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Tim Hopgood is an illustrator and author I admire greatly. His brilliant Here Comes Frankie was one of the first books I reviewed on this blog, over 6 years ago now, and I’ve yet to read a book of his which hasn’t made me happy.

His use of colour is exceptional. His strong sense of design is eye-catching. His use of visual textures always has me stroking the pages of his books. Yes, I’ll admit I’m a bit of fan!

And so it’s a great honour, and an enormous delight to bring you an interview with Tim today. His latest book is something of a departure for him – up till now (at least when working with children’s publishers) he has always illustrated fiction, but Fabulous Frogs is a bold, extremely beautiful and fascinating non-fiction collaboration with Martin Jenkins (author of the award-winning Can We Save the Tiger?). I kicked off my interview with Tim by asking him about this different genre and what impact it had on his illustrations.

Playing by the book: This is the first time you’ve illustrated a non-fiction book. How was your approach different (and also how was it similar) to illustrating a fiction picture book?

Tim Hopgood: It was my first time working on a non-fiction book and my first time working with the team at Walker (Editor – Lucy Ingrams, Art Director – Beth Aves) and Author – Martin Jenkins, but what was so great was their approach was exactly the same as mine when working on my own picture books. By that, I mean the process was very fluid. We met a few times face-to-face at key stages in the development of the book and the rest of the time it was all done via email, but nothing was ever set in stone until it went to print, and that’s how I like to work. So the book was allowed to evolve in a very natural, organic way; it was a very enjoyable process.

It was also incredibly hard work. For me, the biggest challenge was trying to capture the essence and personality of each frog in my style of illustration whilst remaining anatomically correct. When working on a fiction picture book I wouldn’t be too concerned with anatomical correctness as I’d be more interested in whether my frog character had personality and emotion so this was the main difference, as all the frogs had to be easily identifiable. I don’t think I’ve ever drawn anything quite so small and in such detail as the tiny frogs from Papua New Guinea!

The other big difference was each frog belonged to a different world; so unlike in a fiction picture book where you create a world for your characters to exist in and have to stick to it throughout the book, this project allowed me the freedom to create completely different backgrounds for each frog. In some cases I kept the backgrounds white, which is something I don’t usually do in my own books.

Goliath Frog – a rough draft and the final image

Playing by the book: I think you’ve combined anatomical correctness, personality and emotion wonderfully well in this book – a huge part of its visual appeal is that the frogs have immense personality – lifting the book into something special and very, very distant from a “dry” fact based book…

Tim Hopgood: Thank you Zoe! that’s really good to hear…

Playing by the book: So is there anything about the process of illustrating non-fiction that you think you will “bring back” to your story picture books? Any way of looking at a subject which is different for you now because of the things you had to think about with your frogs?

Tim Hopgood: Although I wasn’t able to draw any of the frogs from life, I think my observational skills were sharpened because of this project. I studied lots and lots of photographs of each frog and had to work out what were the defining features, what made each frog special and then try to bring that frog to life on the page. I think working on the book reignited my interest in nature and I think this will influence my future projects.

Playing by the book: That’s wonderful to hear! Were you a fan of frogs before you illustrated the book? Not everyone loves wet slimy creatures…

Tim Hopgood: As a child I was fascinated by frogspawn and tadpoles; I think children like the way tadpoles move in the water. When my children were little we discovered frogs at the bottom of our garden so we created a small pond in the hope to encourage more (we put an old school sink in the ground and put some plants in it) and amazingly it wasn’t too long before we had a sink full of tadpoles. The kids loved watching the tadpoles grow and develop into tiny frogs.

A rough layout for an interior page from Fabulous Frogs, and the final version

Playing by the book: Which is your favourite frog in your book?

Tim Hopgood: My favourite is the striped rocket frog from Australia. It can jump five metres in one go. I love the look of this frog with its cool stripes running down its back and sides. The other one I really enjoyed drawing is the Malagasy rainbow frog.

Malagasy Rainbow Frog

Playing by the book: How did you and the author interact during the process of creating the book – like a great picture book, the illustrations in this book don’t just double up on the text – there’s a real interplay between words and images. Did Martin indicate what he was thinking of with regard to images? Or was there something of a dialogue about how text and image could play together?

Tim Hopgood: When I first read Martin’s text what really appealed to me was the humour running through it and that it was packed full of frogs I’d never heard of, so I knew this had the potential to be a very striking and informative book. Although we didn’t interact directly – it was all done via Beth (Art Director) – there was definitely a dialogue between text and image which shifted and developed throughout the creative process, but it was a team effort.

