This weekend Pugs of the Frozen North met the blazing heat of the west coast of Ireland for Listowel Writers' Week and The National Children's Literary Festival. The lovely Irish even provided us with a splendid pug named Oscar!



Listowel's gorgeous, my co-author Philip Reeve and I had fun wandering around looking at the beautifully painted shop fronts, bakeries and pubs.



And we even got to meet the wee folk! Here I am, after partaking of the 'Drink Me' bottle, meeting the Queen of Listowel.



I didn't get time to do a lot of drawing (other than on stage) but here's a rough one I did after a couple hours at John B. Keane's pub.




Our first event was to a couple hundred kids for a Pugs of the Frozen North schools event. Here's Philip showing off the yellow trousers he uses to scare off polar bears.


Tweeted by Sarah Webb

We got to see some excellent pug drawings...



The following day, we did another Pugs event, then I did a Dinosaur Police picture book event. And I'm VERY SAD I don't have any photos of Philip being Trevor the T-Rex. He did an excellent job.



I did a little experiment for the drawing part of the event; usually I just teach everyone how to draw a T-Rex, but I got a bit more ambitious and thought I'd start them off making their own T-Rex-themed book.



It was quite a stretch, particularly for the concentration span of the youngest children, but their parents were awesome about pitching in and helping, and I actually had a slightly older crowd than usual for this event, so lots of them tackled the project admirably.



In this one you can see the cover, decorated front endpapers, three pages of story, and a back cover with blurb and price tag.



I was impressed with what the kids did and I hope they go away and finish their books, it'd be fun to see how they do it. I told them that the difference between an aspiring author and an author is that an author finishes creating the books. So if they finish making their book, they will be a genuine authors. Which is true! And to be a published author, all they need is to make more than one copy of the book (with a handy photocopier or printer), and that's being self-published. So perhaps we will get a few self-published authors coming out of that event.


Tweeted by Sarah Webb

One of the fun things about book festivals is catching up with friends I've seen in various events around the country in past years. Here's the most excellent Kim Harte, who is a Book Doctor! You can go into her Book Clinic and she will listen to what you're interested in and recommend books you might like. It was very popular, I don't think she had even time for a loo break for four hours!



Here's Ireland's new Children's Laureate na nÓg, illutrator PJ Lynch. Philip and I got to see an exhibition of his work from the span of his career at St John's Theatre in the centre of town. He did a video interview with me about drawing, so maybe I'll get to post that fairly soon.



More fun guests we ran into: Joanne Harris (whom we'd gotten to know a bit at the Emirates Lit Fest a couple years ago)



And Francesca Simon and Steven Butler, whom we actually see fairly often!



Writer Sarah Webb was in charge of Author Care for the children's book part of the festival, and we couldn't have been cared for better. Sarah's one of the sweetest people you'll ever meet, but she also manages to do ten times more than any of us. Here she is with PJ and Alan Nolan (who was very nice in giving us lots of lifts in his car).



It'd been cold in London but Ireland was ROASTING hot. Here's Philip, attempting some extreme sunscreen:



Huge thanks to everyone who helped make the festival run so smoothly!



Here's Liz Dunn, the chair of the festival, who was awesome at making sure we always had good food and drink and introduced us to lots of people.



I wasn't in Ireland very long, but one morning I did manage to get down to the beach at Ballybunnion with Philip right before our event. (Which explains why I'm here in a sea cave in slightly odd beach wear.)



And a few more shots of Philip and me attempting to make the perfect Irish rock album cover.









You can follow Listowel Writers' Week on their Facebook page and Twitter.

Today Elissa and I have a canine life model in the studio!



If you look in the front of Jampires, this cutiepie gets a mention in my picture book with David O'Connell. :) Treacle's surprisingly tricky to draw!

So my Jampires co-author David O'Connell has just released another picture book! This time he wrote the book, and HarperCollins teamed him up with illustrator Francesca Gambatesa, and it's all about fathers, and out just in time for Father's Day! :) (Here's a link to it on Francesca's website, where you can see some early sketches of When I'm a Monster Like You, Dad!.)



So a bunch of us went along to Gosh Comics in Soho to celebrate! Gosh are awesome at not only stocking comics, but also a range of other illustrated books, often by people who also make comics. Here's a photo nabbed from Gosh's Facebook page. (I wore my new flourescent jumper, wahey.)




A big congrats to Francesca because, while she's done lots of other illustration work in different formats, this is her first picture book, and it's lovely. Hurrah! (We agreed that picture books are quite a lot of work and take quite a lot of time to illustrate.)



Here's Dave doing a dramatic reading with one of Francesca's pictures on the screen. It's about a little monster who thinks he can have fun being big and scary like his dad as a grownup, but the dad shows his kid how they can have fun together right now.



