A Q and A with illustrator, Katy Halford, plus a UNICORNS Picture Book COVER REVEAL! -See it here first! :)

Welcome, Katy, to the Picture Book Den and thank you for answering my questions today!

We love hearing about people’s paths into publishing. Please could you tell us a bit about your journey?

My journey into publishing first started a few years ago when I was taking an online children's book course, 'Make Art That Sells Illustrating Children's Books'. It was a course I had longed to do and I am so glad I did. Whilst on the course I signed up with my agents, Plum Pudding. That year I illustrated my very first picture book 'Moz the Monster' with Nosy Crow to accompany the John Lewis Christmas advert. It really was a dream come true!

2) You have illustrated picture books, some older fiction and also non-fiction books. Do you have a preferred type of book that you like to work on?

I love them all for different reasons. Picture books are always great fun to work on and I love that I can add lots of little details for the children to spot. They do take several months to work on as they are a much longer process. Older fiction is a refreshing break from working in colour, and is a much quicker process to get to final artwork for me so these are great to work on in between. Non- fiction is always great too as you get to learn some interesting facts as you draw!

3) When you choose to take on a project, what is it about a text that makes you want to illustrate it?

I think I've been really lucky with the texts I've been able to illustrate. I think the text has to excite you, it makes your job of drawing the pictures so much easier if you enjoy what you are drawing. I love a text with fun and humor, oh and of course also a bit of magic!

4) Having worked with you on a couple of books now, you seem to work very quickly and efficiently! I’m amazed at the speed at which you are able to produce your pencil roughs (which don’t seem very rough to me at all but are full of amazing details!!) Please could you tell us a bit about your initial process when you start a picture book?

Haha thank you. I really don't feel like I am working quickly!

Character sketches of Rapunzel's Mum from 'Rapunzel to the Rescue' by Lucy Rowland and Katy Halford.

The picture book process usually starts with the main characters. This is one of my favorite parts of the process as people are the best things to draw. I spend a lot of my time (well before lock-down) in coffee shops at the start of a project. I love people watching and often I think some of them inspire the characters that feature in my books. Also it helps having two young nieces that are the perfect ages for picture books, so watching them helps to inspire me too. I love playing around with hairstyles and clothing on characters, it's such much fun. So lots of sketching later I have drawn up some characters. These are sent over to the design team for comments and we go from there.

After the characters are worked out, I start to draw up thumbnail roughs of the page spreads in my sketchbook. This helps me to plan out the page and where the text will sit within the illustration. I often scribble lots of notes around these as my thumbnails are always very rough and tiny! For me I need this process before I draw up the roughs. I know some illustrators prefer to just go straight to the rough process. The thumbnails go back and forth to the publisher design team till we are happy to start drawing up the roughs. I usually draw the roughs on my iPad in Procreate, this way I can easily move things around if they aren't quite in the correct place or shrink them down if the text needs more breathing space etc. I really enjoy this part of the process and I always find it really helps me out at the colour stage if these are drawn up fairly neat with the details added in.

Seeing the characters and environments I imagine in my mind progress from rough sketches to coloured art, is such an exciting process. Especially the first time you see the book in print.

Rapunzel to the Rescue is out in August and is published by Scholastic

5) What does your typical working day look like?

My working day varies, I'm not always a morning person so I like to spend time in the garden in the morning if I can (new lock-down hobby), depends if deadlines are looming! I can be at my desk from 9am in the morning and the rest of the day if I have deadlines and other days I might not start work till after lunch. But saying that if I do that, I will work all afternoon and right into the late evening. I often find I am much more productive in the afternoons and evenings, I'm not really sure why it's just when I feel most at flow. I guess that's the beauty of working from home. You can choose to work the times that you are at your most productive. Other than that, as I mentioned before, I often sit in coffee shops at the start of a project, this makes a nice change of scenery from siting at the desk!


6) We love hearing about people’s work spaces at Picture Book Den. Where do you work? What does your work space look like?

Katy's (beautifully tidy!) work space.

I work from home, in my studio. It's a lovely bright room especially when the sun is shining. My desk set up is my cintiq and computer and I love to surround my space with inspiration. I have a huge collection of children's books, a collection of bits and bobs that I have collected over the years. This mainly consists of just things that I like and all things quirky. I always have artwork on the walls, some are my own of projects i'm working on and others are prints from illustrators I like.

