BECOME A CELEBRITY AUTHOR IN 10 EASY STEPS - by Michelle Robinson

Michelle Robinson: successful
children's author and non-entity

Every time a celebrity puts their name to a children’s book, a professional author drops down dead. With celebs 'shutting us out of our trade', authors are heading toward extinction. It's hard not to feel bitter when your books aren't even stocked, let alone given their own pedestal. But sucking on sour grapes does not an attractive author make.

Chin up, chums! It's not all that bad. Besides, we ought to be flattered: the rich and famous want to be just like us. Can you blame them? We get to have 'a name' and hang around in our pyjamas all day, not being recognised in public. We'll never be considered too unfit or too wrinkly to do our jobs. Still, from where I'm sitting being rich and famous looks pretty appealing too...

How about we level the playing field and supplement our income with second jobs - as celebrities.

PUT THE ARGOS APPLICATION FORM DOWN.

You've already defied all odds to make it into print despite being a complete non-entity. If you can do that, you can do anything. A monkey with a typewriter can write a bestselling picture book and you can host the Brits! You're 10 steps away from a high profile second job that's WAY better paid than the one you've been busting a gut over. Take a shortcut to fame!

GET A SECOND CAREER AS A CELEB IN 10 EASY STEPS

Step 1: Look loaded

You'll need to speculate to accumulate. I know this is hard when regular children's authors don't make a lot of money, but if you're going to convince everyone you're worth squillions, you need to stop wearing rags. From now on, travel first class and invest in some half decent clothes. Men: buy a tailored smoking jacket, it's what Ant and Dec would do. Women: if we want to be taken seriously we’re going to have to start showing a little more flesh - no socks from now on.

Step 2: Act confident

The paparazzi won't shoot themselves - although you'll soon be wishing they would! Shoulders back, chest out. A shower wouldn’t hurt. Turn up the confidence a notch while you're at it and stop acting so grateful for having achieved your dreams. Demand the dream with a cherry on top. You’re worth it.

Step 3: Handle your own publicity
Once we’re famous we’ll have all the publicity we need - and more. Until then it’s a case of do-it-yourself. Try getting a mention on Steve Wright’s Sunday Love Songs or running down the high street naked. It doesn’t matter if your books don’t figure in any of this. At this stage all exposure is good exposure.

Step 4: Get 'legit'
You’re going to need a blue tick on Twitter and a squillion followers. Everyone knows you don’t necessarily come by thousands of adoring fans legitimately. Just like a top ten slot in the bestseller charts, you can simply buy a fanbase. This is not cheating; this is celebrity publishing. We’re going for quantity not quality.

Step 5: Bluff it
Nothing says ‘Paint me orange and feature me in Heat Magazine’ like wearing a huge pair of shades and a baseball cap down Lidl’s. Serendipitously you'll find these items readily available in store. Hop to it (and stop using clever, writerly words like 'serendipitously'). Note: it is acceptable to dress down when incognito, provided all loungewear is by Gucci.

Step 6: Create a stir

We can’t all be literary sensations, but we can all be sensational. Do something outrageous. It will give you material for that memoir you’ll finally have time to write in prison. Goodness knows you'll be too busy to write the rest of the time what with all those television appearances and international flights. Don't worry about your schedule; your PA will soon be organising everything for you, and you won't have to do school visits, ever again. With any luck you won't have to write anything ever again either - someone else will do it for you. You could even request a body double for all those top-billing lit fest events you'll be doing. Get in!

Step 7: Acquire a cute back story

Sales and marketing departments love 'a hook'. Those lucky old celebs have them ready made. ‘Treasure in the Attic’s Wotsisface has treasure in HIS attic with new children’s book masquerading as pile of junk’. ‘Reclusive writer's cardigan provides refuge for rare moths’ isn’t going to cut the mustard. You and I are going to have to dig a little deeper to create eye catching headlines. Consider selling your own granny. Who cares if you're disinherited? Pretty soon you're going to be MINTED.

Step 8: Get a famous partner

Remember when Jools Oliver wrote a children's book? No? Oh. Well, a celebrity author is one thing, but a celebrity author with a celebrity partner is TWO THINGS. Photoshop yourself into a compromising situation with a celeb of your choosing. Don’t worry about being sued; you can settle out of court once you’ve made your first million.