And then there was a big signing. (Stuart got our copy dedicated to both of us and we shall treasure it.)



Fab to see writer-illustrator friends Laura Ellen Anderson, Jamie Littler and my studio mate Elissa Elwick:



And the crafty artists Sami Teasdale and my former studio mate Lauren O'Farrell (aka Deadly Knitshade):



Side note: did you see the amazing phone box cosie that Lauren and Sami knitted for The Clangers?


Photo by David Jensen from Knit The City Facebook page

Thanks to Gosh's lovely Steven Walsh, Nora Goldberg (and Tom Oldham who was manning the basement) for hosting!



And since I was practically the only person who'd never tweeted a selfie from the Gosh loo, that was WHAT I GONE AND DONE.



Huge congrats, Dave and Francesca!

Hooray for writer Pamela Butchart and illustrator Thomas Flintham whose book yesterday won the Overall Award at the Federation of Children's Book Group's award ceremony in London! What's also awesome is that the media is featuring BOTH the writer and the illustrator in their coverage!

This dual coverage doesn't happen by chance; publisher Nosy Crow has been very active in the #PicturesMeanBusiness campaign and making sure illustrators are credited, and the FCBG people writing the press releases must have been on the case about it. Media journalists may even be wising up! So big thanks to everyone who's making this happen! :)


Screenhshot photos: BBC Breakfast tweeted by @bookloverJo and CBBC Newsround by @Pamela_Butchart

Here are a few more photos from yesterday's ceremony. Thanks for inviting me, Louise Stothard from FCBG! And thanks to Jane Etheridge, Sarah Stuffins and everyone else on the FCBG team who made it happen. It was fun running into lovely be-frocked authors Pamela and Jeanne Willis at the front door of the Union Jack Club:




Here are Thomas and Pamela winning their 'Books for Younger Readers' category award:



And then the Overall Award:



I got to meet author Sarah Crossan for the first time (who also won in her 'Books for Older Readers' category):



And writer-illustrator Richard Byrne:



The kids and their FCBG leaders put together beautiful albums of artwork and letters about each book and I caught a glimpse of Richard's:



And Viv Schwarz's (whose Is there a Dog in This Book? won the 'Books for Younger Children' category award):



Steven Butler did a fab job presenting... (Oh look, it's Walker Books editor Lizzie Spratt!)



And Korky Paul drew up an absolute storm on kids' lunch napkins (sadly not shown here):



Readers presenting albums to Guy Parker-Rees and Gareth Edwards:



And to Tony Ross and Francesca Simon:



Adrian Reynolds and Jeanne Willis:



Author Kim Slater:


Author Polly Ho-Yen tweeted a couple photos:



Oo, look at those hooligans at the back... I spot my studio mate Elissa Elwick and her new picture-book-partner-in-crime, beardy Philip Ardagh.



I just went along to see people, none of my books were up for awards. But indie bookseller Tales on Moon Lane cheerfully provided them anyway and it was fun getting to meet readers who loved them and those who were just about to dive in.



Thanks to Carousel editor David Blanche for slipping me a copy of Carousel and making Philip Reeve 'n' me look dead famous in front of a bunch of kids. :)




Hugs all 'round, a lovely sunny afternoon.



You can read more about the shortlist and awards over on the FCBG blog here.

A whole bunch of us have a new activity/colouring book coming out on 8 Sept, Draw It! Colour It! Beasts! Here's my two pages in it:


You can pre-order it on lots of book websites or you can buy our first book now, Draw It! Colour It! Creatures. It's fun being included with so many other amazing illustrators.

If you're in Scotland, look out for a copy of today's Herald, I have an article in it! You can also read it online here:



Yesterday's #PortraitChallenge got me fired up to do some more pictures with actual paint. I've been doing a lot of digital work, and sometimes digital works best for me, but then I miss working with real paper in front of me the whole time. Here's a not-very-accurate self portrait, painted in watercolour, and when it was just pencil linework.

Here's my #PortraitChallenge for today! It's a 1750s portrait of Ignatius Sancho, painted by Allan Ramsay. (You can find out more about it here.) Check @StudioTeaBreak to see other people's drawings!

Hooray!
I finally finished illustrating my upcoming book with Philip Reeve, Jinks & O'Hare Funfair Repair!
The book's not finished; Jo Cameron still has to do a lot of placement work with all the files I've had to fix because there were little picture mistakes, and Liz Cross is checking with the proof reader that there aren't any text mistakes, and then it has to go the printer, etc. With Cakes in Space, Liz, Clare Whitston and Jo had to send the books back to the printer because I'd used SO much heavy ink with all the black outer-space stuff that the pages didn't have enough time to dry and went wrinkly! (But the printer fixed it and everything was okay in the end.)



