Bedtime Stories in Broad Daylight

As a picture book writer and a storyteller, I take my books into libraries, festival events and bookshops to tell stories. I don’t read from the book – I tell them like a story – sometimes with songs, but also with actions, sounds and interactivity.

Tales on Moon Lane with
Farmer Falgu Goes on a Trip, illustrated by Kanika Nair

            Often the audience is a group of children ranging from 3 years to 7 years old. Often these events are in the middle of the day either right after breakfast (so the children have eaten) or after lunch (so the children have eaten). That time between naps and bedtime, the time between playtime and nappy change time. Understandably the children are not sleepy – they are raring to go and want to join in the fun.

            This is fantastic because if I tell the story of Pattan’s Pumpkin, then the story is an adventure. It’s exciting to join Pattan as he journeys down the mountain.

            But I’ve also written three beautifully illustrated bedtime stories. Stories shared by parents with their children with a comforting refrain. These are stories that are meant to be read when the child closes it eyes and is ready to be comforted and lulled into the safety of dreams.

Illustrated by Poonam Mistry,

it was shortlisted for the Kate Greenaway Medal 2019

Illustrated by Poonam Mistry,
it has been longlisted  for the Kate Greenaway Medal 2020

Illustrated by Poonam Mistry,
all 3 published by Lantana Publishing 

            

How do I tell these three stories in the middle of a busy library or a festival in broad daylight when the children are definitely not sleepy? I had to adapt the performances to suit the venue, the timing and the level of interactivity the event organisers demand.

1.    The setting: I discuss the setting, the fauna and the flora of the region in these books. The first one is set in an Indian forest, the second one in the Arctic and the third one in the grasslands. I talk about these habitats, and who lives there, what grows there. Children love to contribute to these discussions. The first book You're Safe with Me has a number of unfamiliar animals and birds that fascinate children.

2.    Discuss the issues and the science discussed in each of the books before telling the story – the first one handles fear and water cycles, the second one about climate change and third one is about mutualism. I discuss these concepts with children – relate it to their own real life and then when I do tell the story, they can make the connections.

3.    Adding songs that are more interactive and noisy than bedtime ones. For example, to perform You’re Safe With Me, I’ve adapted “The wheels on the bus” to my own story – they know the rhyme, I teach them the words and soon we are singing together.

4.    We chant together – the refrain which is also the title appears at the end of each section of the story and the children join in. They are waiting for it and they love to say it with me.

5.    Activities - I always carry colouring sheets, puzzles, word searches all related to the book – so just in case older children have accompanied their younger siblings or a child is less happy to sit down and listen, they start working on the activities. Colouring has definitely opened the door older children to join in with the story.

6.    Workshop – Sometimes the group of children who have bought tickets to my event are all over seven. Armed with a sleepy bedtime book I suddenly face an eager crowd that is worried about being bored. 

When that happens I turn the session into a writing workshop. 

I go through the story with them and then we get on with the writing of their own stories or non-fiction projects.

 

I’ve also blogged about taking picture books into older classrooms here, if you are interested in doing writing workshops with your picture books.

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Chitra Soundar is an internationally published author of over 40 books for children. Her picture books have been translated into German, French, Japanese and Thai and have been included in the White Ravens Catalogue and IBBY International Books of USA. 
You're Safe with Me was shortlisted for the Kate Greenaway Medal 2019 for Poonam Mistry's illustrations and their second book together You're Snug with Me has been longlisted for the Kate Greenaway Medal in 2020. Find out more at www.chitrasoundar.com and follow her on twitter at @csoundar.

Draw me a hamster with an elephant's body driving a Lamborghini

Garry Parsons describes how he approaches visiting schools to talk about his work as an illustrator, gives some tips on how to do it, and asks two teachers why they feel author and illustrator visits are beneficial to pupils.

One of the surprises of working as an illustrator in children’s publishing was being asked to take part in live events. My first picture book, Billy’s Bucket by Kes Gray, won three awards during the first year of its publication and, as the illustrator, I was expected to speak publicly. Being a fairly private person, this was very daunting at first and, looking back, I’m sure in those first few years my events were probably pretty awful. But experience is a great teacher and I have learnt a lot about speaking in public and adapted my repertoire to hopefully enthuse and inspire children to pick up a pencil or read a book.

This Friday I visited a school in South London, my first of the year, and, with the thought of a busy World Book Week close on the horizon, I was keen to start the season off with a real cracker. 

Tip 1: Arrive in plenty of time.

