The Ten Fat Sausages had another outing this weekend. I was thrilled to be invited back to The Times and The Sunday Times Cheltenham Literature Festival for a third time.
It's such a wonderful festival. I love the 'village' site at Montpelier Gardens. Even on a soaking wet weekend it's beautiful and there are plenty of brilliant venues to visit and enjoy.

The Ten Fat Sausages are back on the road! I had a wonderful time revisiting the Henley Literary Festival.
Those Gower Cottage brownies - mmm, mmm! Thanks to all who came along and to the festival for making me and my family welcome.
Huge thanks to Harriet Dunlea at Andersen Press who has been a legend organising all my events. Best of luck in your new role, Harriet. Me and the sausages will miss you!

It's been a while since I've posted on here, mainly because I've been CRAZY BUSY on tour with my 'Ten Fat Sausages' event. (You can still catch me at the Discover Story Centre in London August 3, and at Awesome Authors, part of CBBC's Summer Social in Liverpool on August 5!).
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Talking of Awesome Authors: three cheers for the team of local authors behind the brilliant Bradford-On-Avon Mini Book Fest, including Fleur Hitchcock, Maudie Smith and Anna Wilson. The whole team works tirelessly and generously to help their local library deliver a truly wonderful festival - and it's completely free to attend!

Reading just got even more rock 'n' roll! I'm just home from the Oxford Literary Festival where I had the most amazing time performing my Ten Fat Sausages and Odd Socks event, c/o Andersen Press.

The audience were wonderful! They totally deserved the extra treat: musician David Gibb very kindly joined me on stage for a supercool live performance of the sizzle-sizzle-bang song that I play as part of my show. EAR WORM!

For anyone who has come to any of my Ten Fat Sausages events: you can get the full version of David's ridiculously catchy song, titled Jelly on a Plate, on his latest album - I highly recommend it!
We had another chance to visit The Story Museum, which is without a doubt one of the Robinson family's favourite venues anywhere, ever. If you have a chance to visit it's well worth making the trip. I've never been anywhere that inspires such indulgence in the imagination. It's utterly magical.

​How lucky are we? We happened to be there the same day as Cressida Cowell and Mark Nicholas, so we bought tickets and went along to their event. Cressida's books were a huge inspiration to me when I was an aspiring children's author, so meeting her was a dream come true for me and my kids! Mark taught us how to make art with old socks, so we're going to give that a try this week at home.
Maybe today... there's so much snow in Frome that school is closed! HOORAY.
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Massive thanks to Harriet Dunlea at Andersen Press for her help organising such a brilliant book tour. Legend! Thanks also to the team at Oxford Literary Festival and The Story Museum for their help on the day. Last but by no means least, HUGE thanks to all who came along and joined the fun! It was great to meet you all.

Ever wondered what it's like to dress up as a giant sausage in front of hundreds of excited young children? Let me tell you: it's FUN.

I've had a wonderful few weeks touring the country to launch me and Tor Freeman's latest picture book, 'Ten Fat Sausages'. Thanks heaps to Harriet at Andersen Press and everyone else who has helped to arrange, plan and run the events so smoothly.

I've genuinely never enjoyed sharing a book as much as I have this one! I hope everyone I've met enjoyed has just as much fun as I did. Thanks so much for making this book arrive on the shelves with a POP and a BANG!

I'm not quite done yet! I'm still looking forward to meeting the children at Bristol Cathedral Primary School for our postponed World Book Day event (snow stopped play!) and to performing with David Gibb at the Oxford Literature Festival.
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Also: Ten Fat Sausages has been chosen as book of the day by BookTrust, is one of the Guardian's best new picture books and featured as LibraryMice's picture book of the week! Amazing!

MASSIVE THANKS to Sheffield Libraries for including both 'A Beginner's Guide to Bear Spotting' by me and David Roberts and 'Odd Socks' by me and Rebecca Ashdown for their brilliant Sheffield Children's Book Awards!

I finally got to meet Rebecca at the event, as well as meeting and catching up with loads of other authors, illustrators, publishers, librarians and - always at the heart of these amazing awards - KIDS!
You can read the list of winning titles here (top picks for Christmas!).

The shop (which is a children's book fan's paradise!) was packed with young giraffe spotters who watched Claire draw (scroll down for a pic!) while they listened to our story - they even let us paint their cheeky faces.
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We've loved visiting schools in Hampton and Crouch End, larking about with very magic markers, face paint and ossicones. Yes, ossicones - those knobbly horns on the top of a giraffe's head. Thanks to all who joined the fun, and to Hannah and Elisa at Simon & Schuster who helped it all run smoothly.

​Huge thanks to the Alligator's Mouth in Richmond for welcoming me and illustrator Claire Powell to their wonderful book shop yesterday! Clever clogs Claire designed, made and installed a really funny window display based on our picture book, 'Have You Seen My Giraffe?'

I've since removed the face paint, but it stains and I still look a little jaundiced. A fair price to pay for a wonderful day out. As well as all the brilliant festival volunteers I also got to meet Beanstalk, Authorfy and one of my all time picture book faves Guy Parker-Rees. Plus I snuck in an ice cream before going home. With any luck I'll be back again next year.