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The UK’s 2016 Little Rebels Award shortlist has been announced – and once again it sets a challenge for the judges… It presents a good mix of books for all ages. There are some big names among the books’ creators – and notable is Gill Lewis’s Gorilla Dawn, … Continue reading ... →

Dreams of Freedom: In Words and Pictures
edited by Janetta Otter-Barry, designed by Judith Escreet, with a Foreword by Michael Morpurgo
(Amnesty International/Frances Lincoln, 2015)

All royalties donated to Amnesty … Continue reading ... →

Are you ever too old for a picture book?

Walk into a bookshop, and you’ll rarely find a picture book on the shelves labelled 5-8, 9-12 or Teenage/Young Adult (the age bandings used in the most widespread chain of bookshops in the UK), implicitly telling buyers that picture books are only for those under 5.

But what if you have a picture book about Descartes’s philosophical statement “Je pense donc je suis” or to put it another way “Cogito Ergo Sum”?

A book which not only explores learning to listen to yourself, to trust your own instincts but also what it feels like when you think you have failed and how to fight against the dark thoughts that then crowd in.

Gosh, if only we all knew everything we needed to know about these issues by the time we were five! Wouldn’t life be much simpler?

I am Henry Finch written by Alexis Deacon and illustrated by Viviane Schwarz is a new picture book which makes readers and listeners think about every one of these big concepts and more. It’s about being brave, about being independent, about feeling secure enough to not follow the crowd (though also being happy to be part of a community).

It’s also about totally adorable little birds and one terribly monstrous beast who wants to eat them all up.

Henry is just one of a huge flock of finches. They make a racket all day long, doing the same as each other over and again but one day Henry starts thinking for himself. He starts to have his own dreams, his own vision of who he could be, independent from the community he’s grown up in.

Alexis Deacon has written (although not specifically about Henry Finch):

“It seems to me that if every character in your story is entirely on message and engaged with the world you have created it can be very off-putting for the reader. I find that I am drawn to stories where not every character follows the grain: Reluctant characters, perverse characters, selfish characters, irreverent characters. They are often the catalysts for action too.”

And Henry Finch does indeed go against the grain, doing things differently to those around him, daring to be different. But he’s not selfish. In fact, his ability to think for himself gives him the courage to tackle the monster who threatens his family and friends.

Danger, doubt and darkness beset Henry, but he survives and shares what he has learned with his fellow finches, sparking a cascade of individual ideas and wishes as they each set off to explore the world, though not before reassuring each other that “We will come back“; the finches are thinking for themselves, but individuality doesn’t have to lead to the destruction of their community.

Deacon’s story is full of food for thought, opportunities for discussion and debate, whether you’re 4 or 40 or more. The meaty issues explored never become overwhelming, not least because Viviane Schwarz’s illustrations bring so much humour, delight and simplicity into the story.

The use of fingerprints to illustrate a narrative about what it means to be an individual is a stroke of genius; is there a more powerful symbol of individual human identity than the imprint left by the small ridges on the tips of our fingers? They also bring massive child appeal; mucky fingerprints on walls and furniture are unavoidable aspects of life with children, and so there is nothing like these marks to proudly proclaim, “Hey, I’m here, me, this child, and I can make a mark on the world around me!”.

I really like how Schwarz sometimes brings her real life community into her artwork. In her graphic novel The Sleepwalkers there are crowd scenes filled with real people she knows, and in I am Henry Finch, she’s included fingerprints from friends as well as her own. The joy she’s had in creating these images can be seen in the hugely expressive faces and wings of the finches, and that seeped into us: we just had to make our own flock of finches using the same technique.

We started out with inkpads, paper and lots of messy fingerprints…

…but soon we were experimenting with other sorts of prints too…

Then we added beaks and wings…

And soon we had our very own chattering of finches:

One or two elephants interloped! (these were made from prints using the side of our fists – click here to see what Viv Schwarz created with similar prints)

These finches were born from toe-prints, whilst the beasts were heel-prints:

They just kept on coming, causing havoc, and just getting on with doing their own thing.

Whilst fingerprinting and making our own flock of birds we listened to:

Other activities which could work well alongside reading I am Henry Finch include:

I’ve more philosophy in the form of illustrated books coming up soon on the blog, with offerings from the Netherlands and Spain. What are your favourite picture books which deal with the big issues in life?

Disclosure: I received a free review copy of I am Henry Finch from the publishers.

By Candy Gourlay Writing novels is an honourable way to make a living, but sometimes you can feel like you're so deep in the cave of your imagination there is no such thing as real life. To stop my brain turning into a cow-pat from spending too much time in the writer's cave, I've been trying to diversify a little bit. Last year, I attended a graphic novel course where I made comics. That was

I think you should read what Alexis has to say about observational drawing.

Observational drawing is good for you, right?  I certainly think so.  I have never been much into sitting in front of something for hours on end and trying to make an exact duplicate of it though.  We have cameras for that.  There are loads of things that you can do with a drawing that you can't do with a camera.  One of the most useful is the power you have to recombine elements you have observed into entirely new arrangements.  I use this all the time when drawing moving subjects like people or animals.  The are almost always going too fast to get as much information as I would like so I have a couple of tricks for collaging several together. If the subject is say, a cat, it might well be moving constantly but it will also be repeatedly hitting the same sorts of pose or taking the same sequence of steps.  If you have a few drawings on the go at once you can wait for each pose to come around in turn and work on the related drawing when it does.  With people, I often like to draw them in segments, taking a posture from one subject, a hairdo from another, shoes from a third etc.  This has the added bonus of making the people you ultimately draw unrecognisable should any of the subjects happen to see your sketchbook.  It also means you don't have to gaze intently at one poor fellow for hours on end.  Knowing you are being drawn is like having the sensation you get when someone is taking your photo stretched out over half an hour. 