Step 9: Smile

Coffee and red wine may help with the unsociable hours writing requires, but nobody wants to see their ill effects in HD. Tooth whitening is expensive and you’ve probably blown all your cash on a butler. Thankfully you are naturally creative and have a plentiful supply of Tippex. Say cheese!

Step 10: Grow a thick skin

Don’t expect to be welcomed to all those star-studded parties* with open arms. Those celebs didn’t just suddenly become children’s authors without putting in the hours. Okay, maybe some of them did. Still, if you should happen upon some children’s authors having a moan about the amount of non-entity authors selling loads of books, smile politely and find someone sympathetic to talk to. Like Madonna.

*Orgies...? Take breath freshener.

See you on your luxury yacht, my friend!

Michelle Robinson manages the tricky balancing act of being both a successful children’s author and a total non-entity. She has seven picture books publishing in the next six months - and still no invitation to appear on Oprah!

‘Daisy Doodles’, illustrated by Irene Dickson with photography by Tom Weller, publishes with OUP in June 2017. 

This is NOT a Happy Agent - James Catchpole

We'd like to welcome our guest blogger for this week, James Catchpole of The Catchpole Agency.

The Catchpole Agency which represents authors and illustrators of children’s books from picture books up to YA. James is the agent. Lucy prefers to keep her role mysterious.

New Agency Website

This is a story about a side of publishing authors probably prefer not to think about. It may have a moral, but if it does we don't know what it is. It may be a cautionary tale of sorts, we don’t know - we haven’t got to the end yet.

Sometimes an author has a really great idea, one that seems to spring almost fully formed, that makes you wonder "how hasn't this been done before?" Sometimes, that’s because it has. So as an agent, I check. This particular idea - we'll call it 'This is NOT a Happy Agent' for now, because using the real title would scupper any chance of a happy ending - had not been done before. It was 2012 and this was an original idea for a picture book text, with an original title - a title that ran through the thread of the story, a title that summed up the text and was repeated like a fabulous, memorable refrain. One you could imagine children chanting along with their parents.

Agents may be characterised as soulless money people, but don’t believe it - it is exciting when you see a text like this. And especially so when, as in this case, it was by an unpublished author (let’s call him, er… Dave) who I’d only just pulled from the submissions pile.

I thought this story could (nothing is sure in this business) break this young author. I read it to my wife. She was impressed. She is not easily impressed.

This is a Happy Agent

So I did what an agent does - I took this shiny new text around to all my best contacts. I took it to Bologna and read it out to all the major publishers. Sure enough, it was pretty damn popular. Some editors passed on it regretfully, others held on to it gleefully and passed it around the office - to their team, to Sales, to I don’t know who else. That’s the way this business works.

Reading this back in the context we’re now in, it seems strange to me that the industry does work this way. A new author, an original idea, and what do I do with it? I go and shout this original idea around the assorted editors of New York and London. But until this month, this way of working hasn’t ever seemed strange to me. This is just the way it is. The industry works on trust. It has to.

'This is NOT a Happy Agent' (ahem) was indeed bought - back in 2012 - by a big US publisher (hooray!). I was excited, the author was excited.

And then, for various reasons unrelated to the quality of the text, things kinda stalled. The editor who’d bought it moved elsewhere, the illustrators the new editor wanted weren’t available... Now, in 2016, they’re still looking for an illustrator. Frustrating, but not hugely surprising - it’s the way it goes sometimes - picture books can be a long game.

Skip forward to two weeks ago, when something odd happened. “Isn’t ‘This is NOT a Happy Agent’ one of Dave’s books?” my wife shouted through to me. Yes, so? “Then why is there a photo of a book on Twitter called 'This is NOT a Happy Agent', by someone else entirely?’ Oh.

A pile of books...

I had absolutely no idea. I knew this couldn’t be our author’s book. But sure enough there it was - a photo of an advance copy of a book with exactly the same title, but with another author’s name, sitting on Twitter. I know the editor who’d posted the picture well (she’s lovely btw). She works for a big London publisher - er..Goliath Kids UK? that'll do - which is actually the sister company of Dave’s publisher in the US.

So here it gets murky. Because as I said, I showed 'This is NOT a Happy Agent' to everyone. In fact, I’d read it out to Goliath Kids UK back in 2012, and discussed it with their editors a few times since.

So what had happened? A quick search told me that yes, Goliath were bringing out 'This is Not a Happy Agent' - by their own author (let’s call him John Smith) - in March. 6 weeks’ time as of writing.

