The Christmas Quiet Book Cover

This is a bit early, but I wanted to be one of the first to share it!

We had a fresh coating of winter this weekend. Here are some tracks from one of my artist models - a jack rabbit that visits our front yard and hangs out in the neighbourhood.

Does A Feather Remember

I am very excited to share the announcement of a new book I am illustrating, DOES A FEATHER REMEMBER! It is a lovely story written by Nina Laden. I want to thank her so much for sharing it with me, doing so couldn't have been easy. Besides writing many fine children's books Nina has also illustrated them. To give up the opportunity to illustrate this book must have been a difficult decision and I am very grateful to her and hope I can make it a worthwhile choice!

 This will be the first book I have worked on with Little, Brown Books for Young Readers and I am looking forward to working with them. The publisher asked me to write a little about what attracted me to this project. This is what I came up with:

DOES A FEATHER REMEMBER is one of those stories that had me saying "I wish I had thought of that!"

I instantly fell in love with the text. The first line "Does a feather remember it once was a bird?" which is so simple and poetic attracted me to the manuscript. On that first read I had images coming to me for the whole story. Every line opened up possibilities for my imagination to explore. DOES A FEATHER REMEMBER is a wonderful way to experience how things are connected and the stories behind them - how does the bird lose its feather? I can't wait to draw it and find out.

As with THE QUIET BOOK it seems the simplest stories allow me to add my own visual narrative and let my imagination to run free, or wild! I feel very fortunate that this story has come my way and that the author and publisher have so generously shared it with me. 


Visit Nina's blog HERE to read more about the book, as well as see some of her original drawings for it.

Beatrix Potter

The last post reminded me of another favourite artist. I took a photo of this lovely book dummy at the V&A Museum in London. The line drawing was so delicate! After the trip I picked up a quill pen and ink and tried some sketches - it was very tough I have to say.

He is Scarry good!

This is what I was reading this weekend, makes me smile! I had actually not seen Richard Scarry's amazing work until I picked up this old copy of Fun with Words at a used book shop a half dozen years ago or so, it reminds me of a childhood textbook we had in school that I loved too.

Tweets

A card for Michael, we are most definitely twitter illiterate.

and this is his card to me.

French Book Updates

Here are a  two more foreign editions. It's interesting to see that Aunt Tillie's name has changed to Aunt Irma.

A short write up about Bada Boum! in Le Journal de Québec http://www.journaldequebec.com/2012/02/18/echapper-a-la-mort-et-lui-voler-son-coeur

Book Updates

LITTLE PANDA has just been re-released as a paperback edition from Sandpiper. Yeah!

THE QUIET BOOK has been published in Brazil and Finland. 

If you can read Finnish HERE is a review, I google translated it and I think it was a good review!

THE LOUD BOOK! has been released in Korea, Japan, and Brazil.

Red Wagon appeared on the cover of Canadian Children's Book News, 

I thought it looks pretty neat cropped like this.

And finally, I will be sharing some great news on upcoming books very soon,

I can't wait!

I Want My Hat Back by Jon Klassen

A favourite of mine from last year.

Nobrow

We had a lovely time stopping by the shop of independent book/comicbook publisher Nobrow while in London. They gave us a tour of the studio and we had fun chatting about their fabulous books.

I can see why they were excited about this new book, Hilda and The Midnight Giant by Luke Pearson. I've read half so far and it's very enjoyable, it's imaginative and fun for kids and adults too I would say.

They also carry books from other publishers. I can't read À quoi penses-tu ? but I love looking at the pictures. Each spread has a picture flap with an image of a character on the outside. You turn over the flap to see what is on the inside - brilliant! By Laurent Moreau

Nobrow are really great to order from, the orders come quickly and they take the same care in the packaging of their books as they do in creating them. This fellow below had to come home to us,

 of course.

Thanks to Alex and Sam!