The postman delivered another parcel this week. It's the German co-edition of Jungle Grumble:
It's always fun to get copies of foreign co-editions of my picture books. I especially enjoy it when I get German ones, as I did German A level at school, many, many moons ago.
It got very rusty of course so, in the days when I used to torture myself at the gym, I used to work my way, painfully slowly, through German translations of trashy novels, while I was puffing away on the exercise bike - much easier vocabulary than more worthy literature. People used to laugh at me, because I had to hold the book in one hand and a pocket dictionary in the other!
After that, I decided to re-do a German GCSE, just for fun, as an evening class, because I was OK reading off the page, but absolutely rubbish at any kind of conversation - which is after all, the point of a language. I really enjoyed myself and was a real swot. A little group of us used to get together in-between classes and test each other. I got an A* and was very pleased with myself.
Anyway, enough of this rambling and back to Jungle Grumble. The fact that I can read the text (more or less) is interesting, because things are not always direct translations. The title for instance is no longer Jungle Grumble but 'The Hippo Wishes He was a Bird'.
It's great news that the 2014 German edition of 5000 copies has already sold out: the copy my publisher has just sent me is from a 2015 reprint - they have done another 4000. Hurrah!
I also just found out that Jungle Grumble has now got a Chinese co-edition. I had Chinese editions of Stinky! and Lark in the Ark too. I love the ones with different alphabetic styles. I've had lots of Korean ones and Big Bad Wolf is Good was published in Arabic, which is great for taking into schools, because it runs in the opposite direction to a UK book, something I didn't know until I got my copy.
I've been trying to tidy up the studio a bit today. I need to get down to more work on my new book, but there are piles of stuff on every surface and it's a nightmare. I don't work well in mess: I have a threshold but, once crossed, I have to sort things out.
So to free up some shelf space, I've had another clear out of my foreign co-editions.
The publisher sends me at least one copy of each co-edition that's printed. They are great fun to see and sometimes I use them in my
school workshops, but they do clog up the shelves. In any case, I think a book, especially a children's book, should be out there with a child, not stuck in storage in my studio.
So, every so often I have a blitz and give them all away. Sometimes they go to relevant individuals but, if not, I donate them to Sheffield Libraries. There's always a big demand for children's books in a wide variety of languages, but with budgets what they are at the moment, it's not considered high priority.
So, authors and illustrators: dig out those foreign-editions, donate them to your library and free up some space in your studio too!
Yes, my lovely postman has been at it again. Yesterday, quite out of the blue, I received a jiffy-bag containing...
...a new co-edition of my most recent book with Julia Jarman, Bears on the Stairs! John and I were not at all sure what language it was, but Julia assures me that it is Portuguese.
I don't like to hoard foreign editions of my titles on my shelves in the studio. Apart from taking up a lot of space, I firmly believe that books are for reading - especially children's books. So I try to give away my co-editions to people who speak the relevant languages. I find most UK libraries are crying out for Eastern European languages, as well as Arabic of course, so that's a great way to ensure those ones go to a good home.
However, I have another idea this time. As it happens, last year's Urban Sketchers Symposium was held in Lisbon (remember, when I went completely l
Yes, today is the day (hurrah!) when all you good people can rush out to your local booksellers and demand multiple copies of my newest book, Baby Goes Baaaaa!
The book is stuffed full of sounds that baby will recognise and can easily make. Making these early sounds with a baby is fundamental to early language development, but the funny illustrations of various cute and silly animal characters romping through the book will hopefully make it a fun experience to share and explore together, while the learning happens behind the scenes.
Although the pictures here are square edged, the actual book has gently rounded corners to make it baby-friendly, plus it's fully laminated (thanks Egmont), to allow for enthusiastic licking and sucking!
My editor at Egmont tells me that we have already sold over 7000 copies (queue fireworks...)!! These are not sales made over the counter at bookshops of course, since it's only just available to buy
Profit and sales have increased at co-edition publisher Quarto although it warned the UK market remains "weak".
Ahead of today's annual general meeting, chairman and c.e.o. Laurence Orbach said sales were up 4% to $178.5m (£108.2m) for the 12 months to 30th April 2011. Profit before tax, amortisation of non-current intangibles and exceptional items, was up 3% to $11.5m (£7.0m).
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John has nipped to the post office for me, so the DVD of scans is winging its way to Egmont at last (phew), but I nearly overlooked something important...While I was doing a last-minute check through my illustrations, looking for bits of text I might have missed for my overlays, I spotted the crocodiles. When I did the actual artwork, we hadn't finished designing the Baby Goes Baaaaa! cover, so I illustrated it as my best guess, based on discussions at that stage: Once we had done the cover re-design, using the spotty, coloured text, the lighter yellow etc, I was able to alter the illustration on the digital scan, to match the new look:
I spent ages tinkering in Photoshop, creating a miniature version of the book. One challenge was not making it too neat: trying to make it look like it would if I'd been restricted by the pastels.BUT... I suddenly realised this was not very co-edition friendl
I am well and truly frazzle-brained after that marathon but, finally, all the digital cut-outs for Baby Goes Baaaaa! are now done. Phew. It took longer than usual, because every single page needed doing, rather than just the odd image here and there.
