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Ethel was always a little bit different than the other sheep.

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5 Stars The Shepherd Girl of Bethlehem: A Nativity Story Carey Morning Alan Marks 32 Pages     Ages: 4 + …………………….. Inside Jacket:  The shepherd’s young daughter helped with the sheep every single day. How she longed to help through the night as well; but her father said it was too dark and she needed sleep. [...]

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The illustrated adventures of three friends, which will be updated regularly. Go here to read and follow: bearandwhitefox

Filed under: journeys

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 5 stars “The wolf is dead!” No sooner have thr Three ittle Pigs atarted celebrating the death of the Big Bad Wolf than a sheep decides to apply to be the wolf’s replacement. He’s barely slipped on the wolf’s skin when he starts to change before his friends’ very eyesa—becoming perhaps a bit more than [...]

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Just posted a comic in Writer Unboxed about author platforms and sheep, plus a winning Non-Denominational Spring Festival Lagomorph cartoon caption winner, PLUS my exciting two-book contract news for those who hadn't heard. :-)

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Bright and colorful animals and children invite your child to count, count, and count some more as you explore this book full of numerous scenes. Click here to read my full review.

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Folksy drawings illustrate an updated classic nursery rhyme as a boy ventures through his farm and discovers where wool, honey, milk, eggs, and down come from. Click here to read my full review.

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Feeding the Sheep by Leda Schubert, illustrated by Andrea U’Ren

Follow the process from sheep to sweater through the eyes of a young girl.  The book starts with feeding the sheep corn and hay on a wintry day.  Then it moves on to shearing, washing the wool, drying the wool, carding it, spinning the yarn, dyeing the yarn, and then knitting it.  Each step is done by the little girl’s mother to the refrain of “What are you doing?” The book uses gentle rhymes and repetition to show the steps as well as detailed illustrations where the young girl gets involved too.

This book is ideal for toddlers and preschoolers who will enjoy realizing where their sweaters come from.  The style of writing is approachable and gentle.  Nicely the book comes full circle back to the feeding of sheep, making the point that the cycle of sheep to sweater continues.  U’Ren’s illustrations are filled with homey touches and small details, yet they will work well with a group.  A wonderful touch is the changing of the seasons throughout the book, often glimpsed only out of the window.  This again underlines the cyclical nature of farming.

Short sentences with plenty of rhythm and repetition, make this a friendly choice.  It is also a joy to read aloud.  Appropriate for ages 2-4.

Reviewed from library copy.

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Well I haven't kept to my New Years Resolution to blog more often! I've been really slack recently, I don't know why, I seem to have lost all of my inspiration. I've been working on a few things over the last month or so...a couple of children's maps for an American educational publisher, and I started working on a picture book, which has unfortunately now been put on hold. I'm now trying to get lots of new work done for my portfolio, any suggestions are welcome! Just need to get the creative juices flowing again, I'm feeling rusty!

I'm trying to make my portfolio more diverse, I've been working on some human characters and think I will experiment with some images for an older audience. This is an image of the nativity:




















Hopefully I will be posting a lot more from now on!

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Twin sheep! Kind of linked...!? Not sure which one is the evil twin though? I need to try and get my IF done over the weekend instead of leaving it to the last minute everytime!! x

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Filed under: snow, winter

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FEEDING THE SHEEP, by Leda Schubert, ill. by Andrea U'Ren (FSG 2010)(ages 3-6). While her mother tends to the sheep and the wool and the spinning and the knitting (and more), the little girl asks, "What are you doing?" At each stage, the mother tells of, and the illustrations show, a step in the process of turning wool into a sweater.

FEEDING THE SHEEP is an elegant tale of mother-daughter bonding and participatory education. Drawings are bright and cheerful, and together with the text, provide a heartwarming introduction to sheep husbandry and the work that goes behind the work that goes into a sweater.

Baa, ram, ewe! (Sorry, I just couldn't help myself)

Read a guest post by Leda Schubert on FEEDING THE SHEEP at Cynsations.

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A sad moment in The Sleepwalkers.

It's Sunday, I'm drawing, I have to stop drawing for a moment because I don't have the correct page grid for the next page... ah well, I'll just leave it out for now.

I took lots of pictures of people on my trip into town today, I more or less just snapped everyone who I noticed for some reason or another, and tomorrow I'll draw them. I feel I've become a bit lazy about observing poses.

I bought a whole load of materials, including an electric eraser with which I can rub stuff out a bit more precisely than before. I also bought a concertina sketchbook to fill with drawings of people, to create one long street scene eventually.

I watched three episodes of The IT Crowd today while drawing, I'm running out fast... what can I watch next... grargh...

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Reason I like it so much: I got to use the beastie that I crocheted in the name of research years ago.


Grrr.

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What does 5 rare breed sheep and a cell phone equal? 

"OHMYGRASS!" 

 One crazy caper that kids' are gonna love.

After Sal is bonked on the head by a tossed cell phone, things for the sheep begin to get crazy - could this "mysterious object" be a sign from "Lord Aries" (the sheep of all Sheepdom) that he needs help?

The Warrior Sheep posse sets out to answer the call and soon find themselves on the journey of a lifetime.  However, a ride on a plane, train, boat, tunnel tube and a hike up a treacherous mountain aren't enough to dampen the Warrior Sheep's fleece or to stop the two bank robbers (whose cell phone contains all the evidence needed to put them away for a very long time). 

"A couple of woolbags aren't going to stand in their way, even if they have to chase them all over London."

This book is fun, adventureous, action packed and hilarious.  The writing is quick but subtle enough that your tweens will love the ride.