7) What is your top tip for budding illustrators who want to break into the publishing industry?

Draw everyday or as much as you can, and enjoy it. Be yourself, draw how you draw, don't try to be anyone else. Try not to compare yourself to others, everyone is on a different journey. I know this is hard to do at times but really it's true, don't do it! Persevere and take any critique with open arms. It's there to help you, we are always learning. I for one love learning and developing!

8) Who, in the world of picture books, are some of your biggest influencers/inspirations?

Wow there's so many, this is tricky. I think everyone has some kind of influence and inspiration to me. This can be old or new world. We are so open to seeing so much with social media today it's hard not to see people's work. I think people like Quentin Blake, Janet Ahlberg and Raymond Briggs are some of my main inspirations because they brought so much joy to my childhood. Raymond Briggs more so now because I just find him and his work so fascinating.



And now for the all important PICTURE BOOK COVER REVEAL....
As well as doing a question and answer post today, Katy and I wanted to use this blog to reveal a cover that we are both very excited about!!!!

'THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS UNICORNS' is the first in our upcoming picture book series with Scholastic and will be published this coming January.  Katy and I are thrilled to be able to reveal the cover here today.  We hope that you enjoy it and that it brings some sparkly rainbow magic to your Monday!
Thank you for reading.

From redundancy to award-winning picture book • Guest blog post by Kate Milner

Huge congratulations to author illustrator, Kate Milner, who last week won the prestigious 2018 Klaus Flugge Prize for the most exciting and promising newcomer to children's book illustration.
In her guest blog post, Kate takes us behind the scenes of her award-winning  My Name is Not Refugee. We see illustrations that didn't make it into the final picture book, and discover why they were left out.

When my job was replaced by a machine at our local library I decide to take the chance to do an MA in children’s illustration at Anglia Ruskin. I had wanted to do the course for many years but it felt like a huge risk to step out of the labour market when I had commitments. There was so much excitement and so much fear wrapped up in returning to education in middle age.

I had done some work in editorial illustration when I was younger and I have always drawn and written stories for adults but it was working in the local library which showed me all the possibilities in children’s publishing. I also, of course, met a lot of readers. It was an excellent education.

I came up with the idea for My Name Is Not Refugee at the very end of the course when I should have been finishing off a piece of work for presentation. It was born out of anger at the debate in the press about the march of refugees out of Syria. They were being described as a zombie army, shuffling towards us, and it felt important to me to explain to children why these families had no choice but to leave their homes. It was crazy to start work on this idea a few days before the end of the course but that is what I did, presenting at the final crit a scrappy, half-finished picture book, with no cover. We all agreed it had no chance of commercial success. 

All the steps which have taken me from that crit to winning the Klaus Flugge Prize feel as if they are nothing to do with me but all the wonderful tutors, fellow students, agents and publishers who have picked it up and run with it. When people congratulate me I always say that I have been very lucky. Being polite they generally then say something like, not luck but talent; but, without any false modesty, I know that it takes collaboration to get a book into the hands of children and I have been very very lucky in my collaborators.

Unlike others below, this is an early illustration
that did make it into the final book.
From My Name in Not Refugee by Kate Milner
Published by The Bucket List (Barrington Stoke), 2017

Some of the spreads in the final book have hardly changed since I first drew them. The illustration showing people sleeping on the station platform is an example (see above), it is almost exactly the image I made as soon as I had the idea. Some spreads, on the other hand, have gone through a lot of changes and below are three early illustrations which have not made it into the book.

1) We'll hear words we don't understand.
This was the first example of the idea. I was trying to get the feeling of not understanding anything around you as a child might who finds themselves in a strange country. It’s not just the people who are speaking a strange language, it’s the radio, the dog, the street signs and the magazines, everything is different. Although I still like this image I can see it didn’t fit in with the rest of the book.

Early illustration idea on language, Kate Milner

We'll hear words we don't understand, from the final book
My Name is Not Refugee, Kate Milner

2) We'll see lots of new and interesting things.
Here is  another spread that went through many many changes. The little boy at the centre of the book is basically a cheerful, curious character so, to give a change of mood, I wanted to show him excited about something new. But what should the new thing be?

