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JUST IMAGINE and HALLOWEEN
Charming young Earthlings enjoying ‘Letters from an Alien Schoolboy’ and ‘Cosmic Custard’ I really enjoyed my visit to the warm and welcoming Just Imagine Story Centre in Chelmsford . It’s a beautiful shop, brimming with wonderful books and exquisite dressing up clothes, too. Downstairs is a spooky dungeon, so it’s a terrific place to drop by,…
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THE BIG DRAW
Busy week for me, because I really like just sitting around dreaming. Or quietly drawing. But I wish everybody would draw more, so that’s why I mosied along to The Guardian newspaper’s BIG DRAW last Saturday. Here is just one of the many many wonderful ALIENS YOU CREATED. (Hope to add more later) Joshua…
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ROALD DAHL FUNNY PRIZE SHOCK
Earthlings, listen here. Perhaps you are not such lousy no-good hopeless duffers as I thought. You seem to have chosen ‘LETTERS FROM AN ALIEN SCHOOLBOY’ to be shortlisted for your so called Roald Dahl ‘Funny’ prize. I don’t really get this Earthling thing about ‘jokes’, especially as you always seem to be laughing at me, but I…
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How to Draw Aliens
HOW TO DRAW ALIENS . If you fancy creating your very own alien this Saturday Sept 10th, I’ll be doing a workshop at the Haringey Children’s Literature Festival 1.00-1.40in the Workshop space at Marcus Garvey Library. There’ll be the Word Play Area, the Super Signings Tent, the Story Telling Tent; a Workshop Space, competitions, and…
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‘The Great Big Book of Families’ by Mary Hoffman, illustrated by me and published by Francis Lincoln has been shortlisted for the School Libraries Association Award. http://www.sla.org.uk/information-book-award.php The GBBF as we now call it, celebrates families in all their variations and has been published in twelve languages. Just for fun I’m printing the google translate version of…
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Book Award and phonics
I’m thrilled to hear that Letters from an Alien Schoolboy: Has been shortlisted for the Tower Hamlets Book Award – Fronter It was chosen with five other books from 30 titles and the vote is on Nov 25th.Here’s my original drawing for the cover. You can see the final…
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Ten year olds Can spot a phoney
It’s the end of the world for the News of The World. All writers, not only journalists, might be considering the consequences. Do we hope to use language to illuminate? I first read the News of The World when I was nine years old and stopped reading it a year later. That’s because it boasted…
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Do we need Princesses?
Goodness, it appears the Royal Family is very expensive. It costs 112 times more than the Irish president and the equivalent of thousands of nurses, police officers and teachers according to a new report. www.republic.org.uk/royalfinances But if we banned the Monarchy what would that mean for children’s books? Where would we be without Lauren Child’s ‘The…
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Welcome to my blog (will I keep it up?)
Hello, welcome to my occasional blog about writing, drawing and anything that takes my fancy. Here’s a good writer’s tip: ‘Write a little every day without and hope and without despair’ It’s from Danish author Karen von Blixen-Finecke (1885 – 1962); born Karen Christence Dinesen, best known under her pen name Isak Dinesen. News this…