For Bologna Book Fair, the OUP book team printed up a sampler with the first three chapters, so here's a little peek at them. These are what are called the 'endpapers', even though they're right in the beginning and set the scene.



Philip really likes the slappy satellite. (I'm not sure why it's slappy, I just stuck a glove on it to make it look more interesting.)



And here's Emily, in her bedroom on Funfair Moon!



Emily's based very much on my studio mate Elissa Elwick and Emily wants to be a funfair engineer more than anything in the world. (Not our world, an alien world that's all funfair.)



That's Elissa on the right in the yellow, celebrating with cake, and craft team Lauren O'Farrell (who designed the knitted Pug, Sea Monkey and Jampire patterns) and her working partner Sami Teasdale.



The book doesn't come out 'til September but I'm already excited! Go go Jo and Liz and book team! :D

Edit: Here's a photo just in from designer Jo, who is ON THE CASE! :D

All this week I've been on an illustration book tour of the Scottish Highlands! At first I thought I was going to have to do it solo, but I asked Beth Bottery at Scottish Book Trust if I could bring Stuart along and she said yes. Then all my knitted book characters decided they wanted to come along, too.



This is the first time I've ever gone on an extended tour with Stuart! And he wasn't just tagging along, he was WORKING. In fact, I thought I'd let him do the blogging. So... OVER TO STUART:

Hi, everyone! My first job was help Doug the Pug sharpen up his drawing skills in anticipation of all the pictures he was going to be making during the course of the week. He drew some pictures on the train.



Here's one he did of me!




And here's one he did of the First Minister Nicola Sturgeon. You can't get more Scottish than that.



Our first port of call was GLASGOW, to see Sarah's auntie.



On Sunday, Beth Bottery and Thomas Jefferson from Scottish Book Trust came to pick us up and drove us all the way to Thurso, right in the north of Scotland.



Here they are in the wilds of the Highlands.



Here are a couple of snapshots of Thurso in late evening.





MONDAY, 9 May:

My first stage appearance was at Mount Pleasant Primary School in Thurso (coordinated by Suzanne Urquhart) and Pennyland Primary came along, too. Here I am with Sarah in my new role as PROFESSOR SNOWSTORM!



I'm supposed to know a lot about the different types of snow in Sarah and Philip Reeve's book Pugs of the Frozen North. Being on stage was exciting but also a bit nerve-racking. Luckily I didn't mess up too many of my lines.



Here are some books the children made in advance, which are pretty impressive.





For the afternoon, Miller Academy Primary School (and Pat Ramsay) hosted us, along with visiting school Melvich Primary. At each visit we created a board game, featuring a race to the North Pole from the school. We wanted to give them ideas on creating a story, how (like a board game) it needs a beginning, an end, and perils in the middle. This group game up with some really unusual perils, culminating in the greatest peril: Donald Trump.



We also met Reading Champion Alex Patience, who works with the kids on this reading scheme.



On a beautiful evening - tropical for Thurso! - Sarah made a new friend named Kali.




TUESDAY, 10 MAY:

We visited Castletown Primary School, just outside Thurso, with the visit coordinated by Rhona Moodie. Having a day's practice, I was beginning to get into my character a bit more. Things didn't seem to be quite so scary, particularly when the class was a bit smaller.



Tom took us to a roadside cafe for lunch, just outside Wick, The Rumblin' Tum. It felt like something you might find in the Australian outback.



Sarah took this photo of Tom and me and mystery guest in the background.



In the afternoon, we were at Noss Primary School (which was only a few weeks old!), with Watten Primary visiting. Headmaster Ally Budge had really researched Sarah and Beth told us he'd filled out the application form for the visit in Russian! (Sarah and I both speak some Russian.) This was our largest event yet, with more than 200 children. The school gave Sarah a very thoughtful Russian-themed gift, Baggage by Marshak & Lebedev.



We drove on to Tain and stayed in the Royal Hotel, which was very grand.



Tain was lovely, with some very striking buildings.



We had dinner at the restaurant at Tain railway station. Sarah shot this video because she thought Beth had a wonderful Hull accent.



During the week the four of us did some drawing challenges. Here's our #ShapeChallenge drawings. (Can you guess who drew which one?) Sarah sets daily Shape Challenges on Twitter which you can discover at @StudioTeaBreak.





WEDNESDAY, 11 May:

In the morning we visited Knockbreck Primary School in Tain (coordinated by Mhairi Miller), with Dornoch Academy visiting. Sarah drew this picture of her and Doug the Pug but she forgot to take any more photos.



After lunch, we headed to Strathpeffer Primary School (hosted by Carolyn Ritchie and Mr Spence), with visiting school Mulbuie St Clements.



