A Christmas story for you, by Pippa Goodhart

After thirteen years of being a regular contributor to this lovely Picture Book Den, I've decided that this will be my last regular post here. What should my last post be? It's landing at Christmas, so I give you a gift of a story about giving. It's a story intended for a picture book, but which has yet to find a publisher who wants it. I hope you enjoy it -

  

What Can I Give?

 

One morning my phone goes - Bleep-bleepety-bleep!

It’s Mole.

‘Hello, Moley, how are you?’ 

Mole just sighs and says nothing.

‘Shall I come and see you?’ I ask. 

‘Yes please, Rabbit,’ says Mole. 

‘I’ll bring you a present to cheer you up,’ I tell her. 

But I haven’t got a present. What can I give her?  

 

I think of Mole in her gloomy dark hole. 

I want to give Mole colours! 

 

So I stitch-stitch a quilt to wrap-hug Mole up in sky blue, leaf green, berry red.

‘I think she’ll like this!’

 

But, as I set off to Mole’s hole home, I see Badger, and Badger is shivery-quivery cold.

What shall I do? 

What would you do?

 

I give the quilt to poor cold Badger.

‘Thank you, kind Rabbit,’ says Badger.

I’m glad that Badger’s warm, but now what can I give sad Mole? 

Perhaps I can give her some fun.

 

So, I make a toy for Mole. 

I make a fine little boat to float in Mole’s bath; a boat for her to play with. 

I know that she’s waiting for me, so I must hurry to take it to her.

 

But, as I scurry along the path, I see Mouse. Poor little Mouse is gulp-sniff-sobbing.

‘Oh dear, Mouse, what’s the matter?’

‘I got left behind,’ sniffs Mouse. ‘And now I can’t catch up with my friends, and it’s getting late, and I don’t know what to do-oo-oo! Boo hoo!’

‘Oh.’ I look at the little boat I’d made for Mole. 

What shall I do? What would you do?

 

‘Would a boat that could float you down the river help?’ I ask.

‘Oh, yes please, kind Rabbit!’ says Mouse.

So, Mouse floats away in the boat to catch up with his friends. 

But now what can I give Mole?

I haven’t got time to go home and make anything new. All I can do is to collect pretty things as I go along the path. So, I make a bouquet of twigs and leaves and berries to bring beauty into Moley’s home. 

 

But just as I am about to knock on Mole’s door, I see Hare, bounding along the path. 

She sees my bouquet, and she says, ‘Oh, my goodness gracious me, is that big bouquet all for me? How did you know it was my birthday today? Hooray! Thank you so much, kind Rabbit!’

So, of course, I give Hare the bouquet.

 

And now I have nothing to give to my friend Mole, nothing at all. But I’d promised to give her a present! Shall I just creep away, and come back again another day? 

What would you do? 

Uh-oh, oh no, Mole has seen me!

 

‘Come in!’ calls Mole. 

So that’s what I do. 

I tell Mole about trying to bring her colours, making a quilt, and meeting a shivery Badger. I tell about trying to bring her fun, with the boat that was needed by lost little Mouse. I tell about the bouquet that made Hare birthday-happy. 

‘So, I’m sorry, dear Mole, but I have nothing to give you after all. Nothing. Nothing, at all.’

‘That’s not true!’ laughs Mole. ‘You have brought me a story full of lovely things. I love stories.’

That gives me an idea. ‘Shall we make the story into a book?’

 

So, together, Moley and I make the story into a book. 

‘The perfect present!’ smiles Mole. ‘Thank you, kind Rabbit.’  

And her smile is the perfect present for me. 

 

My hope was that this, as a book, could look as if its hand-written, and could perhaps include what look like scrapbook additions of scraps of quilt fabric and winter flowers etc, thus appearing to be the book they make at the end of the story.

 

Pippa Goodhart

Wishing you all a very happy Christmas!

PS My You Choose Christmas, beautifully illustrated by Nick Sharratt, is newly out in paperback:

A

 

 

Colours as a Picture Book Theme, by Pippa Goodhart

 

Colours! 

                  Colours are one of those concepts that young children learn early, along with numbers and opposites and shapes. We adults have a natural instinct to tell and reinforce colour labels in order to teach children these things. I’ve just been sharing books with my one-year-old granddaughter, and observed myself asking her, ‘Where is the blue elephant? Can you see a pink bird?’ even when the text of that book makes no mention of colour. 

    For that teaching reason, colours as a theme are a natural match for a very young audience. But of course they are also visual, and perfect for picture book treatment.