I emailed the editor and her boss. They were clear: the title was not their author’s idea, it had come from within their own team. I suppose they didn’t want me to think their author might have plagiarised it somehow, from mine. This hadn’t crossed my mind – they’d never met, I’d checked. And anyway, much more logical to suppose it was Editorial’s idea, given they’d actually heard the title before.

I reminded them. They seemed to take it in their stride. So would they change their title? No.

To say this is frustrating is an understatement. Whether consciously or unconsciously, it’s more than likely that my author’s title was plagiarised by Goliath Kids UK. What’s worse 'This is Not a Happy Agent' seems in no way organic to their story. Their story is totally different to ours. Applied to theirs, it’s just a catchy title, whereas it runs through ours like words through a stick of rock.

But if Goliath go ahead and publish, Dave’s title will most likely have to change - can you really have two picture books with identical titles coming out within a year or two of each other? And in losing the title his story will lose a prime part of its cachet.

Dave has had other ideas since then, and after a couple of years of trying, late last year I suddenly sold four of his texts in as many months to two top London publishers. I’m sure it’s going to happen for him. But now I'm starting to wonder...the four texts I've just sold were seen by other publishers besides the ones who bought them. What's to stop their titles or their ideas being stolen before they come to be illustrated and published? How should I advise my author? What should we advise our many other authors, all of who rely on this same trust?

Perhaps this trust doesn't really exist. These are all good people we’re dealing with here, and we all know how easy it is to come up with someone else's idea while believing it's your own...But that's why you check. Perhaps there just aren’t any systems in place within publishers to stop things like this happening? And once they have - as in this case - it’s just handed over to Legal (watch this space…).

But can it really just be a question of whoever publishes first? That all feels rather Elizabethan. Or does it happen, and we just don’t hear about it? Am I breaking some unspoken rule of the industry in discussing this? (Maybe!) Do I need to guard my clients’ ideas more heavily in the future?

In that case, maybe all that will prevent a publisher from plagiarising is the threat of reputational damage? In which case, perhaps the best thing I can advise a new author to do is the most counter-intuitive. Should they actually go public? Should they blog and tweet about the titles they’ve sold, put it all out there on public record online? (Not unprecedented, these days...) Should they not rely on privacy and trust, but lay down a challenge: here are my ideas, here I am laying claim to them.

That could present a whole lot of new problems for the industry. But I suppose at least it would take a brave publisher to claim so publically an idea that wasn’t theirs in the first place.

Feedback appreciated! Comments can always be anonymous...


James and Lucy Catchpole


P.S If a picture book actually called 'This is NOT a Happy Agent' appears in the bookshops, you heard it here first - we will be cross.

Click here for aother guest blog post by James Catchpole.

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly - Jonathan Allen

An interpretation of Norvin, the main character in 'The Great White Man-Eating Shark' by Margaret Mahy

One thing an author and/or illustrator will encounter when they have the good fortune to be published, is other people's opinions about their work, publicly expressed and very much in the public domain. Mainly in the form of reviews, but not always. When all your concentration has been on trying to get published, it's easy to forget the the additional stuff that goes with it.
These public expressions can be loosely put into three categories,-
The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.
(Aaah-eee-aaah-eee-aah. . .Wah wah wah. . . as Ennio Morricone put it so well)

The Good -

If you are very lucky, you might get reviewed in a national publication, a Sunday Paper for instance. If that happens, it tends to be a good review, for the reason that reviewers are usually engaged in the recommendation of a few books they feel readers might want to consider this Christmas, that sort of thing. I have been lucky enough to have that happen two or three times over the (many) years and it's a good feeling to see your work in the Sunday papers ;-) Something for your parents to show the neighbours ;-)

I have also been in my local paper once or twice, but I find that just a bit embarrassing so I try to lay low and not tell the local press about stuff being published etc. . . Come on, you all have local papers, you know where I'm coming from ;-)
Another really nice thing that can happen is being sent fan mail. Sometimes from parents, sometimes from children. Children's fan mail is usually sent via their school, as sometimes schools ask a class of children to pick an author each and write to them. Sometimes it's the whole class that writes. Especially after a school visit you might have done, as a kind of thank you. The best part for me is seeing their illustrations of my characters. I love children's artwork anyway, but seeing their interpretations of your creations is really magical. These are from a very long time ago, but they were the only ones I could lay hands on without much tedious rummaging, as they were already scanned and jpegged up. . .