The afternoon was so sunny that we sat out on the lawn of our hotel and did a Comic Jam together. Here are some teaching videos if you want to learn how to do a Comic Jam in your school.



Beth shot this video of the Comic Jam at different stages.





THURSDAY, 12 May:

Our first stop was Teanassie Primary School (with Sharon Gallacher), with visiting school Beauly Primary, which was our most intimate event with just over 30 children. When we drove in, we saw the chickens and three pigs the school raise.



Everyone on our tour loved knitted Doug the Pug, designed by Lauren O'Farrell (aka Deadly Knitshade). Here's the link if anyone wants to download the free pattern from Sarah's website. And here are some of the pugs the children drew at Teanassie:



In the afternoon we arrived in Inverness to visit Drakies Primary School (coordinated by Rebecca Fleming), with visiting school Bun-sgoil Ghàidhlig Inbhir Nis. Drakies were very excited about the visit and prepared some posters to advertise Sarah's event to the other children. Sarah was so pleased!



Drakies even tweeted to Sarah before the event (@DrakiesPS). She loves it when teachers and pupils prepare things before the visit and this group made lots of great stuff.











Even after the visit, this mum sent us a picture which made us all go 'Awww'.



On Sarah's drawing challenge @StudioTeaBreak, Thursday is #PortraitChallenge day. Here's a family portrait of pop stars if they were animals.





FRIDAY, 13 MAY

My costume for the week included wearing this pair of yellow trousers. Don't park on my double yellow lines!



For our final day, we began at Crown Primary School in Inverness, organised by James Cook.



The school had a blog up by the same evening! We got some very encouraging feedback from the teachers, including one who said in twelve years of teaching, it was the best event she had seen and gave the teachers lots of ideas of things to do with the kids later.



And finally, Hilton Primary School (with Amy Fraser) and visiting school Cradlehall Primary. We received a warm welcome from the dinner ladies!



The dinner ladies even baked us banana flapjack! This was our biggest event. It will be funny telling my colleagues back at work what I've been doing all week.



Here are cards Sarah drew for Tom and Beth, thanking them for all their hard work. Thank you very much, guys!! And to all the schools who hosted us, Scottish Book Trust, and our sponsors Scottish Friendly.



This was a never-to-be-forgotten week! It gave me a whole new perspective of Sarah's work. I hope all the children we met go away and do a lot more drawing, writing and reading. I might try to do some more drawing, too!

I've almost finished illustrating Jinks & O'Hare Funfair Repair! I ought to celebrate by tidying my desk.

We love each other, really, but we have odd ways of showing it.

Today was Bank Holiday Monday and Stuart and I hiked from Robertsbridge rail station to Bodiam Castle in Sussex.



Bodiam's great, it's sort of how you imagine a castle to be when you're a kid. A real classic.



I just thought I'd post a few photos in case you're ever considering taking a trip there. You can even get a steam train from Tenterden station; maybe we'll try that some other time.








Old graffiti in one of the towers:



Yay bluebells!



Twitter tells this is a raft of some sort.

Well, that's my fancy dress sorted for Shakespeare's 400th birthday party! Today's #PortraitChallenge was this engraving by Martin Droeshout, tweeted by the British Museum. Their website says it's 'from the Third Folio of Shakespeare’s works of 1663–1664 and was originally engraved for the title page to the First Folio, published in 1623. It is therefore one of the earliest portraits of Shakespeare.' (Read more here.) Lots of people have taken part; check out their pictures over at @StudioTeaBreak!

Thursday's #PortraitChallenge was Thomas Gainsborough's famous portrait of Georgiana Duchess of Devonshire (which I've seen on a visit to Chatsworth House). Mine's a Pegasus-wrangling cowgirl because why not. :) You can find out more about portraits and #PortraitChallenge here on my earlier blog post.



Visit @StudioTeaBreak on Twitter to see a gallery of everyone's drawings! We're back to the #ShapeChallenge today. Do jump in, all ages and drawing abilities are very welcome! It's fun seeing whole families get involved. I love seeing all the variations!

HURRAH!! I'm finally allowed to share the new Scholastic UK book I have coming out in September... with writer Alan MacDonald... THE PRINCE OF PANTS!!!



I've had SOOO much fun working on this book, it's a great big loony feast of PANTS and strange corgis and fat ponies and lots more... Here's one of the pages of watercolour artwork on my desk: little Prince Pip trying to find out where all his pants have disappeared to.