However... just when I thought it was all over, I remembered there are a couple of illustrations that need incidental text adding, like the paint pot you can see in this rough of page E, F, G. As any illustrator knows, you never draw wording on your illustrations, because of co-edition translations, but that means overlays are required, so the words can be printed on afterwards.
There are two little pots with wording on: one for the paint above, another for the anteater's sticky treacle (which I think will be syrup in the US):
Now, for most sensible people, who don't work in pastels, overlays are not something they need worry about: the designer is quite happy to take care of it. But, pastel illustrations look a bit weird with standard, hard-edged fonts on top - the wording floats above the surface of the drawing.
So, like the control-freak John is always reminding me I am
I got my 'Jiggle-Joggle' octopus and my 'Ick!' anteater finished. Here's octopus:
I did him blue, as it was the one colour I knew I wouldn't need for a jelly (peppermint jelly? Ugh!). If you remember, it was the suckers I still had to do when we saw him
last time. I sprayed him with fixative, so I was able to load more pastel over the top of what I'd already drawn, then added the suckers with pastel pencils, to enable me to get into that level of detail:
But unfortunately, I've have had to stop work on Baby Goes Baaaa! for the moment and here's why...The massive, international
Children's Book Fair at
Bologna happens every spring, and is probably the most important showcase of the year for new picture book projects. Attentions are focussed months ahead on this unbelievably intense 4 day period. Not only finished books, but pretty much all projects-in-progress must be scrubbed behind the ears and put on best behaviour, ready for presentation.
So, even though I've not quite finished (I have just 4 illustrations to go), I have to mount up everything I've done so far and post it down to Egmont, in time for them to get scans done and create a mock-up for the Book Fair. The idea is to impress as many foreign publishers as possible, to get them interested in signing up for co-editions of the book.
In the meantime, here's what my baby anteater looks like:
I've added a pattern to the romper-suit since last time, and coloured in the gooey treacle. I've left off the label on the treacle jar as usual, to allow for translations, although, someone just told me that the folks in the USA don't know what treacle is, so it might have to be labelled 'syrup' over there.
Click here if you want to re-cap on how I've been geyting on with the project so far.
Poemes prehistorics amb humor, sorpreses, informacio i ... TERROR!
The postman just bought me another of those lovely, surprise packages. When I opened it up I found... 4 translated co-edition copies of Gnash, Gnaw, Dinosaur!. I thought they were in Spanish (what a dimmucks... dimmocks?.. dimmox?.. idiot!) but I've just been reliable informed that the language is in fact Portuguese. Aha!
As always, I'd rather my books be read by children than just sit on shelves, so I'm giving them away. So - anyone out there with children that read Portuguese? Better still, do you have a 'good cause' I could donate a copy to, like a school, library or some such? Let me know and a signed copy could be on it's way to you next week.
Today I am also wondering how Bears on the Stairs got on at the Frankfurt Book Fair... It's SO important these days that other countries sign up for co-editions of new titles, especially America. Crossing fingers that they liked it!
Another post from the ether, while I'm on my travels (right this moment I should be in the middle of a talk at Euxton Library in Morecombe):
I wanted to tell you that a brand new, mini board-book edition of When You're Not Looking! has just been published. Hurrah! This title is a little bit special to me, as it's one that I not only illustrated, but wrote too. 
I got the idea for the text at Centre Parcs, when a friend's child tried to feed bread and jam to a squirrel. The squirrel became a gerbil (can't remember why) and I changed the jam to 'marmalade on toast' (it had a better ring):
I am delighted that, though first published 5 years ago, Gullane are still promoting it and producing new editions.
Gullane were my very first publisher. They gave me my initial break in children's books, back in 1999, letting me loose on The Show at Rickety Barn (thanks Paula!).
I have worked with them ever since, and I can barely believe we've now done 11 books together. I love them dearly for keeping all my back titles in print: fantastic, especially these days. Thank you Guys x
Remember my book swap with Tomas Serrano is Spain?
Look at this brilliant image he created of Salfon (the hero of the book he sent me) reading the copy of Stinky! I sent to him. Ha ha - excellent idea Tomas!
I spotted bears on stairs in helsinki, in finnish. That one will be a hit at your sheffield library:-)
We are always incredibly grateful for any donations you offer us. Thank you!
In fact, a well thumbed copy of one of your books in Croatian (if I remember rightly) was returned by a borrower today! :)
Glad to hear it was well thumbed - that's great!