Another cool thing that happened with 'Mucky Moose' was that a Japanese puppet group made a puppet show of the story and sent me some photos. That was great.

The Bad -

Occasionally, a negative review crops up in a newspaper. I illustrated a few books by the late, great Margaret Mahy, and one of them was in a list of picture books being reviewed by a very well known children's author and illustrator, namely, Raymond Briggs. He was quite snotty about my illustrations. The nerve! ;-) Fah! Oh well, at least it allowed me to unashamedly name-drop years later on Picture Book Den. . .
The growth of sites like Amazon, where people can leave reviews of your books, without having to have journalistic or any other credentials, though a mixed blessing, has meant the democratisation of the reviewing process. Anyone can leave a review. This is a good thing I think, but people can 'miss the point' of a book, and leave an unfair review just as easily as someone can leave a thoughtful and well considered one. The good usually outnumbers the bad, but it's still odd reading a bad review from someone who doesn't seem to 'get it', or is just being rude. Of course they may be pointing out flaws in your work that need pointing out, in which case it's constructive criticism and to be welcomed, but they might not. it makes you understand why many writers and performers feel it's better not to read any reviews, good or bad. After all, if a book is selling well, who cares about a bad review?
And of course, some reviews are just plain odd. A review on Amazon of my version of 'Chicken Licken' just said,
"Chicken Licken? Isn't that illegal? This book is poo."

The Ugly -

This is something decidedly unpleasant that happened to one of my books a year or two ago.
I received an email from somebody I didn't know, containing a link and the advice that I 'May want to look at this', and that the publisher should be concerned. After due pause, I clicked on the link and could immediately see what they were on about.
Somebody had taken the cover of a pop-up book I did years ago called "Don't wake the Baby!" and changed it to read "Don't Rape the Baby!". The site it was on seemed to be some kind of American anti-gay hate site, that wanted to imply that gays were paedophiles. I was shocked, as you can imagine, and left a strong message for the perpetrators, telling them to remove it immediately. I also contacted the book's publishers, who were also appalled and promptly contacted the ISP to get the site taken down. The site owners meanwhile replied to my message, denying that their site was a hate site and claiming it was put up to 'promote hetrosexual love'. Yeah, right.
Anyway, after nearly sending several very angry replies, I responded to the feeling I got from them that they were enjoying the attention, and decided not to feed the beast, but to ignore it, as the publisher was very much on the case. The site was taken down shortly afterwards.
Nasty.

So you never know what proportion of Good, Bad and Ugly you may find coming your way. May it be mainly good, may you take the bad with a pinch of salt, and may nothing ugly crawl out of the woodwork and bite you!


I leave you with my favourite bit of fan mail to cheer you up after that bit of unpleasantness.
(from a good few years ago, it's been on my wall ever since, hence the blu tack and general grime)
And I extend it's wishes to you all, pausing only to wonder how old the writer is now and what she is doing now?

New Life for Old Picture Books - Diana Kimpton

This month we're delighted to have Diana Kimpton as our guest blogger. She addresses the old question of what to do with a picture book once it goes out of print. So please read on and enjoy.

Having your picture book published is an exciting process. There’s the thrill of seeing your characters come to life in the illustrations, the excitement of seeing the story transformed into a book and the satisfaction of seeing your book for sale in the shops.

However, except for favourites like The Gruffalo, there’s another less pleasant step that’s not talked about so much. It’s when your publisher decides that the book isn’t selling enough to justify a reprint. Sometimes they wait until the print run is sold out, sometimes they sell off the last copies cheaply to get them out of the warehouse. Either way the result is the same: that book you worked so hard on is no longer available. It’s out of print.

At this point, you can get the rights to your book back. But what happens next? The answer is easy for authors of novels: they can bring new life to their out-of-print books by self-publishing them as ebooks. However, that route is much more difficult for picture book authors because picture books need pictures and, unless we illustrate our own work, we only have the text.

That leaves us with several options.

1. Leave the story in the drawer and do nothing. (What a waste!)
2. Draw some illustrations ourselves. (Definitely not viable for me. I don’t draw as well as my brilliant illustrators.)
3. Work with the original illustrator or a new one to produce a fully illustrated picture book.

Option 3 sounds the most feasible but it raises other problems. How are we going to share the costs and the profits with the illustrator? Are we organised enough to pay royalties and will our heirs be able to cope with doing that for 70 years after our deaths? Life would be easier if there was a print-on-demand publisher who was willing to pay the author and illustrator separately, but I haven’t found one yet. (Please let me know if you have.)