Now here's a funny thing: I had a contract to do a picture book with Scholastic UK and I was so busy on the Pugs book that when the time rolled around, my editor Pauliina Malinen was like, 'So where's your picture book text?' And I was like, 'UH.' And then, 'I'll write one, let me get back to you soon!!' And Pauliina was like, 'Well... I have this absolutely amazing script from Alan MacDonald that you could illustrate, I think it's perfect for you.' And I was like, 'No no no, I'm going to write my own book, just you see. ...But hey wait, let me just have a little peek at it anyway.'

And then I read it. And started laughing.

And suddenly saw all the awesome ways Alan had packed in room for me to make loads of little visual jokes and I was like, 'Oh my goodness, I HAVE to illustrate this book, gimme gimme gimme'. And Pauliina was thrilled, and my new designer Strawberrie Donnelly has turned out to be ACE to work with. I'm proud that we got their names in the credits, too!



The Prince of Pants doesn't come out until September - arghh!! (here's a Hive pre-order page and Waterstones) - but in the meantime, I'm going to TRACK DOWN THAT ALAN MACDONALD because weirdly I have still never met him and it feels bizarre not having met my co-author. Lucky Alan is in for a McIntyre Invasion.

Huge congratulations to the two writers who are AJ MacKenzie, whose exciting-looking book comes out today! I first met Canadian husband-wife team Marilyn Livingstone & Morgen Witzel at the wonderful Emirates Festival of Literature in Dubai; we spent a lot of meals together and they were fascinating. Morgan had some great tales about growing up in the wilds of British Columbia and Marilyn's been writing as a medieval historian for 25 years; she and Morgan decided to try something new, diving into the 18th century and trying their hand at crime fiction, something page-turning and fast-paced but still very much grounded in history.



Here's the cover art, designed by Jet Purdie (who won and had two titles shortlisted for the most recent Kitschies Inky Tentacle cover awards) and he commissioned the illustration from Head Design. And here's the blurb:

Shocked to discover a dying man on his doorstep - and lucky to avoid a bullet himself - Reverend Hardcastle finds himself entrusted with the victim's cryptic last words. With smuggling rife on England's south-east coast, the obvious conclusion is that this was a falling out among thieves. But why is the leader of the local Customs service so reluctant to investigate? Ably assisted by the ingenious Mrs Chaytor, Hardcastle sets out to solve the mystery for himself. But smugglers are not the only ones to lurk off the Kent coast, and the more he discovers, the more he realises he might have bitten off more than he can chew.

I had a couple questions for AJ MacKenzie:

Marilyn and Morgan, I can't wait to read this new book! What are a couple of the most exciting bits of the history that made you want to write it?

The 1790s were quite a dangerous and (if you don’t have to live in them) exciting time. Romney Marsh, where The Body on the Doorstep is set, was rife with smuggling and dark nights would see parties of smugglers landing on the beaches and carrying cargoes of gin and brandy inland over the Marsh, pursued by the Preventive men, the law enforcement officers of the day.



Then there was the threat of invasion from France, which by the mid-1790s was becoming very real. There is a earlier Hogarth print at the Fitzwilliam Museum that shows hordes of ravening Frenchmen threatening to descend on England:



It looks sort of comical, but in fact the threat was very real and was taken seriously; there were plenty of invasion scares. From Romney Marsh, you can see the French coast on a clear day. In the next picture, the line of clouds is where France begins; it’s only about thirty-five miles.




A lot of French refugees washed up on the coast of Kent after the French Revolution began. But which refugees were genuinely fleeing the Terror, and which ones were actually enemy agents? A lot of this begins to sound rather familiar, doesn’t it?

Finally, there were a few historical characters we could bring in and play with. One was the painter JMW Turner, just starting out on his illustrious career. During the early 1790s, Turner often came to the Kent coast to paint the sea. This is one of his early works, Fishermen at Sea, on show at the Tate. The Tate say this was painted near the Isle of Wight. But who is to say he didn’t make a little unrecorded trip to Romney Marsh around the same time?


'Fishermen at Sea' by Turner, 1796 from Tate Britain collection

Where and how you and Morgen work?

We work in all sorts of places. What we don’t tend to do is lock ourselves in a room and write together. There are several reasons for this; chief among them being that we both listen to music as we write, but very different kinds of music. Marilyn likes mathematical music like Bach and Purcell, or modern performers like Ms Dynamite. Morgen listens to gloomy Central European music from the late nineteenth century. Each person’s music would drive the other crazy.



In fact we mostly work by talking, working out plots and characters and ideas and conversations, and we can do that anywhere. We often sit opposite each other in these two chairs in our sitting room, talking and reading text to each other.



If the weather is fine (not always a given in the West Country) we go outside. The beaches of west Cornwall and the tors of Dartmoor are some of our favourite places to work.



After all, we live in a beautiful part of the world; why not take advantage of it for inspiration and ideas?