With my mild anxiety about being late dealt with by arriving at the school half an hour early, I was greeted enthusiastically by the teacher I had been organizing the event with, and led around the school to where my workshops would be taking place during the day, and to the hall for the assembly. 

Tip 2: Set up your wares before the kids arrive.

I like to be drawing as the children are filing into the hall. You can hear the muffled chatter of excitement and murmurs of “Who?” “What?” “How?” and “Wow!” 

Children are gripped by live drawing, so I like to make the most of the flip chart paper.

Tip 3: Get everyone’s attention straight away. 

I like to do this by asking a question immediately. “Does anyone here like to draw?” I ask, and usually around 80% of hands go up.

I go on to tell them that there are three things that an illustrator needs, we quickly work out between us what these might be, and I draw these on the flip chart with fast strokes of a fat marker. Children love to interact with moans and laughter when I inform them that my pencil is in love with someone but it’s not me! 

We go through the importance of PRACTICE by unravelling a long concertina sketchbook, and the abstract notion of using your IMAGINATION by drawing a brave volunteer’s portrait. But I get it ‘wrong’ under the influence of my vivid imagination, which seemingly has a mind of its own and might add an elephant’s trunk, crazy oversized hair or giant ears to the drawing. This brings on peels of laughter.

By this point I usually feel I have the room engaged, but the time has flown by and I need to wrap it up with a five minute Q&A or, if it’s a longer assembly, I might continue with ‘Challenge the Illustrator,’ where I tell the children I can draw anything and they give me three random elements to put together in two minutes, a gorilla on a unicycle in Wembley Stadium. Either way, my intention is to have lit a fuse of enthusiasm that will carry me and the students into a series of workshops for the rest of the day.

In the workshops I explain the process of illustration, from text to final artwork, and how a picture book is made. I use examples of my work to show each of the stages and emphasise how important it is to keep the first stages fluid and not to be concerned about perfection and getting things right. That's where the romance of the pencil and the rubber comes in.

So how did the day in South London go? 

Well, it was a marvellous day with responsive children and enthusiastic and welcoming staff, it felt great and everyone seemed happy. 

This is what they said...

We had a very exciting visit from illustrator Garry Parsons. He amazed the children in an assembly with his illustration skills and quick imagination! His inspirational assembly and workshops had children in awe with a lot of spontaneous clapping.

But how do I know that schools really do get something out of author and illustrator visits? Is it worth schools spending scarce resources this way? 

I asked two experienced teachers from schools in Kent to get an inside point of view on why author and illustrator visits might be of benefit to them and their pupils and how they know a visit may have had an effect.

Mrs Bryant told me:

A visitor to your school can give pupils a fresh engagement with a subject, whether that is reading, writing or drawing, or even something less obvious like bee keeping or gymnastics. It can show children the aspect that gives education a purpose and gives them a reason for going to school. Authors and illustrators can be both inspirational and aspirational for pupils. 

Visits broaden views and often give a purposeful link to a unit of work that the pupils might be studying in class at that time or later, and we can ask questions such as “Would you like to do this as a job?” 

Miss Neech told me:

Meeting an author or illustrator in real life at your school brings in a reality, an actual person that children can directly engage with. And this is a shared experience for everyone in the school, including the teachers, and every school member can be uplifted by an inspiring speaker. When schools are required to focus on the academic, having a creative person, such as an illustrator or a writer, visiting the school is beneficial, because society is about creative thinking and problem solving. Not celebrating creativity would be a mistake!

For me, meeting the children is wonderful and I thoroughly enjoy visiting schools and having the opportunity to enthuse children about drawing and reading and about books. 

This aspect of being an illustrator has become a pleasure I had never considered when I started on the art work for Billy’s Bucket all those years ago. While the benefits of authors and illustrators visiting schools might be hard to measure from my perspective, I am convinced that they have a real impact because of the feedback from teachers, the fun that I can see the children have and, more than anything, the brilliant thank you letters I sometimes receive a few weeks later.

Garry Parsons is a children's book illustrator.


You can see more of my illustration for children's books on my website by clicking here. Get in touch to book Garry to visit your school, library or festival.

Follow me on twitter @icandrawdinos

THE PICTURE BOOK EVENT ANXIETY CHECK LIST

by Michelle Robinson

Event coming up? Worried you’ll forget to WORRY about something? Fret no more. This handy checklist of unnecessary anxieties is guaranteed to have you losing sleep for weeks.