                  Picture books focussing on colour play with colours in different ways. There are those simply naming and showing coloured objects. And there are those which use colour within a story context. I’m going to show two of my favourite examples of colour-based stories, but first of all I want to show off my own new board book, Colours of Things! 

                  My text is a simple rhyming one –

‘Red cherries, a red door, red jam and a parrot.

Orange bunting and T-shirt, marigolds and a carrot.

Yellow banana and crayons, and bright yellow hair.

Green grass, a green dress, green grapes and a pear.’ … And so on through blue, 

purple, pink, brown, silver and gold, to …

‘White mittens, a kitten, a snowman, a cup …

And all sorts of things that just mix colours up!’

 

But its Emily Rand’s gloriously rich array of coloured objects in her illustrations which offer so many everyday examples and so much to notice and talk about. 

 

 

 

                  ‘Wow!’ Said The Owl by Tim Hopgood is a beautiful board book story in which a curious little owl stays awake during the day, and sees colours she hasn’t experienced at night. 

A pink dawn sky, a yellow sun, blue sky, green leaves, red butterflies, grey clouds and rain, all seen from her tree, and all eliciting a ‘Wow!’ reaction. 

 

Then, best of all, …

 

And the night has ‘Wow!’ wonders too. Such a lovely book.

For slightly older readers, and in paperback rather than board book format, is The Colour Monster by Anna Llenas. With wonderful, almost 3D seeming, collage and scribbly oil crayon artwork depicting characterful characters with energy and humour, this is a story that equates colours with moods. 

Colour Monster is very confused, and doesn’t know why, so the capable girl narrator of this story takes him in hand and sorts him out. 

 

He needs to recognise and separate his colour moods. Happiness ‘shines yellow like the sun and twinkles like the stars.’ Sadness is ‘gentle like a blue rainy day’. And so on.

 

Look at fear …

 

All get firmly sorted. But then another colour appears that the fierce know-it-all narrator girl is confused by …

 

Profound, beautiful and funny. A brilliant book. Perfect as a starting point for children to make their own mood colour collages. 

 

                  How else has colour been used in picture books? Do, please, add and share examples in the Comments below. 

Guest Picture Book Author, Mariesa Dulak, interviewed by Pippa Goodhart

Q&A Picture Book Den

 

I’m delighted to welcome Mariesa Dulak to the Picture Book Den. As part of Book Trust and World Book Day’s ‘PassThePen’ project, I, as author of last year’s World Book Day ‘You Choose Your Adventure’, have been linked with debut picture book author, Mariesa. We’re celebrating the publication of her picture book ‘There’s a Tiger on the Train’, beautifully illustrated by Rebecca Cobb.

Mariesa, I’ve got so many questions to ask you! 

 

First of all, have you always been a writer, wanting to write books? What was child Mariesa like when it came to her relationship with stories and books?

 

Thank you for inviting me into The Picture Book Den, Pippa. 

 

I've always loved books and luckily, I was brought up in a household where reading was encouraged and celebrated. One of my earliest memories is scrambling onto my mum’s lap to share a well-worn copy of Grimm’s Fairy Tales. My dad took my sister and I to Harrogate Central Library every Saturday morning where I slowly munched my way through their children’s collection. 

 

I used to enjoy writing stories too, but I was mostly inspired to write silly poems and songs. Buckingham Palace by A.A.Milne was one of my favourites. I would march around the house to that one and make up my own words.

 

I’ve read that you did an MA in children’s literature, worked in publishing, and been a bookseller. What did those experiences give you in preparation for becoming a published author? (I was a bookseller myself for some years, and am hugely grateful for the commercial insights it gave me.) 

 

I think one of the best things about bookselling (other than the books of course) is the people. I worked with some lovely booksellers who were knowledgeable and passionate about what they did. As you say, bookselling teaches you about the business side of the book industry and this was a huge help to me when I eventually got into publishing.

 

Publishing is such a fascinating and creative industry, and I had the opportunity to run marketing campaigns for some inspiring authors and brands (Kes Gray & Jim Field's Oi Dog! was one of my favourites). But working within the industry also showed me the humungous steps that a picture book text has to go through before it reaches a bookshop; secure an agent, find an interested publisher, get to an acquisitions meeting, get through an acquisitions meeting, find the right illustrator, convince the sales team (and rights team) that the text is worth investing time in, convince the booksellers that customers will buy it, secure marketing and PR support and budget and then when it finally reaches a bookshop, make customers aware that your book exists AND convince those customers to actually buy it... For every text , securing an agent is the first step in a very long process and so many of these steps are out of an author's control.