As the proud owner of a drawer full of out-of-print stories and stories that have never been published, I decided earlier this year that I didn’t want them to languish there any longer. As I wasn’t in a position to self-publish illustrated versions, I started wondering who would want a picture book text with no pictures.

After a bit of thought, I realised that would-be illustrators need stories to practice on so I decided to give them a helping hand. The result is Stories for Illustration – a collection of five picture book stories that come complete with wide-ranging permission to use them in colleges, schools and at home. There are some illustration tips too, but absolutely no pictures.

The book is not flying off the shelves. It’s such a tiny market that sales are very low. But the book cost very little to produce so I don’t mind. I’m just glad that the stories are out of the drawer and available to read again. 

Diana Kimpton

A book charity we should all know about. The fantastic work of Living Paintings.

Moira Butterfield

We all love the crazy, wonderful, colourful world of picture books, but how can children who are blind or partially-sighted join in the fun?  Yesterday I was moved and delighted to find out that some very special people are working hard to make sure that this happens.

I visited the offices of Living Paintings, a UK charity that’s also a unique publishing house. The charity creates and publishes tactile printed/audio books for blind and partially-sighted people and distributes the material to them free through a postal library. Some of the work it creates is prepared from scratch. Some is prepared with the agreement of publishers.

The material it offers is very surprising and varied. For adults it has worked with some very exciting contributors to create unique material. The architect Norman Foster and the artists Gilbert and George are two examples I found fascinating, and Tracey Emin is about to co-operate with the charity, apparently. Helping create access to art of all kinds is a big part of the charity’s ethos.

For young children Living Paintings has created tactile and audio versions of some of our most well-loved picture books, from Angry Arthur through to Where’s My Teddy, via Spot, the Gruffalo, Kipper, Charlie and Lola, and many more. The audio for these books is a real treat, read by such great voices as Martin Clunes and Bill Bailey, with added sound effects and music.

Older children and teenagers get a great range, too, including up-to-the minute material on fashion, music, cooking, science, nature and history.

Charlie and Lola in 3D

I saw 3D picture book images being created at the charity’s workshops near Newbury. The front cover image from Oliver Jeffers’ beautiful ‘Lost and Found’ had been lovingly carved in wood, ready to be made into a durable plastic 3D mould for touching. Publishing Manager Liz Davies made the mould before my eyes and it looked great. Nearby, volunteers were painting the moulds. Why? Because some readers will be partially-sighted, but also because blind children will be sharing their picture books with sighted readers, just as sighted children share their book-reading with adults. Living Paintings strives to make sure that its picture books lend themselves to that all-important sharing experience, and readers might want to talk about the colour as well as the image and the story.

On another desk lay some Spot learning books, in the process of being carefully re-configured for blind or partially-sighted children, with each image carefully pored over and selected for the 3D treatment.  

Celebrities give their time for free to Living Paintings, producing some fantastic audio treats. Liz told me that she wanted an American voice for ‘Where the Wild Things Are’, so she took a punt and wrote to Hollywood heartthrob Ethan Hawke when he was performing in London. Ethan Hawke said yes!

A happy library user shares Mole's Sunrise by Jeanne Willis

For older children, Phil Harding of Time Team fame has just helped produce some great audio material about Anglo-Saxons, which will be going out with touch moulds and all sorts of interesting material to support school history learning. I drove home listening to Sean Bean reading a children’s adaption of Beowulf for the Anglo-Saxon pack, and very stirring it was. 

Phil Harding working on the Anglo-Saxon material.

Alan Davies apparently had a ball in the office sound studio interviewing Arsenal Premiership footballer Carl Jenkinson, for teenagers to hear. What treats! Charity Chief Executive Camilla Oldland tells me that the families and schools who use this material get a very big boost from this kind of involvement.

Alan Davies reads Billy Monster's Daymare by Alan Durrant.

So how can we help? Well, first off, the charity needs as many people to know about its work as possible because it wants to reach as many blind and partially-sighted people – adults and children – as it can. Its guiding principle is that its library will always be free for them to use. It needs to get the word out, so please take a look at the website and pass on the link.

Secondly, it wants to engage more directly with authors and illustrators, because it knows that we are good sharers of information. It hopes to get the chance to introduce its work to more of us in 2014, perhaps even by running some events. Sometimes it finds that publishers haven’t told authors and illustrators very much about how their work is being used in this way, and they want us all to know just how strongly valued we are!

