One more day to go

Peep! is out tomorrow.  To celebrate I made this little gif of Dot.  She is patience personified.  Unlike my own dog who only stares out the window to bark at passing cars, the postman and the wind.

Peep! is published by Andersen Press and available to buy wherever you get your books.  But please support your local bookshop if you have one, or take a look in your local library.  Libraries and bookshops are the best.

And the winner is...

The Bookbug Picture Book Prize 2020 winner was announced yesterday and I'm happy to report that The Station Mouse won. Woohoo!

The beautiful trophy was made by Emily Hogarth

Every year Scottish Book Trust give all of the primary one children in Scotland a Bookbug bag containing three shortlisted books.  This year Scottish Book Trust gave out an incredible 189,000 books in these bags alone.  That's 63,000 bags!  The most wonderful part of all this is that young readers get three great books of their very own to keep.

The winner is picked by the readers too, which for me is the loveliest part.  It's really nice to know that the people you write books for are actually enjoying them.  Thank you to all the schools who took part, all the libraries that helped out and to all the pupils for voting.

Here is the announcement video.

Huge thanks to Liam, Heather and Jonathan who made this video, and to Hannah who filmed the shortlist videos, you who were all so helpful and supportive.

Maurice and I are off to celebrate with our favourite things, cheese and cake.  Maybe there's a way we can combine the two...

The Wizard of Oz

The Wizard of Oz publication day is finally here.  Sam Hay has written a wonderful picture book adaptation of L. Frank Baum's classic and I have illustrated it.   I feel like I started this project a long time ago, in fact I think I first drew the characters back in 2014.  It was some time after this that I was approached by Egmont to illustrate the book, based on those drawings from so long ago.  
And here they are...

The original gang all together

The book gang

As you can see, everyone has changed a little.  With my original drawings I wanted to play around with the scale of the characters and to have Dorothy be the sort of kid I was when I was little: ready to go outside on an adventure.

After discussing the character designs with Egmont the most notable changes are Lion's shape and size, and the colours which are brighter and more friendly.  You'll also notice that Little Dot doesn't have red shoes.  When I designed these characters I only had a vague memory of the film (which I don't think I'd ever seen in its entirety) as I hadn't ever read the book.  Once I'd been asked to illustrate this I immediately went through the book making notes about the characters, the world and what colours and details were mentioned.   L. Frank Baum wrote Dorothy finding silver shoes on the witch beneath the house, the iconic ruby slippers are actually from the film, and so once I'd read the book I switched Little Dot's sneakers to silver.

The Wicked Witch, soon to be The Even Worse Witch

I wanted the Wicked Witch to be more elegant than what we're used to seeing.  

The Even Worse Witch and her flying monkeys

There's a big difference between doing one initial drawing versus the many sketches it takes to illustrate a book.  The latter means that characters will have time to develop and change.  They developed even further once Sam had written actual words for them and their personalities really began to show.  For me, Scarecrow has been the real constant.  I designed him to be soft and lumbering and I think he's really kept that.  He might be my secret favourite.

These are the original character designs for the Wizard and witches.  The Wizard, who resides in Oz, is obviously in green.  I gave him tools as the original Oz is a bit of a humbug and this was to hint at the mechanics of the tricks he plays.  Sam's Oz is a lot kinder and so these things no longer applied.  I kept his snazzy suit though.

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and Glinda

My very first sketch of Glinda (the red-haired witch) was horrendous so I'm not showing it.  (Believe me, it's for the best.)  This was a revised version that no-one has ever seen.  I wanted all of the witches to have very distinctive coats and hats.  The Good Witch I wanted to look like a snowdrop as she is described as all in white (the petals inspired the folds of her cloak and her little green hat is the stem.) For the Wicked Witch I wanted a sophisticated hunter look (eagle-eyed readers will notice she has a lion's mane scarf and a flying monkey feather in her hat) and for Glinda, who is described as being beautiful, I went with a sort of 50s librarian chic.  Glinda was never included in any draft I saw from Sam and so no-one has seen her until now.

The final Good Witch (now a very sparkly snowdrop)

Once I received a first draft of the text I drew a few rough sketches of what I thought would be the most fun/important thing to illustrate on that page.  Here are a few of the original sketches and how they evolved into the final images.

Sketch

Roughs and text placement

Final image

I'm not sure if Sam intended the final book to be set in Kansas but I certainly used it as a visual reference for Dot and Auntie's farm. Their farmhouse was designed by taking my favourite bits from British and American farm buildings, and those clothes poles are from my back garden when I was little.

Sketch 

As you can see, this was before I redesigned Dot's house.

Rough

Final artwork

My art director, amazing Abi, and I spent a long time on the cover.  We'd played around with all of the characters running along the road before but we wanted to make sure we explored every possible option to find something striking.

A few of the unused ideas that flooded Abi's inbox

Here is the finished book in all it's shiny holographic foil glory.

Here are a few things I learned along the way...

One.  Never give this many characters their own patterned clothing, especially if they are main characters.