Early illustration idea on seeing new and interesting things, Kate Milner

This was one idea which came from looking at pictures of refugee camps on the internet. I could see temporary shops being set up with items for sale wrapped in plastic bags and hung from washing lines. I found this visually very interesting, the sweeping curves of the washing lines, the distortion of the objects through the plastic; I got a bit carried away. Again I like this image but I can see why it hasn’t made it into the final book. It’s my idea of what is interesting, not a small boy’s.

We'll see lots of new and interesting things, from the final book
My Name is Not Refugee, Kate Milner

3) Sometimes we'll wait by ourselves...
I like this image, probably more than the illustration in the final book which is a return to my original idea. However, I can absolutely see why we decided not to use it.

Early illustration idea on waiting, Kate Milner

The heart of the book is the relationship between the mother and her little boy. On nearly every spread of the final book they are touching, or close to each other, or looking at each other. If she is there he is safe and can look out at the world around him. This illustration does not show that connection between them.

Sometimes we'll wait by ourselves, from the final book
My Name is Not Refugee, Kate Milner

Kate Milner

Thank you, Kate, for this wonderful insight into your new picture book, and for showing us that redundancy can be an exciting catalyst to something new.
Follow Kate on Twitter @ABagForKatie

My Name is Not Refugee by Kate Milner is published by The Bucket List (Barrington Stoke), 2017
Klaus Flugge Prize 2018  www.klausfluggeprize.co.uk

Picture Books For All, by Pippa Goodhart

A lot of us are lucky enough to remember the joy of sitting snug in bed as a parent read us a bedtime picture book, and also know the joy of being that adult performing the picture book text for an eager child audience.  Those of us in the book world tend to have taken that relationship between an adult reading the text to a child who is looking carefully at the pictures while they listen for granted.

But there are many adults who find reading hard.  What if the adult can’t read the text?  Can’t enjoy that bond that comes from reading and sharing a book with their children? 

In recent years there has been a lot of work done to create what are known as high/low books (higher age interest level together with a lower age reading ability) to help children and adults who struggle to read books to themselves.  But nobody had given much thought to the parents who want to read to their children but find reading picture books out loud too much of a challenge. 

Designers often play with text in picture books, working it through illustrative images, varying font size and style to make it express the text meaning, sometimes expecting the reader to jump from text at the top of a spread to text at the bottom, then up to the top of the facing page.  All those things can work well for the able reader, but they become obstacles to reading if you are somebody who finds reading hard, perhaps because you are dyslexic and never learned to read fluently at school, perhaps because English isn’t your first language. 

So Barrington Stoke have come up with a series of picture books that are designed to be read easily by children and adults alike.  What makes them easier to read?

• Pages that are a tinted cream background rather than the stark white that can make reading hard if you’re dyslexic.
• Text laid out left to right, top to bottom.
• A font that is clear, reader-friendly, and consistent.
• Writing that doesn’t introduce made-up strange words that have to be worked out.

Does any of that that mean that these are dull books?  Far from it! 

These are rather sophisticated picture books, aimed at children of, say, seven plus.  Their stories challenge in a way that you might not want a book for the usual picture book audience of 2-5 year olds to be challenged.

‘All I Said Was’, by Michael Morpurgo and Ross Collins is a short tale, showing and telling how a boy who swapped his life for that of a pigeon begins to regret that swap when he gets mobbed by crows … but when he returns home, the pigeon who is now a boy won’t swap back.  Rather as the child in Roald Dahl’s Witches is left stuck as a mouse at the end of that book, this book too leaves a bleak and seemingly hopeless ending for the boy.  Food for thought, and a bit of thrilling horror, all in twelve spreads of illustration and a short text!

‘Wolf Man’ by Michael Rosen and Chris Mould plays with fear as a scary manic-looking Wolfman runs amok through a town, scaring even the army and the chief of police … until the tension is brilliantly cut with a typical Michael Rosen joke of a kind which children will find hilarious!  This book has slash marks, and real holes, in it’s cover, presumably made by the Wolfman’s claws.  Books can be exciting!

There are more of these Picture Squirrel books out there, all combining top illustrators and writers, all of them quality books.  Hooray that one publisher has woken up to the need for excellent accessible picture books for parents and children to share.

Do look at this whole series of books and more on the Barrington Stoke website by clicking here