On its website there is a new icon that you can grab and put next to any books they’ve featured that you’ve been involved with. The charity finds it gets increasing amounts of click-throughs from parents who have visited author websites, so they know it works. I'm also going to suggest they produce a general icon that we can add to websites such as this one.

The Living Paintings website is newly revamped. Perhaps you could offer it a blog (which might become an audio blog). Perhaps you could point it out to your agent or your publisher. Perhaps you could tweet their blogs, to share the message. 

Finally, if you're feeling generous, this is a really worthwhile charity for authors, illustrators, publishers and agents to support. Living Paintings gets no government money. It relies on donations and help from individuals and on donations from businesses, so all word-spreading is good. 

Please take a look on http://www.livingpaintings.org. If you Tweet, follow them on Twitter: @LivingPaintings.

PS: If you know of any blind or partially-sighted children, or perhaps a school near you that would benefit, check out the gift box range for sale on the website– with tactile pictures of Elmer, Mog, Winnie the Pooh, Harry (Bucketful of Dinosaurs) and Willy Wonka. The charity is happy to post these to worldwide customers, though they point out that the audio features British-usage language. They do work with some blind and partially-sighted individuals internationally, so please contact them direct if you want to discuss this side of their work.

You Gotta Be In It - Lynne Garner

Getting published is a bit of a lottery. If you're not in it you're not gonna win it. So in January I made the New Years resolution to write and send off one new picture book story per month. As with all New Years resolutions I was good for the first couple of months but my energy started to flag around April time. So a few weeks ago, in a bid to feel less guilty I decided to search my 'resting' stories to see if I had any I still believed in. I surprised myself and found five stories I felt might be worth sending out again, after the odd tweak.

As a couple had already been sent to the 'usual' publishers I felt it was worth undertaking a little research to find alternate publishers. So I spent a morning reading submission guidelines for picture book publishers. As I did my research I realised how demoralising the process could be. Around 50% of the publishers I found no longer take un-agented authors and suggested getting an agent (that's another post entirely).  Those who do accept un-solicited manuscripts stated:

• They take one month to reply (note: this was just one publisher out of the many)
• Expect to wait up to three months for a reply 
• Don't expect to hear quickly they take up to six months
• Will get back to you within three months but only if they like your work
• Contact you only if they like your work - no time frame given

As I found suitable publishers I created a table and placed them in order of response time. By lunchtime I had five likely candidates, all of whom respond within three months. I then spent the afternoon emailing my five stories along with synopsis and covering letter. I didn't have to wait long for the first rejection, just 18 hours!

I may have already received my first rejection but I still have five chances (the rejected story has been sent out to another publisher) of winning that publishing lottery.

So whilst I wait with fingers crossed I'm going to work on a new title and send that out. Hopefully by January 2014 I might have fulfilled my New Years resolution and you never know even signed a new publishing contract.

Lynne Garner

I also write for: Awfully Big Blog Adventure, Electric Authors, The Hedgehog Shed and Fuelled by Hot Chocolate.  

P.S.
I have three new distance learning courses commencing in September via Women On Writing:

How To Write A Picture Book And Get Published

Five Picture Books In Five Weeks - Advanced Course

How To Write A Hobby Based How To Book 

My Illustration Style – A Brief History – only not so brief, sorry. . . by Jonathan Allen

As an illustrator amongst a gaggle of writers I guess I'd better post something about illustration. So here goes.

I'll write about influences, subject matter and how I came to be doing what I do another time, OK? If you don't know my work, (gasp! is such a condition even possible!?) I draw appealing, funny animals in a simple 'cartoony' (for use of a better word) style.

Today I'm going to talk about my drawing process and how it came about.

This is a rather ropey but fun little video I put together of my current process in action. Dig the music ;-) Sorry it ends rather abruptly, this vid making lark is a bit of a learning curve.

Some history - I started off drawing simple outlines of said funny animals and background trees, windows etc, truncated by the edge of the frame. Colouring the resulting shapes with flat poster paints in bright colours straight out of the pots. It looked quite nice, in a bold, abstract, graphic sort of way, and I got a commission to do a couple of cards for Gallery Five in this style while I was still at college, which was encouraging.

This kind of thing, though these were done a few years later

But this flatness became very limiting, so by a process of good old trial and error, the flat colour evolved into a more subtle watercolour/gouache wash in naturalistic colours over/under the same simple outlines.