Alexis Deacon

(1) All this past week, and next week, BBC Radio 4 Extra is serialising Patrick Ness’ A Monster Calls. It’s wonderfully read by David Hayman. Anyone can listen, worldwide, but episodes are not available for long online so don’t hang around. In each case the reading of A Monster Calls starts about 45 minutes into the host programm (The 4 O’Clock Show)
Episode 1
Episode 2
Episode 3
Episode 4
Episode 5, today’s episode, isn’t yet available on line.

A Monster Calls continues all of next week, every day at about 16.45 on Radio 4 Extra (digital or online).

(2) The House of Illustration has created a gorgeous looking set of resources for teachers of science at KS2 (7-11 year olds, here in the UK, though I’m sure these will be useful anywhere science is taught). Science + Illustration? I love it! You can find out more by watching the video below, or by clicking on http://www.houseofillustration.org.uk/teachers-resources/.

(3) Finally, we’re huge comic fans here and I found out this week about a comic which needs your help.

“LOAf Magazine is a new publication for 9-12 year olds, jampacked with comics, stories, puzzles and more. LOAf is dedicated to creating a place where the imaginings of brilliant emerging and established illustrators, writers and narrative artists are collected for children to read and enjoy. More than that: it’s our aim to make it a magazine where children ARE some of those talented contributors. A perfect circle!”

It sounds terrific, but it needs financial help to get off the ground and so it’s working on crowd-funding the first issue. If you’d like to support LOAF you can find out more, and pledge your support here: http://www.peoplefund.it/loaf-magazine/

It’s current list of contributors includes Joff Winterhart, Rose Robbins, Mel Castrillon, Alexis Deacon, Liv Bargman, Daisy Hirst, Mike Smith and Trudi Esberger amongst others, and I for one would love to see it get off the ground.

My latest book! And my first book that I didn't write: Alexis did.
It's almost out. Well, It'll come out in May. And yesterday I visited Alexis for dinner, and he surprised me with a proper bound copy of it that he'd picked up at Walker Books.
Isn't it cute? It's got a hole in the cover and everything.

• We covered up all the characters' heads for almost the entire book. I get very annoyed whenever people claim that we only connect with characters that have expressive faces. There are many other ways of being expressive and engaging, and here's my bit to prove it. You'll see.
• A really limited palette. The hamsters are orange. Some things are yellow. Everything else is just one colour, changing with the passing of time.
• An epic adventure tale that shows none of the actual adventure but is instead set in an entirely boring place.
• All sorts of hidden little plot hints just for fun that most people will never notice.
• And, yesss, a hole trough the cover.

...Over at my Lightbox blog!!! :0)

I know that several of you who read Playing by the book also write book reviews. What’s the process you go through for this? Do you draft your reviews? Do you check out what other’s have written about the book in question?

And, dear readers, whether your write reviews or not, what is it that you look for in a review? Do you read book reviews elsewhere e.g. in magazines?

When we find a book we love and I want to review here, I tend to sit on it for quite a few days. If it’s a book I really love, often the review takes even longer to write – In fact, library fines are generally one way for me to tell which books are the real gems! Finding the words that a great book deserves can be quite a challenge for me and today’s book has been a case in point.

I’ve just sat down with a coffee and re-read (on my own, with some peace and quiet) Jitterbug Jam by Barbara Jean Hicks and Alexis Deacon. The first few phrases I jotted down after closing the covers were:

Jitterbug Jam is a wonderful story about finding friendship despite differences and fear. A young monster cannot sleep at night because there’s a boy hiding under his bed.

Even Godzilla, who everyone knows
is the bravest monster ever,
would be scared of a boy
with pink skin
and orange fur on his head
where his horns by right should be,
and eyes that awful colour the sky is
when you wake up in the middle of the day
and can’t see, it’s so bright out.

What the young monster learns in the course of the story is that the way to overcome his fear is to reach out and take the risk of (quite literally) extending a hand in friendship. The gamble pays off, and the young monster realises that he and the boy are more alike than not.

I lie awake a long time after,
thinking about that boy,
how he has a brother
and plays Hide ‘n’ Seek
and says ‘please’ and ‘thank you’
just like Mama taught me.

And I think about how that boy must have a ma of his own,
and maybe a grampa like Boo-Dad
who tells him never, ever to
look at a monster’s toothy grin,
or he’s like to turn
to fluff and dust for ever.

The story is told in the first person, with a distinctive, unusual voice (I can hear the words with what I’d call a southern US drawl), and whilst this might make the text more of a challenge for a kid to read to themselves, it lends the story very well to being read out loud. The illustrations don’t remind me of any other’s I’ve seen before – and by this I want to say that they really are something fresh, different, engaging. They are full of detail that you’ll want to return to and will give you plenty to talk about with your kids.

Despite severa