I'm very excited about this one! 1,2,3 Do the Dinosaur is illustrated by Rosalind Beardshaw. I've long been an admirer of Ros's work. Her characters are truly adorable and she's made this a book to love and treasure. I'm very pleased with the text too - I was lucky enough to work with editor Alison Green who taught me so much during the process.
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Huge thanks to Bournville Book Fest and all the families who came along to meet the Ten Fat Sausages and the Odd Socks!
What a busy couple of weeks! I've had a wonderful time visiting schools as part of their World Book Day celebrations. My week started with in Andover and Basingstoke with the Hants School Library Service. What lucky schools to have such brilliant librarians! They help pick out the best new titles and make sure the schools have plenty of variety on their bookshelves. The kids were brilliant, too! I visited St Bede's and St John the Baptist's primary schools, who played host to other schools joining us on coach trips. It was bookish, busy, bonkers and lots of fun. On World Book Day itself I was invited to Milldown Academy, Blandford Forum for a whole day of sessions with everyone from reception to year 6. No rest for wicked sausages - I was at Christchurch Primary in Bradford-on-Avon on Friday morning along with Fleur Hitchcock!
The children at Christchurch had all been challenged to make a 'book hat' from a piece of card. The hats were based on their favourite books.Assembly was BRILLIANT! I've never seen so many wonderful, creative, inventive and varied hats. What a great idea - much cheaper and simpler than costumes, and they got everyone talking about favourite stories. I think my favourite was a traditional caravan hat from Danny the Champion of the World. The hats meant I found out about some books I'd not heard of before - and I've now borrowed them from the library for my kids to read! I'm still not done! I'm visiting Old Sarum Primary with Waterstone's Salisbury tomorrow, then I'll be at the Bournville Lit Fest for a sold out Ten Fat Sausages event on Saturday. Phew! Thanks to my publishers and Authors Aloud for keeping me organised, and to all the bookshops who've helped with book sales. Hooray for books, every single day! Well, these took a while, but they're finally here: Happy Birthday to you, Princess and Happy Birthday to You, Pirate are now in book stores. In 2016 my editor at HarperCollins spotted that the rights to the song, Happy Birthday had finally come into the public domain. She asked me to write some books, essentially as 'party bag' items for very young children who love those traditional party themes: princesses, pirates, superheroes . . . you know the kind of thing. They lined up Vicki Gausden to illustrate them - and I'm very glad they did. Vicki's style is super cute and very appealing. We worked on these a long time ago, so they feel a long way away from the sort of books Vicki and I are working on now - but they're very sweet, nonetheless! I wanted the books to be fun and silly - the squashed tomatoes and stew kind of birthday song rather than anything too sickly sweet.
Happy New Year! I hope you've had a good Christmas? I seem to have gained the equivalent weight of a tin of Quality Street on each thigh.
Because I don't already have enough to do what with dieting, exercise and several books to finish, I thought I'd give my website a bit of an overhaul. Apologies for any bits of code that I've left visible, or any gremlins still in the works. I'll get round to a good old spit and polish when I get time. This year sees the publication of, I think, at least five new picture books from me. But I may have miscounted... Tooth Fairy in Training with Briony May Smith for Walker, The Pawed Piper with Chinlun Lee for Walker, Happy Birthday to You, Princess and Happy Birthday to You, Pirate, both with Vicki Gausden for HarperCollins and Do The Dinosaur with Rosalind Beardshaw for Egmont. 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! What a crazy summer. Eleven weeks ago I posted a first draft of #OnlyOneOfMe online, hoping - but not expecting - to find a way of getting Lisa's book published. Getting published is never easy. Publishing a picture book (two, in fact!) in such a short period of time is pretty much miraculous, and it's been an absolute pleasure from start to finish, thanks to the team behind it. Thank you a million times to our artists, Catalina Echeverri (who worked while juggling other deadlines and moving house) and Tim Budgen (who worked while juggling other deadlines and on holiday), Peter Gill and the team at Graffeg - Damon, Daniel, Hazel, Joana, Matthew, Megan - hope I got everyone! (Peter said YES at first sight and his team have gone above and beyond in delivering the books, a website and a whole lot more besides), James Catchpole (who pulled more strings than Mr Geppetto),
Last but by no means least I want to thank Lisa Wells for being an absolute smasher. Through regular chemo, ongoing pain, feeling like crap and getting abuse from strangers (believe it or not), she's stuck to her guns to see this project through. She's an incredible person and a dream of a woman to have as the public face of #OnlyOneOfMe. The book would simply not exist without her drive to stick two fingers up to cancer. Eff you, cancer. LONG LIVE LISA! [caption id="attachment_3785" align="alignright" width="225"] Beautiful flowers - thank you, Walker Books![/caption]
The #OnlyOneOfMe book trailer is here - huge thanks to Hazel Guppy at Graffeg for putting this together, along with the website - where you can pre-order as well as nominating a charity to receive one of 800 crowdfunded copies of the book. What are you waiting for? Visit onlyoneofme.co.uk and nominate as many charities as you like! |
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