Well, look at us. Here's Alexis giving his bit of the acceptance speech for the 2016 Little Rebels Award at the London Radical Bookfair, with his hand in his pocket as is appropriate, and me making the appropriate face for an award winner, and Wendy Cooling getting ready to hand over the framed trophy, most appropriate of all in every way.
This is hands down the best thing I've won in my whole life. - The Little rebels Award recognises books that celebrate social justice and equality for children aged 0-12 - what could be better?
Don't be too cross that I was reduced to making faces by the end, people said the most wonderful things about "I am Henry Finch".
Kerry Mason of Letterbox Library who runs the award put it like this:
“It’s an absolute gem of a picture book. It deploys the simplest of graphics and text to ponder vast questions about our humanity. Viviane Schwarz’s blood red thumbprint finches get to the beating heart of our existence and Alexis Deacon’s minimalist, beautifully structured, sentences are like a beginner’s course in existentialist thought. This is a book which respects and honours the youngest of readers, believing them capable of and thirsty for philosophical thought.”
Out fellow shortlistees were: Michael Rosen and Neal Layton for
Uncle Gobb and the Dread Shed, Gill Lewis with
Gorilla Dawn (who won the award in 2015), John Boyne with
The Boy at the Top of the Mountain, Yasmeen Ismail’s
I’m a Girl, Michael Foreman with
The Little Bookshop and the Origami Army! - A strong list!
We had a panel talk with everyone who could make it. It was a sunny day (hence me stealing Alexis' hat), the trees around Goldsmith College were scattering pink petals everywhere. It was a very friendly talk, despite the underlying frustration of an overall lack of "rebellious" picture books being published in the UK. It's hard to not be friendly when pretty much everyone involved still has pink petals stuck somewhere on their head. Michael Foreman pulled his impressive backlist out of a handy suitcase like a stage magician, Alexis and I demonstrated some domestic birdsong and everyone agreed that there should be more rebellious books. I contemplated the 70s German books I had as a child and wondered if I was the only one there who feels that current UK picture books are incredibly tame on the whole, and that the books I learned to read with would blow them sideways...
My favourite book had a page with a naked king that you could glue paper pants on if you thought he deserved them, and my sister made him some that you could take off again just to annoy him. Many times I went holding a book that bothered me up to my mother, asking: "Is this ok???" And she's say: "No, it isn't", or "Yes it is", or "I am not sure", and always "Lets talk about it," but never "They really shouldn't make such confusing books for children!" - Reading the same books again, I still find that they encourage discussion, and I am impressed with my family, and grateful.
So I guess I was lucky. I want all children to be that lucky. I don't want access to information and permission to take agency to be a privilege. Opportunities to be confused and difficult and curious and learning in ways that can't be measured in standardised tests and judged across the board must be a basic right for every child.
It was great to meet the judges and organisers, the fellow artists and book sellers at the fair.
I am enormously heartened seeing the level of political engagement in such a respectful and creative environment.
I've got a bit tired of London lately as everything I love is getting pushed out and shined over gradually, but... we have a new mayor now who I actually voted for, and we still have events like this one, and there is hope. Maybe we can even fix education, eventually.
I am enormously proud to feel that Henry can be a mascot for rebellious thought, until next year. But let's make books fit to dethrone him with panache and kindness and curiosity. Let's keep asking questions as well as explaining what we think we know. Picture books are not just for putting tiny children to sleep peacefully, they are for waking them up as well.
Here's a writeup in the Guardian (just in case you are for example a member of my family and want to see that this is a real award) and
here is the proper, detailed official event writeup by Letterbox Library.
Photos copyright Letterbox Library.
Look at these kids from Oaks Primary school in Birmingham drawing Henry Finch and the Beast for World Book Day...
I had a few wonderful school visits recently...
In St Christopher's School I helped with a project where the kids made their own picture books. I did a day of tutorials, some sketching and in the end made a whole dummy book on stage.
They had a biology lesson in the gym, handling exotic animals, which was great fun to draw.
In the Haberdasher's Aske's School for Girls I visited for a day with Alexis. We read them our books and drew monsters together.
Very important to have a party stomach.
modular beasts.
It was awesome.
Thanks everyone!
I just sent off my artwork to be auctioned off for
this excellent fundraiser in aid of Bath Festivals:
This is your chance to own a unique piece of original art by one of the UK’s best and most popular illustrators. Come along on the night to bid on one of several framed pieces of art – each depicting the famous Bath Children’s Literature Red Chair.
Amazing artists including including Chris Riddell (Goth Girl), Ben Cort(Aliens love Underpants), Nick Sharratt (The Story of Tracey Beaker), Korky Paul (Winnie the Witch), Alison Jay (Welcome to the Zoo), Michael Foreman (War Game) and Axel Scheffler (The Gruffalo) have all donated pieces featuring their own, entertaining interpretation of the Festivals’ iconic red storytelling chair.
Help secure the future of the Bath Festivals internationally renowned programme of popular Festivals and be in with a chance of acquiring a piece of artwork to treasure for your family, school or business.
An Online Auction of many more Artworks will be launched on the night.
My picture is painted using all materials I have picked for the art lessons and workshops I'll be giving soon via
The Kraken Studio - all cheap stuff but really nice.
Go and admire the rest, there are some Mighty Fine Red Chairs to be had.
"I am Henry Finch" seems to be doing well since it was published earlier this year, it's getting good reviews and I keep meeting it in bookshops. - People have asked me about illustrating Alexis' texts, how we work together seeing that he is also an illustrator and I am also a writer. So I thought it would be good to write this MAKING OF.