 

But despite learning the nuts and bolts of the business, I still had a passion for the books themselves which is why I decided to do an MA in Children’s Literature.

 

The MA was tough (I was fitting it around full-time work) but so rewarding. I learned about the origins and development of children’s literature as well as genres, techniques and themes. And I think it’s around that time that I started to write my own stories. But in those days I didn’t think authors looked like me or came from a background like mine so I didn’t share my writing with anyone.

 

 

Your ‘There’s a Tiger on the Train’ story text reads with wonderful rhythm and rhyme … ‘You’ll never guess what happened on our trip down to the sea … A tiger in a top hat came and sat right next to me!’ That easy-to-read rollicking rhymical rhyming text is anything but easy to achieve. How did you manage to keep it going for a whole book?

 

Thank you, Pippa. I love writing in rhyme, but I have Tessa Strickland at the Golden Egg Academy to thank for showing me how to make it scan and flow. Tessa is a publisher, editor and writer and her GEA course on rhyme was a light bulb moment for me. 

 

In the story, more and more wonderful creatures pile chaotically into the train carriage with their belongings … and Dad remains focussed on his phone … until the tiger gobbles the phone up, releasing Dad to join the fun as the boy gallops on the tiger to the beach, with Dad running after. It’s great fun! But within the fun there’s a clear lesson there for us adults about being absent from children’s lives if we focus on our phones. Do you believe in ‘a spoonful of sugar to make the medicine go down’ when it comes to stories with a message? 

 

I didn’t set out to write a story with a message. The rhythm of the train and the little boy came first, then the animal passengers and it was only then that I had the mobile phone idea and the rest of the story fell into place.

 

The mobile phone theme of the story was inspired by my own experience of working full time with a young family and finding it hard to get the balance right. I'm sure readers are rooting for the little boy in the story, but I have a lot of sympathy for the Dad too. He wants to spend time with his son, he’s just distracted by the pressures of modern life.

 

There’s a Tiger on the Train is about taking the time to connect with those you love. I hope that children reading the book will join in with the rhymes and rhythms, have fun making some new animal friends and enjoy the ride! And I hope that their grown-ups will be reminded to look up from their phones to see what they might be missing in the wonderful world of their own child’s imagination. But I hope parents don’t feel guilty, that really is not my intention. I know that most parents, like I was, are just trying to do their best!

 

The illustrations in this book are bright and energetic, full of body language we can empathise with, and slightly naughty behaviour we can relate to and enjoy. Are Rebecca’s Cobb’s pictures what you imagined as you wrote?

 

Rebecca’s illustrations are so much more than I could have imagined. When I wrote the story I thought that perhaps the real world could be in black and white on one side of the page and the imagined world on the page facing it in colour (a bit like John Burningham’s Time to Get Out of the Bath, Shirley). But when I saw Rebecca’s illustrations I knew that the whole thing had to be in glorious full colour. And then when Rebecca did her layouts, she designed the pages so that as the book progresses, the Dad’s real world begins to take up less and less space on the spread and the little boy’s imaginative world takes up more until eventually his world just takes over. I think details like this help to make the book more immersive.

 

My father and all his family from as far back as we can go came from Yorkshire. He taught me, ‘Never ask somebody if they’re from Yorkshire. If they are they’ll tell you so in the first five minutes. If they aren’t, why humiliate them?’! Do you feel that anything of your home county comes through in your story? 

 

I am proud of my dual heritage and definitely feel that I am half Bajan (from Barbados) and half Yorkshire. Yorkshire people are known for being both warm and plain-speaking. I think the way that the animals rally around the little boy when his Dad is distracted feels like something Yorkshire people might do and I suspect there is Yorkshire tea in the hippo’s tea pot!

 

And, of course, I’m going to finish with the question, ‘What can we look forward to from you in the coming months and years?’

 

My next picture book publishes in Spring 2025 with Walker Books. It’s called The Silver Shadow and is based on a story from my Dad’s childhood growing up in Barbados when he found a baby shark in a rock pool.

 

After that, my next book through Faber and illustrated by Rebecca Cobb is due in 2026 and it’s called The Ice Cream Crocodile.

I’ve also been working on a middle grade novel for ages 7-11 and a graphic novel text. I’m really enjoying working on different age ranges but I think my heart will always belong to picture books.

 

Wow! I look forward to all those new books. Congratulations, and thank you so much!

If you'd like to find out more about Mariesa, go to her website: mariesadulak.com 

The Highlight of Our Writing Career - The Picture Book Den

It's that time of year when the Picture Book Den team get together and create a group post. 