The Quest of the Warrior Sheep
By Christine & Christopher Russell
Sourcebooks Jabberwocky

Price: $6.99
ISBN: 9781402255113

Quest of the Warrior Sheep is also available on Amazon

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This is the latest post in our regular OUPblog column SciWhys. Every month OUP editor and author Jonathan Crowe will be answering your science questions. Got a burning question about science that you’d like answered? Just email it to us, and Jonathan will answer what he can. Today: how do organisms evolve?

By Jonathan Crowe

The world around us has been in a state of constant change for millions of years: mountains have been thrust skywards as the plates that make up the Earth’s surface crash against each other; huge glaciers have sculpted valleys into the landscape; arid deserts have replaced fertile grasslands as rain patterns have changed. But the living organisms that populate this world are just as dynamic: as environments have changed, so too has the plethora of creatures inhabiting them. But how do creatures change to keep step with the world in which they live? The answer lies in the process of evolution.

Many organisms are uniquely suited to their environment: polar bears have layers of fur and fat to insulate them from the bitter Arctic cold; camels have hooves with broad leathery pads to enable them to walk on desert sand. These so-called adaptations – characteristics that tailor a creature to its environment – do not develop overnight: a giraffe that is moved to a savannah with unusually tall trees won’t suddenly grow a longer neck to be able to reach the far-away leaves. Instead, adaptations develop over many generations. This process of gradual change to make you better suited to your environment is called what’s called evolution.

So how does this change actually happen? In previous posts I’ve explored how the information in our genomes acts as the recipe for the cells, tissues and organs from which we’re constructed. If we are somehow changing to suit our environment, then our genes must be changing too. But there isn’t some mysterious process through which our genes ‘know’ how to change: if an organism finds its environment turning cold, its genome won’t magically change so that it now includes a new recipe for the growth of extra fur to keep it warm. Instead, the raw ‘fuel’ for genetic change is an entirely random process: the process of gene mutation.

In my last post, I considered how gene mutation alters the DNA sequence of a gene, and so alters the information stored by that gene. If you change a recipe when cooking, the end product will be different. And so it is with our genome: if the information stored in our genome – the recipe for our existence – changes, then we must change in some way too.

I mentioned above how the process of mutation is random. A mutation may be introduced when an incorrect DNA ‘letter’ is inserted into a growing chain as a chromosome is being copied: instead of manufacturing a stretch of DNA with the sequence ATTGCCT, an error may occur at the second position, to give AATGCCT. But it’s just as likely that an error could have been introduced at the sixth position instead of the second, with ATTGCCT becoming ATTGCGT. Such mutations are entirely down to chance.

And this is where we encounter something of a paradox. Though the mutations that occur in our genes to fuel the process of evolution do so at random, evolution itself is anything but random. So how can we reconcile this seeming conflict?

To answer this question, let’s imagine a population of sheep, all of whom have a woolly coat of similar thickness. Quite by chance, a gene in one of the sheep in the population picks up a mutation so that offspring of that sheep develop a slightly thicker coat. However, the thick-coated sheep is in a minority: most of the population carry the normal, non-mutated gene, and so have coats of normal thickness. Now, the sheep population live in a fairly tempera

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By Christine and Christopher Russell, for The Children’s Book Review
Published: August 24, 2011

Authors Christine and Christopher Russell are a husband and wife team writing children’s books together. The Warrior Sheep Go West is their second book, following closely on the hooves of The Quest of the Warrior Sheep (February 2011). Christopher Russell had a successful career in British television drama before becoming a children’s novelist and Christine has always been closely involved in his work.

We’re often asked how we collaborate, if we ever have disagreements and if so, how we settle them.

Well the initial ideas, wherever they have sprung from, are developed on the hoof. Sitting at a desk at this early stage sends us to sleep so we plot the storylines and invent characters whilst we’re walking, usually on the beach or the cliffs near our home. There’s nothing like a howling gale to keep the brain spinning. Then we take turns at writing chapters. Whichever one of us is the bravest or keenest dives in first and hands the results to the other. And that’s when the fur sometimes flies. But disagreements are usually resolved during heated but short debates – or maybe that should read explosions – and then one or other of us goes back to the drawing board and tries again. We don’t always wait until we’re both happy with a chapter. Sometimes it’s better to plough on regardless then go back and revise bit by bit.

The one thing we never do is sit side by side at a desk working. Christopher needs peace and quiet. And he writes longhand! Yep. He’s Mr Biro. Well, you can chew the end of a pen but it’s not  easy to chew  a laptop. Christine works straight onto the keyboard and revises a million times per page.

It’s unusual for two people to write together. And even more unusual if they’re married to each other. But we’re used to being under each other’s feet the whole time. Until recently Christopher was the sole writer. He produced scripts for a number of major television series in the UK. Christine helped at initial ideas stage and with plotting and then later in the process with script editing.

The same applied for the first four novels Christopher wrote for children. But then we got the idea for the Warrior Sheep Series and decided to have a go at actually writing together. It just seemed to be the right thing to do at the time. And it seems to be working: we’re having fun and we love the thought that our efforts are making people laugh.

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In The Warrior Sheep Go West, the follow up to the critically acclaimed sleeper hit The Quest of the Warrior Sheep, by Christine and Christopher Russell, the courageous and loveable ovine heroes are back for another sheep-tastic adventure with, if possible, even more hilarious fun than before. The “Eppingham Posse” of Oxo, Links, Jaycey, Wills, and Sal hoof it to Las Vegas for a new epic mission. This time, it is the entirety of sheepdom that hangs in the balance, and it will take their combined fleecy genius to outwit the monster named Red Tongue (evading in the process a mad scientist, joyriding teenagers, a flash flood, a sword-wielding magician, and a menacing bear) and save the, ahem, eweniverse.

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