Two.  The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum is a great book.  It is full of magic, darkness, adventure and, of course, friendship and bravery which are themes Sam has brought out so well.  I highly recommend it.  Moreover, I recommend you treat yourself to one of the many beautiful illustrated versions out there.  You can start with ours!  It's available now.

If you made it to the end of this post, congratulations!  Here's a flying monkey for you...

One week to go...

My next book, The Station Mouse, is publishing one week today.  That's when Maurice will begin his new job.  He's a very responsible mouse so he's got it marked on his calendar.  There's still a lot of unpacking to do, but with a whole week to go I think we can let him sleep a little longer.

Pigeon P.I. paperback publishes

My second picture book Pigeon P.I. is published in paperback today.  Hooray! 

Complete with a snazzy new blue cover, the lovely people at Andersen Press have managed to cram all the nice little details from the hardback, including the secret cover underneath the hardback dust jacket, into the paperback.

Available from all lovely bookshops today!

And to celebrate there are now some pigeon based prints in my SHOP.  

TOTES!

And prints!

Book three

My third book with Andersen Press is publishing next year, but the proofs have already arrived.  I can't show much but I'm sure no-one will mind a tiny sneak peak.

Mo at work

This is Maurice (Maw-reece). He runs the lost property department of a railway station.  His office was inspired by a ticket office I saw at Boat Of Garten railway station in the Highlands, near where I live.

   Isn't it the sweetest?  And perfect for a mouse.

Here's a little close up of the title page.  As you can see, like my first two books,  it is published by those lovely people at Andersen Press.

And finally a little glance at the back cover.  With some exciting bits and bobs I've collected to make some luggage tags of my own.

You'll have to wait a little longer to see the rest.

Edinburgh International Book Festival

Last week I was luckily enough to attend my first ever Edinburgh International Book Festival, which is a bit silly since it's only a year younger than me and I didn't live that far away, but I can now proudly say I've been.

And the sun was out.

I ran two events.  One was a short storytelling session in the Story Box, and the other was in the Baillie Gifford Imagination Lab and required Houdini and a magic suitcase.  Many a magnificent Houdini was drawn by our young audience (and a few adults too) and no-one has yet been turned into a rabbit...well, not permanently.

Only a garish pink strap can keep the magic contained.

Huge thanks to all the lovely children and adults who came to see us, and to the Edinburgh Book Festival staff who were so welcoming.

I'm probably supposed to be doing something...

Many pennies were spent in the Children's bookshop.

Making Pigeon P.I.

Since my second picture book Pigeon P.I. is published in but two weeks, I thought I'd put together a little how-it-was-made.

Pigeon P.I. started life as a flash of inspiration.  I was working on ideas for my second book and I already had a pretty good one.  I wasn't sure if it was THE idea but I liked it.  With about a week to go before my meeting at Andersen Press I had an idea I was far more excited about: I was going to write a film noir picture book and call it Pigeon P.I.  It sounds so simple when you say it out loud but ideas are like that, they're exciting and instant.  It takes a lot of work to make them into something more.

Is it a mystery?  The words 'private investigator' should've been my first clue.

I started to draw using Humphrey Bogart as inspiration for Murray, my pigeon (apologies to Mr. Bogart)

The first Murray.  Sadly, 'you filthy corn husk' didn't make it in.

Faye Dunaway from 'Bonnie and Clyde' helped inspire my canary Vee.  Apologies to Ms. Dunaway but I wanted someone who looked great in hats and there's no denying that she does.

First sketch of Vee

One of many test drawings of Vee

A few more tests.  My art director Beccy and I spent a long time working on what made Vee look young and appealing.  We shortened her hair flick and really focused on her shape.   She was definitely the hardest character to get right.  

The final Vee

I didn't have a story yet but I had most of the characters and a world I wanted to build.  Most importantly I had an idea I was passionate about.  It was THE idea.  Here's some of the sketches I prepared for my meeting.

I make a lot of notes.

This neon colour test didn't make it in but I still like it.

 I was watching Chinatown at this point.





From the final book.

A little joke about a spin-off series

Take a peek under the dust jacket to meet Penguin P.I.

First sketch of the police, who nearly didn't make it when my first draft came in at 50 pages

Sadly the night watch don't feature.  They're biding their time.

 Luckily, the good folks at Andersen Press liked this idea too and we spent our meeting discussing character motivations and all things noir.  With all sorts of wisdom imparted, off I went to sit with my sketchbook to see if these characters really had a story to tell.  It's funny to look back and see how many stages a book goes through when you write it.

This pie-as-an-escape plan is one of my favourite drawings that never went anywhere

It's also amazing to see how much sticks.  One of my very first drawings has remained the whole way through as my first page, with pretty much the same first line.

Only I could think a pile of abandoned newspaper is a 'filing system'

Murray and his filing system

I'm pretty excited about the way this book turned out, it's very different to Life Is Magic but I think they've got some things in common, namely an excess of hand-lettering and background characters.

A note to myself

What I wanted to create was a satisfying mystery in picture book form, to pay homage to the detective books I've loved all my life but to make sure that I was writing it for a picture book audience, that this was a satisfying world and story in itself and not just a parody of something I loved.  I hope I've managed to do that.