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!