We did meet a few times at key stages in the development of the book. At our first meeting we discussed the overall approach and Lucy (Editor) explained how the text would work on two levels: there’s the main text running through the book and then there’s the more detailed information which would sit smaller on the page. We discussed initial ideas for each spread and Beth and Martin provided me with source material for each frog. The next stage was for me to respond to the text in a visual way.

For my first rough I did several versions for each spread so that we could discuss options and work out which one we all thought worked best. Throughout the process the copy would be revised and repositioned on the page to work with the illustrations I was creating. And sometimes I did new drawings to sit more comfortably with the text. Beth is the kind of Art Director I really enjoy working with, the kind that has a clever knack of getting the best out of you, sometimes pushing you out of your comfort zone, but in a supportive and encouraging way. I think a great Art Director can often see things in your work that you as an artist can’t see yourself, they can see you’ve got more to give and that maybe you should approach a subject in a slightly different way, and with the right encouragement and support you can do it! I learnt a lot from creating this book and not just about frogs, but about drawing too!

Striped Rocket Frog

Playing by the book: Whilst researching your frogs, did you come across any other non-fiction illustrator’s work on frogs that really stood out for you?

Tim Hopgood: Oh yes – Art of the New Naturalists – Forms From Nature by Peter Marren and Robert Gillmor is an amazing non-fiction book for anyone interested in art and nature. I was given this book as a present and was inspired by the vitality of the drawings and the strong design compositions of the New Naturalist covers that are lovingly recorded in this book. It definitely influenced the way I approached the artwork for Fabulous Frogs: artwork for a non-fiction book doesn’t have to be clinical it can be painterly too. Combining expressive artwork with clear-cut information produces an interesting dynamic and that’s something I intend to explore in future projects.

Playing by the book: So apart from books used for researching for work, what role does non-fiction play in your own personal reading? Now, and as a child?

Tim Hopgood: As a child, non-fiction played a big part in my love of books. I struggled to learn to read and I struggled to find books that I enjoyed reading. I was always drawn to the non-fiction side of our local library, highly illustrated books on nature filled with facts had a particular appeal.

When I was nine, my parents bought me a hardback copy of ‘More Tell Me Why’ – Answers to over 400 questions children ask most often, by Arkady Leokum, published by Odhams Books. I loved that you could dip into it, that you didn’t have to start at the beginning and stick with it all the way through to make sense of it. You could flick through the pages and see something different each time you picked it up and I loved that it weighed a ton! And although it was heavy that didn’t stop me taking it to school and proudly reading from it in assembly!

Nowadays you’ll find plenty of non-fiction titles on my book shelves; mainly cookbooks (I recently completed over 100 illustrations for the new River Cottage cookbook ‘Love Your Leftovers’), but also lots of books on artists, designers, textiles and architecture. I still love the way you can dip in and out of a non-fiction title and discover new things each time you pick it up.

Playing by the book: One last and completely different question given that you are being interviewed on Playing by the book… what’s the last thing you did / place you visited / something you made for fun having been inspired by a book you’ve read?

Tim Hopgood: Now I feel very dull! I’m afraid it’s been all work and no play here recently, but when I’m not drawing I love to cook. For my birthday I was given ‘A Modern Way to Eat’ by Anna Jones – her Artichoke and fennel seed paella recipe is delicious!

Playing by the book: A book that makes you want to cook? That’s good enough for me! Thank you so very much Tim – here’s to frogs, fennel Seeds and further success in the future!

You can find out more about Tim Hopgood’s books on his website http://www.timhopgood.com/, and follow him on Twitter @TimHopgood.

Do look out for Tim’s new pre-school boardbook Walter’s Wonderful Web, and (like me) rejoice that his first three books are now all back in print!

Today’s interview is part of National Non-Fiction November, a month long celebration of non-fiction books for children and young people, set up by the Federation of Children’s Book Groups.

Both giggle inducing and surreptitiously brain expanding, Little Answer by Tim Hopgood is about BIG questions (“What is the meaning of life?”, “What is the secret to happiness?”).

And sausages.

Yes, really. It’s about sausages.

And I say that even though you could in fact argue Little Answer is ultimately about the biggest existential questions any of us face; it’s about trying to find out who we are, about trying to understand how we fit into the big wide world.

Profound AND full of laugh out loud moments, kindness and good old fashioned silliness, this is a fabulous book for all ages.