Thanks, guys! You can read a lot more about The Body on the Doorstep and The Romney Marsh Mysteries over on the AJ MacKenzie website and blog. And you can follow them on Twitter: @AJMacKnovels. (They're very friendly; feel free to ask them questions.) Right now you can buy the first book in hardcover and for Kindle, and the paperback comes out in August. (I ordered mine from Tales on Moon Lane, through the Hive Books button on the AJ MacKenzie website.) Published by Zaffre.

Age appropriateness: Aimed at adults but might be accessible to high-school/secondary-school kids and secondary school libraries. No sex, some violence, quite a lot of bad language (mostly f***).

Uh... did you see Johnny Depp and his wife saying sorry for smuggling their pet dogs into Australia? It was a bit strange.



Well, I'm doing a Pugs of the Frozen North book tour of the Scottish Highlands in May, and Scottish Book Trust are already issuing their own apologies...

Disney gave The Guardian newspaper some money to commission illustrations reimagining The Jungle Book, so thanks to editor Sian Cain, Philip Reeve and I jumped in! You can see it online here. Visit the links to see how other people have illustrated it!



Here's Philip's full description:

It must be forty years since I read The Jungle Book (I never saw the classic Disney version as a child - only a couple of clips which were forever turning up on Screen Test). A lot of the detail of the story escapes me now, but there are a few scenes which must have made a deep impression, since they still spring vividly to mind; Akela and the council of wolves deciding little Mowgli's fate, and the overgrown ruins called the Cold Lairs where the moneys live. But my favourite element as a child was Mowgli's relationship with the bear Baloo and the black panther Bagheera, which I think is at the heart of the book's appeal. Most children love animal stories, but the animals in The Jungle Book aren't the domesticated, clothes-wearing sort you meet in other books of the period. Baloo and Bagheera feel like real animals, big, and fierce, and dangerous - yet they accept Mowgli as their friend; he gets to hunt and play and laze about with them, and it's they who come to his rescue when he's captured by those pesky monkeys. I'm not sure if he snuggles up with them as cosily as he has in Sarah's illustration, but that's what I would have liked to do.

And here's the trailer for the new film:

Love that David O'Connell! Enough to put a cake on his head.


Original photo by Dave Warren

Actually, I did bake a cake, a real carrot cake. Possibly my first cake I've baked in at least five years. With Kinder eggs on top, it looked like a dinosaur nest.

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! :)

Today's Portrait Challenge drawing for @StudioTeaBreak, based on a photo tweeted by @castledublin.



I don't think the sculptor is known, but you can find out more about Brian Boru here, and see how other people have gone about drawing him on the #PortraitChallenge hashtag!

Can you remember the last time you were given a blank piece of paper and told to ‘write a story’ or ‘draw a picture’? It can be an unpleasant experience, especially when your brain refuses to cooperate, but it’s part of daily life for school children. Some decide this means they hate writing or loathe drawing. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Here's an introduction to a series of four Book Trust videos about making comics, which can be used as an school classroom lesson (ages 8+), or just for fun at home.

Article originally published in Teach Primary magazine, 2015


Children naturally connect with making comics. There’s something about the combination of drawing and writing that pulls them through the process of creating a story, and it’s more fun than trying to fill a page with writing alone.

In making a four-panel comic we can explore the basics of story structure, characterisation, plot, motivation and dialogue. And comics are a great medium for engaging kids who have a diverse range of skills and needs.

If a child’s drawing isn’t all that great, he or she can enhance basic stick figures with clever writing and it will still tell a story. If children can hardly write a word of English, they can tell a story in pictures, and get help when they decide they need a sound effect here or there.

Reluctant writers are likely to enjoy the energetic nature of comics and the freedom that speech and thought bubbles provide. In a workshop film I’ve produced for children’s reading charity, Book Trust (available free online here), I start with a little tutorial on how to draw a Sea Monkey, a funny, incidental character in Oliver and the Seawigs, my illustrated chapter book with Philip Reeve. If the children have read the book, they’ll enjoy seeing one of its characters going on to have further adventures. (And even if they haven’t read the book, it’s still fun to draw Sea Monkeys.) How often have you finished a great book and wished you could keep following the characters, even though the story has ended?



In the first of the four videos, I walk the class through the process of creating a character they feel is their own. The kids can decide its name, how it will look, which kind of cheese it prefers, how it brushes its hair / scales / fur. It’s like having a new friend, or a beloved pet. They warm to it, and it looks back at them from the page.


Give your creators the tools

I used to think that step-by-step drawing lessons would stunt creativity by making kids think it’s the only way to draw something, but I’ve been surprised to discover the reverse is true: when people learn how to put together simple shapes and come up with an engaging character, it gives them some basic building blocks and the confidence to tailor those shapes into countless other character drawings. Add a moustache, a hat, give it bushy eyebrows, a tutu… suddenly their little creature looks very different.