This year we wanted to share with you a highlight of our writing career. We hope you enjoy and wish you all the best for this festive season and a fabulous 2024!

Moira Butterfield 

There have been highs and lows in my writing career and there still are. It's part of the gig. Sometimes it feels as though, with every book, I must restart from scratch. I forget that I have any kind of track record and  it feels like I am at the bottom of the mountain again. It's then that I need to bring out my precious gems to look at - those surprising and unasked-for nuggets of good feedback from everyday folk that I store in my memory. These may seem trivial but are, in fact, priceless to a writer - like magic fuel that can keep us going when our tanks seem empty. Here's a very precious one - When I moved to a new house I met my new neighbour. She asked what I did for a living, looked amazed and said 'You're the writer of my boy's favourite book. It's up in the attic now. We read it to him so many times!". Yes - I did feel old because the  boy in question was at 'big school' by then, but I also filled up with pride that I had done this. So make sure you pass on good feedback to your favourite authors. You'll be giving them a shiny career highlight! 

Pippa Goodhart

    Ah, so many highlights after all these years! Most of them courtesy of my You Choose picture books illustrated by Nick Sharratt. Nick and I collect images of the tattiest copies of those books, ones loved to literal bits! But there was also the young man who is now a professional ballet dancer because, his mother tells, aged seven he saw the image of the ballet dancers in You Choose and said, 'I want to do that'. And the Ukrainian refugee child totally absorbed in choosing his own life in a copy of You Choose. And more. But I'm going to choose a topical and current You Choose highlight.

    Nick and my new You Choose Christmas book has the two of us, large and gloriously attired, on its final spread -

 

We didn't manage the Elvis jumpsuit and Flamenco dress, but we did try to match the headwear when we did signing session for the book last weekend! 

Chitra Soundar

I'm a picture book writer at heart. My first picture book came out in India in 2010 and it was a masterclass in editing. With the editor's advice, I edited a 1000 word manuscript into a 100 word manuscript over a weekend and to my delight that picture book had an amazing run. Since then I've written over 20 picture books. The highlights are so many... My series of Farmer Falgu books (illustrated by Kanika Nair) brought me Indian and international recognition. Pattan's Pumpkin (illustrated by Frané Lessac) is such a hit with children, parents and teachers. Mummy-baby books I wrote for Lantana Publishing, illustrated by Poonam Mistry - You're Safe with Me (the first book in the series) was shortlisted for the Kate Greenaway Medal and You're Snug with Me got shortlisted too, which is a huge honour. 

 

But the most recent highlight I feel is my proudest moment, because even though I've been publishing with Walker Books, my first picture book with Walker Books (the giant of picture book publishing) will be out February 2024 titled It's Time to Hush and say Good Night, and has been the Editor's Pick at The Booksellers and already making waves. It is inspired by  traditional Indian lullabies and beautifully illustrated by Sandhya Prabhat which is fantastic as both of us are from Chennai, India. 

Lynne Garner

My writing career highlight is a rejection letter. I know that may sound odd but it's the only rejection I've received which was handwritten on a complement slip. In essence this rejection said, "The story isn't quite right for us, but I like your style so do you have anything else you are working on? If so, please send to me." 

 

I’d an idea I'd been mulling over but hadn't written. So, I got tapping and the very first draft of 'Bramble's Diary' was completed. I placed it to one side and allowed it to 'rest.' I then edited, 'rested' it and edited again. Finally, I felt happy enough to sent it off. The editor who had sent me the rejection came back with a very positive reply. And after six rewrites and a change of title 'A Book For Bramble' was published. 

 

Hence why this rejection is my chosen highlight. 

Natascha Biebow

 

The most surprising and heartwarming highlight of my career has been connecting with children and wonderful teachers and librarians all around the world doing virtual and in-person school visits. Surprising because I am essentially quite a shy person and even though I do a lot of public speaking in my role as Co-Regional Advisor of the SCBWI British Isles, when my book THE CRAYON MAN was published, I was daunted by the prospect of 'getting out there' to promote it. I applied for an SCBWI Marketing Grant, and put down an action plan on paper (and on this blog), which meant I would be accountable and have to come out from under my rock:

I was surprised when I was awarded the SCBWI grant, which enabled me to do a week of author visits in Pennsylvania and DC, including a farmers' market in Easton, PA, home of Crayola. 

Nothing better than seeing children engrossed in your book!

That same year, I visited my school as an author!

 

 

Recently, I was invited to the International School in Panama, which was extra special because I attended an international school, so have a real connection with third culture kids.