In this philosophical and joyously absurd book Little Answer actually knows his name (‘Sausages‘), but the worrying problem is that he can’t find his question. Something’s missing in his life, and until he can find the Q to his A, things just don’t feel right.

With help from a friend, Little Answer asks around. Could he be the answer to “What makes the wind blow?” or “Where did everything come from?”. There must be a question out there just right for him to answer…

Children will recognise themselves in the gloriously satisfying end to this book, and they and their parents will enjoy the inclusion of brief answers to all the more challenging questions posed in the story. Indeed this is the perfect book for children always asking “Why?”

Tim’s richly textured illustrations are bright and beautiful. His scribbles and prints, full of energy, have an appealing child-like quality to them. Thick crayon strokes look like they’ve just been drawn on the page. And Little Answer’s characterization is brilliant; he’s utterly personable and endearing!

Tim’s told me that the idea for this book came to him during a question and answer session at the end of one his school visits.

One boy put his hand up and said “I’ve got a guinea-pig” and the teacher then explained to the boy that that wasn’t a question.

She then asked the class “What does a question need?” to which they all replied “An answer!”.

And at that point Tim immediately thought, “But what if the answer can’t find its question…”

I do hope that little boy and his guinea pig one day find out they’ve inspired a wonderful, witty, and warm book perfect for feeding (and satisfying) curiosity.

You know a book’s hit home when within just a couple of hours of it arriving, the kids are already at play, inspired by the book. And so it was with Little Answer. Balloons were filled with rice (making them lovely to hold), and then eyes, smiles and legs were added to make our own Little Answers.

M couldn’t resist making a BIG Answer too! And the answers didn’t go nameless for long.

They were called:

The girls told me that these were all answers to questions they had come up with, and it was now my job to find out what those questions were.

Well I like a challenge, and I was certain that one of the questions must involve cake, so off we set for a cafe.

To the huge delight of the girls, I was WRONG! None of their answers involved anything to do with a cafe (though they were more than happy to try some cake, just to be sure).

I thought I better up my game, so I then decided that the local library would be a good place to look for questions. M was very obliging and looked up the dewey numbers for the books which might help me find the right questions to the answers she and her sister had prepared.

So at least I was in the right section for some of my questions…. and I started knuckled down to work, with the Little Answers looking along side me.

The Big Answer preferred to lounge about!

I have to admit, it was quite a struggle to find the right questions. But in case you’re wondering what they were here they are:

And are you ready for the really really BIG question?

I especially liked the big question. It really reminds you how different the world can see when you’re a kid!

Even if I struggled to find all the questions in the library, we had so much fun with this activity. Any game where the kids are in the know and the adults are clueless is always popular in this home! Plus, along the way we got to practise research skills and giggle a great deal. What could be better?

Music we listened to whilst making our little answers included:

Other fun activities to try out alongside reading Little Answer include:

What are you the answer to? What questions are you looking for?

Disclosure: I received a free review copy of Little Answer from the author.

School is back in full swing now, and I’ve returned to my storytelling sessions at J’s school on a Friday afternoon, where I get to read stories and play and craft in what is termed “Golden Time”. It’s a brilliant way to round off the week (definitely much better than the Triple Latin I once had), and it means I’m always on the lookout for picture books which not only lend themselves to creative play, but which also work exceptionally well as class read-alouds.

Big! by Tim Hopgood struck me as one such book the moment I first read it. And given that it is all about growing up, and thinking about being bigger, it was a natural choice for the start of the school year, where all the children have moved up a class and are enjoying being that much “bigger” than they were last year.

What does it mean to be big? And when, exactly, do you become big? Such existential questions are really quite important in young kids’ lives: When will they be big enough to play on your phone? When will they be big enough to have a new bike? When will they be big enough to stay up as late as their older brother or sister? Certainly, J – being the youngest in our home – asks these sorts of questions very often indeed, and finds it very frustrating that she is not yet as big as she would like to be.

And so it was no surprise that she lapped up Hopgood’s observant and giggle-inducing take on being big. Being big partly depends on what you compare it with. Compare yourself to a piece of popcorn and you’re massive! And compare your big sister with a bear, and even she will appear to be tiny

Image: Tim Hopgood. Used with permission.

Hopgood effectively cobines lots of bold blocks of solid colour (there are no white pages anywhere) with visual texture, and draws his questioning boy with such apparent simplicity that it could have been drawn by a child (think Charlie and Lola, and you’ll have the right sort of idea); all this adds further appeal for young readers and listeners. Use of a variety of font sizes lends the book to very expressive reading-aloud – great for groups, but also for young children reading this to themselves.