This was pretty good, but not quite right, so by dint of further trial, error and evaluation, the addition of cross hatching with a finer pen - to help define form and texture, was settled on. This worked well and after a touch more refining, became my 'style'. Phew. . .

This was one of my first illustration jobs, for Gallery 5

My procedure was this, I started off with a pencil rough, which I either copied or traced onto artboard. I added wash to that, then, when it was dry, I drew a pen outline using the ubiquitous Rotring pen. I then added the cross hatching using a thin version of said rotring pen. This was Ok but the pen would clog frequently, as anyone who used rotrings and their ilk would affirm. Still, it worked and was successful so this was my preferred method for years.

From my first picture book, 'Guthrie Comes Clean', 

published by J.M Dent, way back. . 

Until the mid nineties. . . drum roll. . . swiss roll. . . iced bun. . .

It was then that I became attracted to the idea of using a computer to make my artwork on, as this had just become possible at a more or less consumer level. I didn't want to use it to make computery looking fancy stuff, (that was SO naff, even then) but to draw and paint directly into the computer in my usual style, using a graphics tablet and a bit of software called Painter, which imitated 'natural media' such as water colour, digitally. It sounded interesting, and, well, I just liked the idea for some reason.

So I took the plunge and bought a Mac (a 7100 I think it was called. I still have it in the attic. No idea why. . . ) a Wacom tablet and some software, and thus equipped, set to work learning how to use it all. It was fun actually. I like working things out. Usually. My work is essentially coloured-in drawings as opposed to painterly creations utilising the characteristics of the medium, so the computer could get pretty close to my fairly unexpressive line and wash style.

From 'Fowl Play' one of the first books I did on computer for Orion

The advantages were that unlike 'real' artwork, everything was editable. I could change the size of things, tweak the colours and thickness of line, etc., which was great, especially when working out page layouts, etc. Also, artwork didn't need to be scanned, which was nice for me because it always annoyed me that a scanner would show pencil lines that as far as I was concerned had been erased as they were invisible to the naked eye. Publishers always defended this by saying that the scanners were so 'good' that they picked up everything. A strange definition of the word 'good' I always thought. So good they can pick up things you can't even see! . .. fah!

The disadvantage was that nobody in the publishing industry knew what the heck they were getting or what to do with it. I wasn't exactly an expert either. The main point of contention and concern was that as the artwork only existed on screen, the colours varied according to what screen it was being viewed on. Calibration was important. Everyone had to be confident that they were seeing the same colours as each other as there was no actual bit of artwork to compare the printers proofs to.

I wasn't ever so popular ;-) But we got there in the end. The publishers and printers knew that the repro industry was well on it's way to being digitally led and that they had to adapt.

Baby Owl, conceived and created on computer

I've worked on computer ever since. A lot of artists now scan their work in and modify it in Photoshop. And a lot of artists use Adobe Illustrator, which lets them produce resolution independent images, funnily enough using flat colours and simple outlines like my ancient poster paint images did. It's just normal now but I remember those pioneering days. . . One day I shall sit my grandchildren round the fire and tell them tales of the days when men were men and a megabyte was something significant. And they will fall asleep in seconds flat. . .

Words? Who needs them? by Gill Robins

Welcome to guest blogger Gill Robins. Gill was a leading English teacher who now reviews for Books for Keeps, is a Senior Editor and a published author, too. The Whoosh Book, an interactive approach to teaching classic and contemporary text through drama, is due for publication in May 2013. Gill was awarded the UKLA John Downing Award for creative and innovative approaches to teaching English. Her thoughtful and insightful blog is at http://teacherturnedwriter.gillrobins.com/

I’ll start this blog with something of a confession, because, as they say, confession is good for the soul. I love reading picture books just as much as I love reading Kafka or Dickens. And therein lies the conflict.

Now I realise that if you’re reading this blog you’re already converts to my cause –in fact, you probably never needed converting. My cause, I hear you ask? Simply this: to persuade parents of the vital importance of picture books and image in the development of their children’s reading. Let me take you on a journey into my world...

Although I’m now a writer and editor, I spent most of my working life as a teacher, for the final ten years leading English in a school and training Primary school teachers to teach the subject rigorously and with passion. I mostly failed, I think, with the passion bit and here’s why. We live in a world where the written word is enshrined as an end goal, where word writers are put on pedestals and our education system is relentlessly geared to the mastery of words as some sort of Holy Grail. I tried to broaden the definition of ‘read’ and it met with deafening disapproval.