 

Through my school visits, I have loved meeting children and hearing their curious questions about working as an author, the invention of the Caryola crayons and living in England. And sometimes, the opportunity to do messy art and mix cool colours together:

 

 

A couple of months ago, an unexpected gift arrived in my postbox:

 

These children are very lucky to have such caring teachers and librarians, seeking out opportunities to connect with authors and enrich their students' learning by making connections around the world. I love seeing their creative drawings and curious minds at work!

Mini Grey

My career highlight is finally being able to make the book it had taken me ten years to work out – The Greatest Show on Earth. I’m so grateful to Joe Marriott, my editor, for saying “Yes, let’s make this book!” 

The process of making it was a highlight because I had to get to grips for the first time with proper non-fiction science content, and try and process millions of years of evolution into a story that’s digestible by any one, any age. 

I loved doing the research – and the gift was that I found out how much I didn’t know, and how much there is still to find out – there are more and more stories to tell about animal evolution and our own human evolution: all the animal ancestors we carry inside our vertebrate bodies -  our inner fish, tetrapods, synapsids, mammals, primates… 

Once the book was published, working out exactly how to perform the 4.6 million year story of Life on Earth –  which bits of the story to focus on, and how to make all that time visible and immersive – that was a whole lot of new stuff to find out. And collaborating with audiences - especially the brilliant enthusiastic mix of adults and children you find at festivals -  to build a picture of the story of life on Earth with puppets and timelines has been a fantastic experience. 

And here are a couple of bonus picture highlights:

In other highlights: here I'm opening John Hampden School library in June 2022 with help from the Queen who was still alive then (but this Queen is a cut-out one...)

In other highlights: here in July 2023 AF Harrold and me are at Booktastic Bedford. Our book - The Book of Not Entirely Useful Advice had come out in 2020 lockdown, so it was great to finally get to be on stage together.

Juliet Clare Bell

I feel incredibly lucky to be a children's author and there have been lots of wonderful moments. Here are a few highlights...

When Don't Panic, Annika! (illustrated by Jennifer E Morris) was read on CBeebies as my children loved CBeebies -and the presenter who read it

When The Kite Princess (illustrated by Laura Kate Chapman) started being sold by Amnesty International UK. It came completely out of the blue and it was an organisation I'd done loads of campaigning with as a child, as a teenager in college, at university and beyond. And then I was invited to a local International Women's Day event with vulnerable women and asylum seekers. They called it Subversive Sewing and we used The Kite Princess story and drew and decorated our own kites and put words of freedom on the kites and displayed them. It was incredibly moving

When people told me how Benny's Hat (illustrated by Dave Gray) had helped them when a family member had died

When I read reviews of Luka and the Food Cloud (illustrated by Dave Gray) from parents saying that their children felt seen and understood for the first time ever after reading the book

But working with young children is probably the highest of the highlights. Facilitating creative work with young people with life-limiting conditions at a children's hospice, and with bereaved and pre-bereaved siblings, when we were doing research for Benny's Hat, was an absolute privilege, as was interviewing people with ARFID and parents of children with ARFID for Luka and the Food Cloud

Bumping into children that I've done author visits with at a later date, outside of school, is so lovely and often very funny. I absolutely loved meeting a whole class-load of children I'd done an author visit with a few months before -at a bus stop in central Birmingham! They all called out to me as I approached the bus stop and it was a party atmosphere -which carried on when we got on the same bus and I sat and chatted with them on the top deck until they got off at their school stop about twenty minutes later.

And finally, one of my absolute highlights was when a girl put her hand up in an assembly I was doing and asked, completely seriously, in hushed tones, in front of hundreds of other school children...

Is your hair magic?

Clare Helen Welsh

This year, I was invited to speak at the SCBWI Conference in Manchester. I ran a session called Playing with Ideas, helping picture book authors and illustrators embrace the unexpected and find confidence as creatives.

I always enjoy the SCBWI-BI conferences. I've been every year  since 2013! It's fantastic to meet with new and old friends and to soak up the creative energy from the faculty . It's my professional development to myself - a highlight of my writing year.

But this year was extra special. 

I vividly remember my first conference. I remember the sessions I went to, I remember getting books signed by Catherine Rayner and watching Dave Cousins win the Crystal Kite Award. I remember looking around and thinking what a super tribe of people I'd found and wouldn't it be amazing to be published one day.

Fast forward almost ten years to the day since I first started writing, I am reflecting on just how much I have achieved. The 2023 SCBWI conference was a marker in my writing career, as well as a highlight. An opportunity to look back and reflect on everything I am proud of, how much I have learned and the people I've met on the way.