1. I will not find the venue.
2. I will find the venue is insalubrious.
3. I will turn up on the wrong day/week/month/continent.
4. My car will break down or else I will crash it. Probably into the venue. Or the children.
5. The train will be cancelled. The train will break down. I will crash the train.
6. I will be late. I will be flustered. Everything will go wrong.
7. I will be early. I will still be flustered. There will be no excuse for anything to go wrong, and yet absolutely everything will.
8. I will have to cancel due to crippling anxiety and/or illness. I will let everyone down. I will damage my reputation and no on will ever ask me to do an event again. Fingers crossed.
9. The promised essentials (powerpoint, flip chart, paper, pens, valium, etc.) will not materialise.
10. I will leave my books at home.
11. I will leave my memory stick at home with my slideshow on it.
12. I will remember the memory stick, but will bring the wrong file, most likely something inappropriate or incriminating.
13. The event organiser will be unable to conceal their disappointment in me.
14. The children will boo and chant, “WE WANT THE GRUFFALO.”
15. I will have to read ‘The Gruffalo.’
16. No one will turn up. 
17. Everyone will turn up.
18. Johnny Depp will turn up and I will not be able to think of the first thing to say to him.
19. Nose bleed.
20. Panic attack.
21. Fainting.
22. Sudden inexplicable onset of Tourette’s. 
23. Earthquake.
24. Volcano.
25. Tsunami.
26. Alien invasion.
27. Brain drain.
28. Someone will look at me funny, putting me off my stride so badly I launch involuntarily into a musical number from Grease.
29. The children will be Mensa protégés who correct me on my grammar.
30. A child will ask a question that destroys or unhinges me.
31. I will fall flat on my face. 
32. I will catch shingles from lingering pox on the venue carpet.
33. These are pre-school children. I could even catch bubonic plague.
34. The organiser will not have arranged book sales.
35. The organiser will expect me to bring along books and cash float. They will also expect me to do maths while talking and signing books for children with names like, "Eve, spelled Yvxwezfgh."
36. I will not sell a single book and everyone will know I am a loser.
37. No one will offer me a drink all day.
38. Someone will offer me a drink but I will start choking on it, mid-story.
39. I will choke to death in front of everybody.
40. I will not be able to locate the loo.
41. I will have an accident.
42. Looking for the loo, I will enter the broom cupboard and have to style it out.
43. …resulting in a request to read ‘Room on the Broom.’
44. My family will resent me for spending time away from home.
45. My children will forget what I look like.
46. My husband will think I am away so much I must be having an affair.
47. I will go all that way and - assuming #18 did not happen - there will not be anyone worth having an affair with.
48. No one would want to have an affair with me anyway: I arrive a witless, charmless mess dressed as an impoverished bag lady.
49. A local newspaper journalist will come and take a horrible photo, capturing my dishevelled bag lady look forever and making it the most prominent image result for me in Google.
50. The photo will appear in the paper with the caption, ‘Not even Julia Donaldson’.
51. The photo will not appear, being deemed less newsworthy than a sponsored shoeshine. 
52. My publishers will not even notice that I am hauling my arse all over the country to promote our book.
53. My publishers will notice, but will be too busy celebrating the umpteenth reprint of ‘The Gruffalo' to care.
54. My publishers will see the terrible national newspaper write-up with the unfortunate photo of me, book aloft, smiling, beside the burning venue and sobbing children.
55. There will not be cake.
56. There will be cake, but I will choke on it.
57. Repeat anxiety #39.
58. They will ring to cancel when I am five minutes away because, “We thought you had written ‘The Gruffalo'.”
59. Julia Donaldson will turn up, dressed as the Gruffalo, and deck me.
60. Some manner of very public, non-choking related death.

I’m worried I’ve omitted a load of things I ought to be worrying about. Please share any fears I’ve yet to consider below. Don't worry, folks. You'll be great. After all, you’ve got this anxiety thing nailed. 

Not a bad effort.

Not even Julia Donaldson.

Michelle Robinson's latest book, 'Goodnight Spaceman' is out on April 7th. She has many events scheduled this year and has a few of her own unique fears:-

1. Everyone will be disappointed that I am not Tim Peake.
2. If Tim Peake were watching my event from space, he would be disappointed.
3. They only invited me because they are hoping I can introduce them to Tim Peake. Disappointment is inevitable.

'Goodnight Spaceman' is published by Puffin, illustrated by Nick East and features a very special foreword by ESA astronaut, Tim Peake. 

Events for the picture book age group by Abie Longstaff

I do lots of events: in schools, in shops and at lit fests. Performing was really scary at first but I've got better over the years and I've learned a few tricks along the way!

