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Children's author, illustrator, screenwriter

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Hotel Flamingo Life In Lockdown – Free Book!

2 December, 2020 by Alex

Alex Milway Hotel Flamingo Free Ebook

It’s been a difficult year for everyone, but how have the guests and staff at HOTEL FLAMINGO coped with life in lockdown?

Join Anna, T.Bear, Madame Le Pig and the whole gang to find out what it’s like running a hotel when you aren’t allowed new guests.

You can download your book here

(Also featuring exclusive FREE CHAPTER of my new series: BIG SKY MOUNTAIN (available for pre-order now!)

Filed Under: Books, Free Books, Hotel Flamingo, News Tagged With: alex milway

New series coming! Big Sky Mountain unveiled

1 December, 2020 by Alex

I am so excited to share this with you all!

My new series Big Sky Mountain is publishing June 2021 with Piccadilly Press (who also publish my Hotel Flamingo series).

It got wilderness, adventure, and lots of fun! It was a dream to write. It’s a story about a girl called Rosa who goes to live with her ‘Grandma Nan’ in a cabin in the wilderness.

Nan teaches Rosa how to survive in a very different landscape to the one she was used to. The mountain is home to many other colourful creatures; some friendly, some grumpy, some scary, but all important to the wider ecosystem.

In the first book Rosa meets a pair of beavers…

All of the stories in the Big Sky Mountain series will discuss keystone species. These are species that make a massive difference to our planet, and are incredibly important for all of us…

It’s quite a personal book. Not only is the subject very important to me, it’s also inspired by the relationship I had with my own gran, who would always march me up the Malvern Hills as a boy.

I hope you like it!

You can pre-order here, which is incredibly exciting! http://bit.ly/bigskymountain

PS. Pre-ordering makes a big difference to sales charts, so I’d be really thrilled if you did — but only if you want to obviously! http://bit.ly/bigskymountain

Filed Under: Big Sky Mountain, Books, News Tagged With: alex milway, Early Readers, Hotel Flamingo

Art Classes with Alex Milway

21 October, 2020 by Alex

Half term is upon us already! Who can believe it?! If you’re stuck in lockdown, I thought you might enjoy this series of videos I made for the Bookazini channel (now up on my own YouTube channel too).

As well as silly songs, word games and a reading from one of my books, each video has a ‘How to Draw’ section, where I take you through the simple techniques I use to draw some of my most-loved characters (including Harold from Pigsticks and Harold and T. Bear and Madame Le Pig from Hotel Flamingo.)

Win a Pin Badge!

If you draw one the characters, please do send me a photo! I can’t promise to reply to every message, but I promise I will look at them all.

If you send to me by 1 November at 5pm I’ll pick one and send out an enamel pin badge from my new Alex Milway Shop!

How to Draw T. Bear

How to Draw Harold The Hamster

How to Draw Madame Le Pig

Remember to send me your drawings before 1 November 5pm! (Full terms and conditions can be found here).

I can’t wait to see them all!

x

Alex

Filed Under: Books, Competitions, Hotel Flamingo, Pigsticks and Harold

Hotel Flamingo wins Brilliant Book Award 2020

11 September, 2020 by Alex

Wow! This was a hard one to keep under my hat! I’m absolutely thrilled to announce Hotel Flamingo is the winner of the Brilliant Book Award 2020!

Even better, it was voted the winner by hundreds of primary school children!

The new award, developed by Lancashire’s School Library Service, involves thousands of children from Lancashire primary schools reading new books and voting for their favourite. The main aim of the award is to encourage children aged six and seven years to develop a love of reading.

Isn’t that great?!

Thank you so much for the children of Lancashire for voting for Hotel Flamingo! I’m truly chuffed.

You can watch my acceptance speech (and a bit of drawing) here.

(I should also mention that Hotel Flamingo was longlisted for the North Somerset Teachers’ Book Awards 2019 too)

IMG_7827.jpg

Filed Under: Books, Hotel Flamingo, News Tagged With: alex milway, Awards, Hotel Flamingo, Lancashire Book Awards

Hotel Flamingo: Fabulous Feast out now!

25 August, 2020 by Alex

My fourth Hotel Flamingo book, Fabulous Feast, launched during lockdown. (You can buy it now!)

Normally, I’d have been off out and about doing school events and painting shop windows to celebrate the launch of my fourth Hotel Flamingo book. But lockdown put paid to all that and I was left making do with our front windows at home.

Anna was ready to welcome everyone!