Full of reassurance about one of life’s BIGGEST questions, Tim Hopgood has created another hit I can warmly recommend.

To go along with reading Big! all the kids in my group at school got to make their own growth chart, using paper measuring tapes stuck onto long lengths of fax paper (used for its convenient width). We talked about tall things which we might draw onto our charts (giraffes, beanstalks, blocks of flats and so on) and then the kids had free rein to decorate their charts how they saw fit. Here are my girls creating their own charts at home:

At school there were two other activities kids could choose to take part in; building the tallest tower they could out of a variety of building blocks, and measuring each other with popcorn (mirroring a suggestion in Hopgood’s book).

I taped a large sheet on the floor of the classroom and kids worked in pairs, whilst one lay down and the other lined up popcorn to see how many pieces of popcorn high they were. This was an incredibly popular activity (especially when I lay down and the kids got to measure me), and was worth every bit of the rather large amount of mess it made!

Whilst making our growth charts at home we listened to:

Other activities which would work well alongside reading Big! include:

Do you have a favourite book about growing up?

If you’d like to make growth charts with your class at school, I do have some spare paper tapes (150cm long, marked in both inches and cm); I’d be happy to post them to you (anywhere in the world), with the proviso that they’re for group use (I don’t want to post fewer than 20 in a go, because they are very difficult to pack!). Let me know, and the first 3 people to contact me will get the tapes!

Disclosure: I received a free review copy of Big! from the author.

Thanks to the generous folk at Simon and Schuster I have five (yes, five!) copies of the very funny, very colourful, brilliant read for summer that is Thank You for Looking After Our Pets by Tim Hopgood.

And what’s more they’re signed by the author himself!

I reviewed Thank You for Looking After Our Pets here. As you’ll see, we loved the book! Its vibrancy, its humour, its surprises all add up to making it a book I whole heartedly recommend

And now you can win a copy, a signed copy, for yourself…

If you would like to be in with a chance of winning a paperback, signed copy of Thank You for Looking After Our Pets simply leave a comment on this post – that’s all there is to it!

If you want extra chances to win a copy of Thank You for Looking After Our Pets you can:

For any of the extra entries to count you MUST leave a separate comment here on this post saying what extra chance you’ve gone for (eg tweeted about the giveaway etc).

This giveaway:

The winners will be selected randomly with the help of random.org, and announced here on Playing by the book sometime during the day on 1st of August. Good Luck!

Life and books (as if they really were two separate things!) came together just beautifully this weekend.

To start with, we’ve been looking after our neighbour’s cat, a tom cat, which for some reason M and J have renamed Alice. Not having any pets of our own, it always makes the girls very happy to be tasked with taking care of Alice.

We also received a copy of Tim Hopgood‘s latest picture book, Thank You for Looking After Our Pets. And as big Tim Hopgood fans (see our reviews of earlier books here, here, here and even here) there was much excitement and anticipation as we opened the front cover and began reading.

Thank You for Looking After Our Pets takes a very simple idea but executes it with heaps of humour and an explosion of colour. Essentially one long note to the pet-looker-after-er containing some points to bear in mind whilst the pet owners are away, it quickly becomes clear that the pets in this home are no ordinary pets, despite initial appearances.

There’s Cuddly the Crocodile, Spock the Snake, Vincent the Vulture and even Winston the Warthog in amongst the menagerie. The list gets crazier and crazier, and just when you think there is finally one “normal” pet in the house you get taken by surprise with not one but two clever twists. The first one is such that if you and your kids are fans of Ten Terrible Dinosoars by Paul Stickland, then you’ll adore this book. And when you really think there is no where left to go, the final flourish takes things just that little bit further – it’s brilliant humour with real bite!

The story had my girls rolling around with laughter. The final turn of events still has me shaking my head in amazement – a really witty, unexpected ending, that loses none of its enjoyment now we can anticipate it.

One of the reasons I particularly love Tim Hopgood’s work is because he uses colour so brilliantly. His palette always cheers me up – he embraces colour, vibrancy, intensity with a passion. This book is no exception.

His drawings in this book are as deceptively simple as his text, a combination which makes this a perfect book for younger listeners from babies upwards, whilst the revelations at the book’s denouement will have school aged kids (and their parents) giggling in delight.