After the children have created their characters, in Video 2, I give them tips for making effective comics. In Video 3, we have a ‘Comic Jam’ session where the class participates in a story-making game. I lead the class through dividing their paper into four comic panels, and then start them off drawing the first of these. After five minutes, I’ll have the children swap papers and each child will begin working on someone else’s comic for another five minutes. Three swaps and 20 minutes later, each child will have a finished four-panel comic, which is then returned to the original author so they can see what kind of adventure their character has been on.


From the Year 3 group at Tupton Primary School in Chesterfield

Besides being fun, I’ve found the Comic Jam can be a strong learning exercise in these ways. It can:

1. Teach clarity
The children learn that their storytelling has to be comprehensible to another person. If they get someone else’s comic and find it’s not clear what’s happening, they begin to comprehend what it’s like when their own stories aren’t clearly told. They realise that what they see in their heads has to go onto the paper, or others will struggle to understand. And they see the importance of writing legibly.

2. Thicken plots
Writing comics is a good practice in storytelling: children have to think ‘in this situation, what might happen next?’; random events aren’t as funny or interesting as events that have some sort of logical progression. They learn about the importance of creating a setting for their characters.

3. Set a good pace
A comic jam helps pace the lesson. If each child created his or her own comic, you’d have some children finishing in three minutes while others would still be working on the first panel at the end of the session. The game helps slow down children who work too quickly (“Now think, what else could you put in that scene?”) and speeds up children who might be so precious about their work that they never finish. A comic jam is more about communicating than making perfect artwork.

4. Create new possibilities
Because multiple authors are working on the same comic, children see how stories can take different turns. The sequences might be action-packed or slow and reflective. They might be funny, sad, or very ordinary. There’s no set way to tell a story, and comics help children to understand this. By taking on a character someone else has created, pupils are also forced to empathise.

5. Inspire different endings
The children get a chance to reflect on what they’ve created. If they like the way their story has turned out, they can use it as inspiration for making more comics in a similar vein. If they hate what happened to their character they may feel indignant. But even that negative feeling can be inspiring; they can now go and create the story they envisioned – the ‘wrong’ ending having shown them the way forward.


Young comic publishers Jordan Vigay and Jonny Toons at work on a Comic Jam at the annual Thought Bubble comics festival in Leeds

Finally in Video 4, children can sing along with a Sea Monkey sea shanty. Ending with a song gives a fun, noisy finale to a focused story session, but it also shows children that their characters don’t have to stay on paper. Stories can find life in many different forms – songs, animations, puppets, and theatre – any of which may be less daunting to children than the blank white page.

A note about participants with autism: empathising with someone else’s character may be hard for them, and they may balk at having to relinquish their work to someone else. In severe cases, it might be better for this person to work on his or her own comic, keeping the same panel-by-panel pace as the other people in the room.

Age appropriateness: Some children under 8 will be able to make comics (particularly with one-on-one adult help) but I've found that as a group, children under the age of 8 struggle to have enough literacy to make their work understandable to each other without explanation. Many also get upset when they have to swap papers, seeing someone else drawing on 'their' paper. While younger children will enjoy learning how to draw the Sea Monkey in Video 1 and singing the song in Video 4, I recommend sticking to ages 8+ for the Comic Jam in Videos 2 & 3.


Find out more about Book Trust’s primary writing project The Write Book – and access the four videos of Sarah’s Comics Jam film workshop in the classroom here on the Book Trust website.


Video 2 of 4



I also created a picture book that started out as a Comic Jam with my friend David O'Connell! It's called Jampires and you can read more Comic Jam tips over at jampires.com.




My comics include Vern and Lettuce, and the Shark & Unicorn strip in The Funday Times. Find lots of tips on my FAQ page and follow me on Twitter: @jabberworks

My lovely agent Jodie Hodges just tweeted me this picture from The Bookseller at London Book Fair today!



The photo of me was from a party to launch London Book & Screen Week, which runs parallel with the book fair. Here's a video they took of me to promote Thursday evening's Sketchbook Social, which should be lots of fun, with illustators you'll know of doing live drawing battles, and time to ask questions and chat. Be sure to bring your own sketchbook so you can draw, too! You can book tickets here.

So I've been arrested for outrageous library-saving behaviour and am writing this from Brixton jail... (no, not really). Today's #CarnegieOccupation protest march was very peaceful but there was NO DOUBT of people's passion for their libraries, the Carnegie (which had been occupied for over a week), Minet Library and other libraries under threat.