1. Pre-event

The more effort the event organiser puts in, the better your reading will be. If a shop books me I try to engage with them in the run-up to the show, making sure there are advertisements, posters in the window, notices on local forums; anything to get the message out to parents.












Sometimes the shop needs a bit of a nudge to do this - I often ask my lovely publicist at my publisher to help here. Publishers can make a range of fantastic posters and showcards.
 
2. Prepare

What are you going to do?
I start by reading a story

I talk about how I make a book: where my ideas come from, my writing process, the editing stages.

then we play games - for The Fairytale Hairdresser we play salons.

I have some great dolls with really strong hair that can be brushed, pulled and pinned and we spend ages putting in clips and ribbons. I also have pirate outfits for Pirate House Swap and some fantastic puppets for The Mummy Shop.

 

There are colour-in activity sheets...and sometimes we even have cake!

Work out your event in chunks of time. It's really important to know how long each segment takes so you can plan and so that, on the day, if you only have ten minutes left, you know which segment to do.
 
3. Know your age group

Children of 2-6 don't sit still for long! You have to work hard to engage them. I find sitting with them on the floor really helps because it keeps you in their eye-line and you can hold their attention more easily. I ask them lots of questions as I read: about the pictures and what they can see; about how they think a character feels; about what might happen next. I try to make it a bit like being read to at home, a chatty cosy time so they feel at ease and confident.

Don't forget, along with your target age group will come their parents (who also need to be engaged with and chatted to) and often a much younger sibling.

If you watch the audience you can see when the children start getting wriggly and itchy - spot trouble before it happens and change to another activity.

4. Think about actions, pictures and sounds

When you are reading it is very easy to get caught up in the words. Don't forget to points things out in the illustrations. Ask the children to make sounds - horns, doorbells, rain, animal noises; whatever suits your texts. I get to hear some pretty evil witch cackles! The same applies for actions - we spend time plaiting Rapunzel's hair along with the fairytale hairdresser.

If I'm lucky enough to have the illustrator (Lauren Beard) with me there is a whole new dimension to the event - she draws as I talk and the children can really see the story come to life!

5. Questions

This age group come out with some fantastic questions. They often don't understand that a book is printed - I'm usually asked how I make my writing so neat in the printed books and if it took me ages to write out each book by hand! I ask them how long they think it takes between my first idea and the book ending up on the shelf in a shop. If I really could make that process happen in a day or a week I'd be a very prolific author indeed!

They also tend to spot tiny elements of the illustration that can pass adults by. Be prepared to explain the drawings as well as the words in the story. Get to know every inch of your book. And be prepared for off the wall comments. My favourite question has to be from the little boy who put up his hand to say proudly:
"I had pineapple for breakfast"

I'd love to hear your tips on events!

Have a look on my website for my future events 

Book to see Lauren and me at Hay-onWye Lit Fest here

Author/Ilustrator Events by Abie Longstaff

I don't often get to meet up with my illustrator, Lauren Beard. She lives in Manchester, I live in London; and the process of making a book together is often more separated than people imagine.

But I love seeing her when I can. We have the same sense of humour (so important when working together) and we both love the fairy tale world of Kittie Lacey that we've created.

So, when we were asked to do some events together at Seven Stories in Newcastle, we jumped at the chance.

We've never done an event as a twosome for The Fairytale Hairdresser before so we really wanted to get it right and plan something that would include both text and illustration.

We decided to travel up to Newcastle together so I picked up Lauren in Sheffield at a ridiculously early hour and we had a great time in the car plotting and planning the events as well as talking through the next Fairytale Hairdresser books.

 The story-telling space at Seven Stories is truly wonderful! It's up in the attic and there are books hanging from the ceiling as well as an enormous wooden chair to sit in. I loved reading the stories and seeing how much the children liked the books.

Lauren and I wanted to mix up the story and illustration and to pull out themes from the book to illustrate and discuss with the children. One of the themes we chose was emotion. In The Fairytale Hairdresser and Sleeping Beauty, the seven fairies are at first upset, then worried, then cross then happy. We asked the children to make the faces to reflect each feeling and Lauren drew the emotions in cartoon style.

We did some crazy hairstyles

and at the end I showed my writing books and Lauren showed her wonderful sketchbooks, and together we told the children how we make a Fairytale Hairdresser story.

It was so good to do an event with someone else. Occasionally events can feel a bit lonely and it was fantastic to have Lauren there! I also think it added so much for the children to meet both creators of the book and learn about both sides of the process.

I think they had a good time - afterwards there was certainly a long signing queue...