I mostly taught at the top end of Key Stage 2 (9-11 year olds), by which time the majority of pupils could, of course, read fluently. When I (naively as it turned out) introduced a complex picture book into the curriculum (Roberto Innocenti and Ian McEwan's Rose Blanche) several children refused to look at a picture book which was ‘just for babies’. Then the parents joined in the fray. How would their children get Level 5 SATs/A* GCSE English/a place at Oxbridge by reading baby books? What on earth was I thinking? Didn’t I realise how important it was to introduce them to the canon of classic literature as early as possible (preferably in utero) in order to gain advantage?

I define reading much more widely than just the written word and nothing in my experience has yet convinced me otherwise. Babies and toddlers can read gesture and body language fluently; it follows that they can also read image just as effectively. So although the traditional view is that pictures exist in books to entertain toddlers, introduce them to the concept of a book and then clue early readers into text, my view is that this is too limiting a definition of the role of image. I think it can be read as a medium in its own right and therefore is not something that we should train children out of as print starts to predominate.

Ok, so now you’ve kindly read my rant, here are just a few of the picture books that I have found enriching in the experience of the children I have taught. Let’s start with:

Rose Blanche. This tells the story of one little girl who stumbles across a concentration camp on the outskirts of her town during World War II. I provided this without any text as we went on a journey of discovery through the book. Here are some of the comments that children made and the questions they asked, discussed and wrote about:

‘Why have all the grown-ups turned their backs? Why do grown-ups do that?’

‘I can see her feelings in the reflection in the window – like mirrors.’

‘The way that picture bleeds right out to the edges of the page – it makes you realise how many Jews were killed. There was no end to it. It went on for ever.’

‘The buildings are huge and dark. They fill up most of the picture. It makes you realise how frightening the camps were. Like the buildings are big bullies.’

‘I’ve never realised before that a fence can be a barrier.’

As the war comes to an end, Rose stumbles through the forest in thick fog. On the opposing page, a frightened German soldier fires into the fog. In the final image, a flower which she had picked lies dead over a barbed wire fence. On a mound below the fence, new flowers blossom. These final images provoked really intense discussion. If I had ever needed persuading about the power of image in developing skills in inference and deduction, it would have been this experience that would have persuaded.

Some children decided that Rose had abandoned the flower, found her Mum and lived happily ever after. Some children read into the image that she had been shot by the soldier even though she was also German, the mound being her grave. All children discussed new life and its continuation even after the Holocaust. And only image can provide children with the opportunity to discuss intense, emotional issues from within their own understanding. Words have to spell it out too clearly to afford the opportunity for much interpretation. Could ten-year-olds have gained such an in-depth understanding of such a difficult issue from a print book?

My next ‘favourite’ is Varmints, by Helen Ward and Marc Craste. This is a touching story about the need to make time and space in our modern world. It feels cinematic, with see-through pages that create a soft-focus effect to some of the images. I thought I’d let a nine-year-old comment on this one for you:

‘One page is completely black. Probably the people’s minds were turned off. It doesn’t need words because I can make up my own story. The book goes from light when the Varmint is happy to dark in the middle then light suddenly comes back because the Varmints world has come back. You can read the book backwards because it goes from light to dark to light whichever way you read it. You feel like you’re in a film.’

And finally, Sara Fanelli's The Onion’s Great Escape – an amazingly powerful book which engages the reader in philosophical thinking at really deep levels. In case you’ve never read Sara’s books, you tend to form relationships with them rather than read them. This book is part poetry, part narrative and part philosophy. You also create your own new book as you release an onion from confinement. If you want to encourage children to challenge conformity and tradition, this is the book to share with them.

Sara’s work is typified by collage, a medium which she loves and which she feels that children engage with quite naturally. I spent hours when I first read this book gazing at the different collage materials, going off on thought tracks of my own. Then there are the scribbles which you can imagine to be anything... a very personal, visual experience. I haven’t read this book with anyone yet because releasing the onion will be a very special moment, for which I am waiting for a very special child.

So, words, who needs ‘em?

Well, we all do, of course. I’m not arguing for the abandonment of word books, merely an expansion of parental vision to allow for the enrichment of children’s reading experiences. But with the relentless, narrow view of reading and its mastery, which is the Emperor’s current new clothes, I don’t see it coming any time soon.