With a big ceremonial unlocking of the front gate, the occupiers came out to big cheers for the commitment they'd shown trying to rescue the library from the council's plan to turn it into a gym. The (Labour!) council's scheme seemed hair-brained: the library group had worked hard to come up with a reasonable business plan and the council had turned it down for lack of funds, but then suggested throwing millions at the building to turn it into a private gym with what appeared to be no organised business plan.




The council argued that they'd just push the books to the side, keeping it a library, but here's author Alan Gibbons arguing that a room with books in it is just a room, without a trained librarian, it's not a library. (Also there were questions about kids being allowed to hang out in a gym, who would look after the books, restock, etc.)



A group called 'Defend the Ten' have been arguing the case for all ten libraries in the London borough of Lambeth, and you can follow them on Twitter: @defendtheten.Quite a few writers and illustrators were able to come along, and it was great to see Francesca Simon, who had argued for libraries the previous evening on Channel Four:



Here's Francesca (author of the Horrid Henry books) with presenter Cathy Newman, and Kate Anderson who was arguing that libraries are passé. (Francesca said she thought Kate saw libraries only as a place to work on a research paper and probably hadn't been to one since university.)



Not everyone was able to make it, but they were present IN SPIRIT. (Yes, you, Ardagh.) Here's my studio mate Gary Northfield, author of the Julius Zebra books (in front of author Stella Duffy, who gave one of the speeches).



Sometimes I go to rallies and see people all with identical signs that the union or political party have given out, but this wasn't like that; a lot of people had put thought into creating their own unique signs, which was fabulous.



I loved the kids' signs, and there were SO MANY KIDS there! I do think the case for libraries is a no-brainer when we're talking about kids and books; there's no way even middle-class parents can keep up with the amount of books their kids go through. Some kids will read twenty or more books every week. And I've seen on my own royalty statements that a very, very small percentage of those books are e-books, they're almost all printed books. Books don't need batteries; if you throw one into the bath (as I did when I was two) it's not several hundred pounds worth of tech ruined.



Can I tell you HOW chuffed I was to see the signs I'd created? ...VERY CHUFFED. It almost felt like an Easter egg hunt, spotting them.



Oo, there's another one! :D



(You can download a range of them free if you click here.)



So I'm really curious what's going to happen to Carnegie Library now that the protestors have gone. Will Lambeth Council think twice about their screwball plan?



From what I hear, Carnegie Library was getting a lot of use and a real hub of organised community activities. We marched to Minet Library, also closed down and scheduled to become a 'healthy living centre'. I was talking with a fellow protester later in a cafe who said that the idea behind turning these libraries into gyms is that they're not allowed to take them down and rebuild them if they're libraries. (And Carnegie Library was a 'gift to the people', not to the council.) But if the council can get the designated usage changed, then they can do what they like. (I don't know if this is true but it sounds plausible.)



So many awesome signs!



I recognised this sign from @StudioTeaBreak online community's @MrsJTeaches!















We finished the rally in Brixton, by the Ritzy Cinema, in front of the Tate Central Free Library.


Here's an 11-year-old reading a surprisingly powerful piece of poetry she'd composed for the protest.



Still sign spotting...



Lovely author supporters! Amanda Lillywhite, Mo O'Hara (and can someone remind me of the name of the woman on the right? I'm so awful with names).



In front of Minet Library: bookseller Adriana at Pea Green Boat Books, Jo Franklin, Mo O'Hara and me.



Thanks so much to Stuart for coming with me! Well done to the Carnegie Library occupiers and everyone who's put time into the protests, and I hope the pressure to SAVE LIBRARIES continues!

Last night I made some posters for the London #CarnegieOccupation march from Carnegie Library to Minet Library at 11:30 this Saturday (9 April):



But then Minet Library asked if they could have copies of the posters, too! So here are some downloadable versions. I wasn't sure how many libraries would have colour printers, but if you have a coloured marker, it shouldn't take too long to fill in the bubble lettering.


Download in A3 size
Download in A4 size
Download in US letter size


Download in A3 size
Download in A4 size
Download in US letter size

Feel free to use these posters in any non-commercial way that promotes libraries. (And I'd appreciate a credit, just because I'm an illustrator and you should always credit illustrators.) :) If you get a chance, I'd love it if you'd leave a note in the comments, saying where you are, and if you're using it in any particular library. Here's are links to download earlier posters I drew:


Download in A3 size
Download in A4 size
Download in US Letter size
Download A3 in WELSH
Download A4 in WELSH


Download A3 size
Download A4 size
Download US Letter size
Download A3 in WELSH
Download A4 in WELSH




Download in A3 size
Download in A4 size
Download in US Letter size


Download square version (A4 or resize)

These are harrowing times for our libraries; let's hope the government listens!