 |
|
|
|
|
Newsletter The past year has been a very busy one for me. I have been working on a variety of books for American and English publishers. Early last year I illustrated Christine Morton-Shaw’s charming book, WAKE UP, SLEEPY BEAR! to be published by Puffin in the UK and Viking in the US in August 2006…Wake up, wake up, sleepy bear! Time to rise, time to shine, Hurry up, it’s party time! After that I completed TEN IN THE MEADOW for Orchard Books in the UK to be published in August 2006. In the US it’s to be published by Peachtree in September 2006. It’s the sequel to TEN IN THE DEN. Based on a popular children’s nursery rhyme, the ten friends are together again playing hide-and-seek, but Little Mouse hides a little too well… Last Autumn I illustrated I LOVE YOU, EVERY LITTLE BIT, a pop-up book for Piggy Toes Press in Los Angeles, which is to be published in the US in 2007. All sorts of animal mothers and babies feature in three dimensions. CAN YOU CUDDLE LIKE A KOALA? was short-listed for the UK Booktrust Early Years Award for Best Baby Book in 2005, held at the Bafta headquarters in Piccadilly, London. This is the second year running I’ve been short-listed for this award. (In 2004 HUSH LITTLE ONES was short-listed). It’s always good to meet up with other people in children’s publishing, some of whom I’ve known for many years.
I am currently working on A MAMA FOR OWEN written by Marion Dane Bauer to be published in the US by Simon and Schuster. It’s the touching and true story of Owen, a baby hippo, who lives in Kenya, and who was orphaned by the 2004 tsunami. He attached himself to Mzee, a 130-year-old Giant Tortoise, and hard as it is to believe, the old tortoise seemed to adopt him. They became close friends. Thank you to those who emailed in the past year. I really enjoy reading your comments. I hope I answered everyone. Happy reading!
|
|
welcome · about
· prints · books
· fun & games · contact
site designed, built & maintained by Portmanteau |
Also last year I visited the Kalahari Desert for the first time. It wasn’t the first desert I’d seen, but certainly the most beautiful. It’s a huge national park that covers three countries, Namibia, Botswana and South Africa, and it’s full of wildlife - from bat-eared foxes to leopards and lions, and most appealing of all, meerkats. These are extremely sociable mongooses that live in burrows and seem to eat anything that moves. They have powerful teeth and I took some convincing to pick up the tame meerkat I’m holding in the photo. She ended up curled up in my lap as we drove through the desert to the research farm where she lived. 