Photo by Alex Milway on May 10, 2020. Image may contain: outdoor, text that says 'HOTEL MING'.
Photo by Alex Milway on May 10, 2020. Image may contain: outdoor.
As you can see, the team clocked in for work despite of the corona crisis! That’s dedication!
View this post on Instagram

Stella Giraffe has come to work! #HotelFlamingo #penge

A post shared by Alex Milway (@alexmilway) on Apr 28, 2020 at 7:45am PDT

It wasn’t quite as fun as getting out to spend time with children in schools or reading in bookshops, but it certainly brightened up the house – and we enjoyed watching everyone stop to stare at it on their daily exercise.

Here’s a little video I did for Waterstones with a reading from Fabulous Feast.

Filed Under: Books, Hotel Flamingo, News Tagged With: Early Readers, Fabulous Feast, Hotel Flamingo

How to draw T Bear from Hotel Flamingo

28 April, 2020 by Alex

At the start of the lockdown I made some videos of me reading extracts from my books, teaching you how to draw some of my characters, and singing some very silly songs I wrote.

In this first one, I read an extract from the first Hotel Flamingo Book and teach you all my super-easy method for drawing T Bear! So have a look and you’ll be drawing bears with faces like fried eggs in no time!

Head over to Bookazini to watch more and please hit Like and subscribe!

Filed Under: News

Make your own Hotel Flamingo!

11 April, 2020 by Alex

T. Bear welcomes the cardboard hotel into my house!

If you like making things, like me, you’ll love building your own Hotel Flamingo! It’s not too fiddly, but you’ll need some card, crayons, glue and scissors.

You’ll also need to download the model sheets to print out. There are instructions on the sheets, or you could also watch my How-to video on YouTube!

Have fun, get crafting, and let me know how you get on!

Download the files from Dropbox here

Filed Under: News

Endings and beginnings. And Pigsticks

13 June, 2016 by Alex

robin background 2

Has it really been a year?!

Too much has happened and I have no excuses for not blogging. Well, apart from dealing with everything life throws at a person, of course. (And the fact I forgot my password log-in.) So, time for a catch-up methinks!

Young Robin Hood Series

I hadn’t talked much about it, but I’d been working steadily on a series of books about a young Robin Hood. They concerned BIG details about the character, such as him learning to fire a bow, light a fire, and survive as an outlaw – things that I don’t think we’ve ever seen before.

The trilogy began with Robin’s father dying, which proved problematic as during the writing I found out my mother had incurable cancer. I suppose the story and real life became intertwined in some way, and I found writing about a boy’s feelings concerning losing a parent was a bit too close to the bone. So when I used the word ‘steadily’ to describe my work rate, it was more stop and go. But the publisher and editor were really understanding.

Mum died, I grieved, things moved on, and eventually we were happy with book one. Book two, in contrast, was easy to write. It contained a huge battle at the end – one which I thought was probably the most exciting thing I’d ever written.

And earlier in 2016, I was close to finishing the final part in the series when I heard that the publisher no longer wanted the books. They were trimming their list.

It’s a very strange situation to find yourself in. The cathartic nature of battling through difficult work and finally succeeding in reaching the end was not to be mine. However, I do now sit with an unpublished trilogy of books about Robin Hood growing up in Sherwood. Who wants them?

So, that’s Robin out of the way.

What else happened? I set up This Book is Funny, which was successful, and is back on the road again for 2016.

I travelled the world. I visited the US and China, making school visits and talking about my books. I’ve been back to China once more in this time, and made some terrific friends. I also now know that Pigsticks and Harold will be published in China, which is a wonderful thing. I cannot wait to see how they treat it.

Of course, Pigsticks and Harold have a new book out – Pigsticks and Harold and the Pirate Treasure! We’ve started getting some lovely reviews, and I think this is my favourite of the series so far.

9781406346053

Now then, there is much more to say, but that can wait for a bit. Events are coming up, as well as new stories, and I am dead keen to write some ‘How-to’ posts about my model-making. I’ll be doing those soon.

So, for now, thanks for reading.

Filed Under: News, Pigsticks and Harold Tagged With: harold, pigsticks, Pigsticks and Harold and the Pirate Treasure, Robin Hood

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Welcome to the blog of author-illustrator Alex Milway! Read More…

Latest book out now!

Hotel Flamingo Fabulous Feast

Hotel Flamingo: Fabulous Feast

By Alex Milway

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ ‘My 7 year old absolutely loved this book! Highly recommend!’ – Amazon review

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ ‘Brilliant. My children love this collection of books they enjoy reading them and the artwork illustrations are great. This is the 4th in the series and is excellent.‘ – Amazon review

‘Truly heartwarming and uplifting. I’d love to book a room there myself’- Philip Ardagh

‘Hotel Flamingo is bursting with charm, friendship and fabulous characters!’ – Laura Ellen Anderson

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