If you are going to be asking any friends or neighbours with kids to look after your pets this summer this really is the gift you should give them to say thankyou. If you

One of the contributors to last week’s popular post 50+ picture books every child should be read was an author/illustrator much enjoyed in our home – Tim Hopgood. One of the very fist books I reviewed on Playing by the book was his award winning Here Come’s Frankie, which is still the book I pick up if I’m in a wonderful mood and feel like dancing, or a terrible mood and need cheering up. Our Big Blue Sofa, however, is probably one of my kids’ top 10 picture books (even if my review of it makes me cringe; who of you would display for all the world to see the detritus found down the back of your sofa!)

So when I saw that Tim had a new book out I knew it was something I would want to read and review here. UnPOPpable, published last month, captures all the joy and wonder a simple balloon can bring. Kids will love this book as they will recognise themselves in it – the delight at playing with a balloon, squeezing it, holding it, the loss but also awe as it floats up into the sky, and the magic and squealy delight that comes when the balloon finally does pop.

The story is told with just a few bare words on most pages making is an enjoyable book for even the youngest children to listen to (and great for slightly older siblings to read to their toddler brothers and sisters). As an adult reader it’s a really fun read-aloud – there are plenty of opportunities to get into the spirit of things with loud popping noises.

Tim Hopgood’s illustrations are exuberant; even those depicting the black night sky and space feel bright and vibrant, and without wishing to give anything away, the big bang finale is bursting with energy just as it must have been back when time began.

I hope you’ll find an opportunity to give this book to a child with a helium balloon – I guarantee you will make someone very happy indeed!

Inspired by UnPOPpable we got up to some good old fashioned play with balloons. The girls drew silly faces on them and then we rubbed the ballons on our hair to charge them with static electricity. Once charged we could stick our balloons pretty much anywhere we liked – on the walls and on the ceiling. It seemed like magic to the girls!

Taking the magic to the next level I challenged the girls to stick a knitting needle in a balloon without popping it. Of course balloons ended up popping left right and centre, but then Mummy stepped in with the sort of magic that only mummies possess, and sure enough, with

Last week the UK Secretary for Education Michael Gove suggested that children as young as 11 should be reading 50 books a year as part of a drive to raise literacy standards. This raised a lot of eyebrows amongst the British book-loving public, not least as it comes following large cuts in funding for libraries in the UK.

Whilst most commentators of course agreed that reading should be encouraged, many argued against a prescribed list of set length:

“I feel it’s the quality of children’s reading experience that really matters. Pleasure, engagement and enjoyment of books is what counts – not simply meeting targets” ~ Anthony Browne
“The important aim is a reading that should be wide and deep rather than numerical” ~Alan Garner
“When it comes to reading books children should be allowed – and encouraged – to read as much rubbish as they want to” ~ Philip Pullman

In response to Gove’s 50 books a year suggestion, The Independent newspaper published an article “The 50 books every child should read“, containing books for 11 year olds suggested by Philip Pullman, Michael Morpurgo, Michael Rosen and others. This list gave me lots of food for thought. Of course I want to do all I can to encourage a love of reading in my children, and one of the ways I do this is by reading lots and lots to them – if they don’t love books when they are 6 it’s unlikely they’ll love books when they are 11 or 16.

So I try to let them read whenever or whatever they want, but I also try to ensure they’re surrounded by superb, stimulating, brilliant and breathtaking (picture) books. But how do I, you, or any other person discover and choose such books?

I approached six brilliant UK-based illustrators and asked them to contribute towards a list of books every child should be read. Tim Hopgood, James Mayhew, Jan Pieńkowski, Katie Cleminson, Viviane Schwarz and Clara Vulliamy all very gamely accepted my challenge of producing a list of 10 or so books each that they love.

This list is not prescriptive, this list is personal. This list does not claim to be the definitive top 50 picture books of all time, although it certainly would create a fantastic library for any child. This list is merely a starting point and this list, hopefully, will generate lots of discussion; I look forward to hearing what you think about the books, authors and illustrators which have been included (and those which have been left out).

Tim Hopgood

Tim says “This is not my top 10 – that would be impossible! My top 10 changes constantly as I discover more and more new (or sometimes old) picture books to add to my collection. And I don’t claim to be an expert on what makes a great picture book. The list I’ve put together is simply 10 books that I find inspiring and enjoyable to look at time and time again and hope others will too!”

3 Comments on 50+ picture books every child should be read – a non-prescriptive list for inspiration, last added: 4/1/2011