So, first of all Alexis wrote the text - I had asked him to write something about finches because I like them. Then he showed it to me.
I could see the book straight away. It made me laugh a lot. It was pretty much perfect.
At the first few presentations, people weren’t sure about the philosophical aspect, whether it would get across to small children. I was sure that it would, and kept crudely fingerpainting rough illustrations on my ipad. “Look, look, this will be awesome!” I insisted, drawing more and more beady-eyed lumps with stick legs. The monster was just a wild scribble, and the night paint-bucketed in. I drew a picture of a finch thinking of himself, and Ben Norland, the art director, laughed and said: “Oh, I think I see…” so we started working on it. After that it seemed like every week there was someone else who saw the latest version, went “Oh I see…” and started laughing.
I think that moment is heart of the whole story. A finch, hardly more than an anonymous scribble, sees himself and realises that he is somebody. His thought is identical to himself in that very moment. Truth, but no meaning, no future, no past… he could stop there. It’s a perfect moment. But he goes on, and that, I think is the greatest thing he does: he keeps thinking when he doesn’t need to, that’s what leads to all the rest.
I wanted the finches to be all the same but every one unique, that’s why I used fingerprints. Henry is always printed with the same finger, actually, and no one else has that particular print. While working on the book I started to recognise my friends’ fingerprints. I fingerprinted everyone who came to the house or the studio for a few weeks to get a good collection - I needed big thumbs for finches in the foreground and daintier ones for the background, also different shapes for different moods. Finches change shape a lot. I used to keep finches myself, so I know. I love finches more keenly than any other kind of animal, I think, they are amazing little creatures, brave, resilient and funny.
The linework is drawn with my favourite fountain pen. I always carry that one.
The beast is painted in watercolour because that’s how I instantly imagined it. I have a fear of marine invertebrates which I know most people don’t share. I figured that referencing them, I will be able to feel scared enough myself to draw a convincing monster without making it so frightening that small children will hide from the book. - Its internal organs are a mixture of drawings of sea creatures and cross sections of the human inner ear. It’s just a particularly odd-looking organ, the inner ear, and it amused me that the beast has one in its guts.
The actual design of the beast is a collaboration with Alexis - we spent an afternoon playing a drawing game with watercolour blobs, and I assembled the parts that seemed right.
I put a lot of little interactions in between the finches so that the book would be fun to look at even if you don’t follow the text, and tried to make the more conceptual philosophical pictures accessible enough that each one could be discussed separately, in simple terms, without the text. The page where Henry understands the circle of life pertaining to his part of the world is supposed to be like a little story in itself, but one that you can grasp in one moment, like a thought. Comics are great for that, showing any amount of time presented as one moment, and not even linear but as we experience it - everything interrelating. The rest of the book is paced in a linear manner, mostly by page turns, but on that spread you can spend a moment or an hour, see all at once or follow the threads, say “It is!” or speak about everything you see.
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| click to make bigger! |
I am very glad about the way this book came together. If I hadn’t been so excited that I fingerpainted those hurried digital scribbles on the spot and made someone laugh with them, I wouldn’t have known to keep the art this simple. If Alexis hadn’t been doing workshops turning blobs of watercolour into creatures, I wouldn’t have thought of making the design of the beast into a drawing game. - Working with Alexis makes these accidents easy because he really knows how to improvise.
I hope that people will like Henry Finch as much as I do. I had him tattooed on my arm, to remember what I learned. Keep thinking, keep listening, speak, because You Are, and It Is.
!!!BRAND NEW BOOK!!!!
!!!PUBLISHED RIGHT NOW!!!
I am very excited about this. "I am Henry Finch" was written by Alexis Deacon and illustrated by me. It's our third collaboration, and seriously, we've got this down now. I am so proud of this book - Alexis has been my best friend for many years now, and he still surprises me with his ideas.
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| Alexis at work |
He wrote this strange philosophical book. I could see it in my head instantly, and couldn't stop laughing. I had to draw one of the pictures to explain why it was so funny, and shortly after everyone at the publisher's was laughing, too, and we were off.
I decided right away that all the finches would be made out of fingerprints, and to avoid giving the world a complete set of mine I collected them off friends all through the project.
There's also a Great Beast in this book which is painted in watercolour. Alexis and I designed it by painting a load of blobs and interviewing them for the part.
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| Some hopefuls |
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| The winner |
I had an absolutely brilliant time drawing this book.
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| Wibbly bits. |
I'd just moved into a new work space with space to spread out and experiment, and I'd found the perfect fountain pen that I've been carrying every day since.
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| Every Finch in this book is carefully calibrated for maximum finchiness. |
I loved the book so much that I have been using Henry as my Twitter avatar since, and, well, I had him tattooed on my arm.
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| Photo by Sarah McIntyre |
I AM HERNY FINCH out in a whole load of countries. It's out! It really is!
So buy one already. Or two.
Check it out check it out CHECK IT OUT!
They'll be for sale on the first of January, but THEY ALREADY EXIST AND THEY ARE AWESOME LOOK!
Yawn.
Am working late to catch up.
It's suddenly autumn, so I cooked a soup earlier to cheer up the household. I shall reheat a bowl now (which makes it taste nicer, I expect).
Here's a bit of what's on my screen.
This book will be very, very simple for the most part, and simple is terribly complicated sometimes... yawn...
Good night!
Another book my son is going to love. (Me too)
That looks AWESOME!
Oooh glad you like it!! Hey Alexis I made a new one for the cover, check yer dropbox