanted to do, see his studio and have a nose around in his sketchbooks. (Would I! Oh, yes, please!) So last week, I hopped on a train and had the most brilliant day in Brighton. Here's a little doodle I made of the two of them. (Here's their joint website.)



I think Chris Riddell's drawings were some of the first illustration work I really examined when I emigrated to Britain. I remember studying and drawing from one of his Observer political cartoons that the Cartoon Museum had on display, and admiring how interesting he could make the knuckles on a hand look. And more recently, I've become a fan of his Ottoline books, which the comics community would go crazy about if they saw them, but they're generally hidden away from comics people in the section of the bookshop dedicated to children's chapter books. (Go find them, comickers!)

Here we are in his local pub: Paul, Chris, and Chris's wife, printmaker and painter Jo Riddell.



Chris and Jo have an amazing studio at the end of their garden, in an old barn they've converted into a very comfortable place to work. You can see a ladder in the back to the old hay loft, which makes for great storage space.



Here's Chris's desk, looking remarkably tidy, with his Dr Martins inks all lined up around the edges of his drawing board.




Here's a glimpse at some of the stuff I found on his desk: a cartoon, Sauron's Bedtime, which he drew for Issue Zero of the soon-to-be-launched Phoenix Comic (have you subscribed in time for the first issue?), and a very Steampunk-looking image for a new book he's working on.



When Chris pulled out his sketchbooks, it was total magic. I'd like to say I had deep, insightful conversations with him about them, but mostly it was just me making happy noises and spouting out things such as 'Oh! Oh, my! Oh! Ohmygoodnessthisisamazing!'



Chris doesn't just make little doodles or scribbled jottings, his sketchbooks look better than most people's final artwork, with beautiful diagrams and careful notes. It's like stepping into another world, looking at these, I could have spent months in that studio, just reading through sketchbooks.



Here are notes for a double-page spread layout with fold-open flaps. Chris doesn't do much digital work at all, everything's hand-drawn and hand-coloured.



And here's the final spread with flaps from his upcoming book, the sequel to his first Alienography book. Lots of funny, slightly twisted referenc

My first copy of When Titus Took the Train arrived!

Isn't it pretty? :D I've been carrying around the proofs for ages, but it's so amazing to see it as an actual book. I've posted a bunch of free download activity stuff over on on Titus's website.


And more! I gave a copy of my Dear Diary mini comic to the amazing illustrator Chris Riddell at the Carnegie Greenaway awards, and he was so chuffed with it that he promised to send me a copy of his own mini, Hairstyles of American Civil War Generals:





He wrote, This mini comic thing is addictive! Yay! He's going to call his next one The Book of Colours in Black and White.

And the post made miracles again! Here's a packet from the fabulous David Lasky, who makes comics in Seattle. He's been working on a graphic novel about the Carter Family. David included some of his early mini comics (Dear Ella features an awkward relationship with an attractive life model and My Flying Dream is, as the title suggests, about a dream he once had. I love that he wrote on Salmon Bay Cafe paper. My sister took me for brunch there on a visit several years ago and it made me a tiny bit homesick.



Here's a closeup of his comic strip:


Thanks so much, guys! And thanks, Bridget, for the diary you sent! :D Gonna be doing a lot more diary writing this year.

And fresh in, Alex T. Smith just sent this photo via Twitter of our books nestled together in the shop tent at the Edinburgh Book Festival. Vern and Lettuce a whole month early! (See you in Edinburgh tomorrow, Alex!)