I won something!

Fantastic news - Yuck! won the Younger Children category in the Red House Children's Book Awards at yesterday's award ceremony in Birmingham! The overall winner was Michael Morpurgo's Shadow so we were in great company! Had a wonderful day and we were pampered by all the wonderful people from the Federation of Children's Book Groups. Thank you to all the children who voted for us and for the opportunity to meet the author of Yuck! for the first time, the lovely Angela McAllister! All the shortlisted authors and illustrators were presented with portfolios containing letters and drawings from lots of the children who had enjoyed our books - they were so lovely and it's something I will always treasure. As category winners, we also received beautiful engraved silver bookmarks - I shall put mine in my trophy cabinet alongside my only other award for illustration (so far!!) my pewter plate from Highlights High Five magazine which I won in 2009. We were even on the BBC news - definitely a first for me!

Illustration Friday - 'Shadows'

This weeks Illustration Friday topic reminded me of a lovely book by Cat Weatherill that I Illustrated for Caterpillar Press, called By Lantern Light. It had a lantern that lit up when you pressed it and which appeared throughout the book - hence the shadows! Another book in the series, My Little Night Light had a similar feature, only with a lighthouse on each page. They were great fun to illustrate. It's quite timely as I'm just starting a new book in the same series, this time with party candles as the feature, so it's nice to look back at this one after not seeing it for a while!

May Update

It's been a busy month and I've managed to squeeze in a short trip to beautiful Majorca which was wonderful! I've done some new card designs for American Greetings, some magazine illustrations for Highlights High Five magazine, a commission for a watercolour of a friend's dog ( a rare treat these days, but I promised to do it as they had paintings of their other two from years ago and wanted their new pooch to join them in the hall!)

This week I'm doing some school visits in the run up to the Red House Children's Book Award ceremony to promote Yuck! Had a wonderful day yesterday in Sandford Primary School in Somerset, and tomorrow it's off to Wolverhampton to visit two more schools. Then it'll be time to start my next new book for Little Tiger Press - very exciting as I don't know what it is yet!

This photo was taken after my monster workshop yesterday - I think they liked it!

Illustration Friday - 'Warning'

This is my first blog post in ages - oops! It's been manic here since November - lots of lovely work and new books to look forward to and I'm very excited that 'Yuck' has been shortlisted for the Red House Children's Book Awards as well! Fingers crossed...

This week's Illustration Friday topic is Warning, so I thought this one would be ideal. It's from Star Friends or Ooogle-Doogle and the Boogle by Tracey Corderoy, and the story reads..

But one day, the Boogle raced out of the gate! "No!" gasped Ooogle-Doogle. He never ever went out there! WHAT IF THERE WERE SCARIES? But he couldn't let anything happen to his friend, so nervously he followed.

I'm happily working on a lovely new book by Tracey at the moment, so watch this space!

Illustration Friday - 'Burning'

This week's Illustration Friday topic is Burning and it's been a while since I've submitted an illustration due to holidays and other distractions so I'm so pleased I was able to find something to fit! It's from Silly Goose by the lovely Marnie McGee

Latest news!

Oh, I'm such a hopeless blogger! I know I should be blogging regularly but I get distracted, so here's a quick update on what's happening. A few weeks ago I finished my latest book for Little Tiger Press and I think (not very modestly) that it's looking pretty good! It's a lovely story with a theme of changing seasons and friendship. It'll be a while before it's published - it's probably off in China being printed at the moment! I'm just about to start another new book with them and I'm so excited because the author is the lovely Tracey Corderoy (Star Friends) and the storyline is fab! I'm also working on a lovely new book for Caterpillar Books (My Little Night-Light, By Lantern Light) and doing the illustrations for two new anthologies for Stripes Publishing (Winter Tales series) so I'll be busy with my favourite sort of work over the coming months! In the meantime I've been doing artwork for some new greetings cards which makes a nice change for a while. And I made this for the Village Autumn Bazaar - it was a late entry and came first in the adult category because no-one else had bothered to make one!!

October Update

It's been a hectic few weeks here and I've not had time even to post entries for Illustration Friday :o( but I've finished a new book called 'When will it Snow' which is off at Frankfurt Book Fair with Little Tiger Press getting it's first airing! I did a local school visit with Lauren from Stripes publishing yesterday and in spite of having twice as many children as I expected (75!!) we had a great story and craft session and the kids made lots of little monsters - each one unique! I love how creative they are and how some love to make them neat, some colour co-ordinated and some just go wild with their imaginations!

Anyway that's it and we're off to Spain now for a lovely holiday so bye bye blog for a couple of weeks !