Alex Milway - Official Website
Children's author, illustrator, screenwriter
It’s the Big Sky Mountain book 2 cover! The Forest Wolves is all about wolves, of course, but it also features bison and woodlands. All things I feel very strongly about!
It’s a story about belonging, being scared of what you don’t know, and – most importantly – what makes a family.
Join Rosa, Grandma Nan and all their friends over on Big Sky Mountain again.
Out in February 2022!
Summer holidays are in full flow and I know it’s not always easy to think of things to do. Art and especially drawing is something we revert to on a very regular basis. My kids love it and so do I.
Everyone can draw – I really believe this – it’s just that it needs a bit of regular practice. Whereas we all write day-in day-out, so many people put down their pencils at the age of 14 and never go back. But it’s certainly true that sometimes you need a bit of confidence and support, and that’s something I find a lot at schools when I teach children to draw my characters.
It can be really hard coming up with something new on the spot – who doesn’t fear a blank page? – so I often take children through my character designs step-by-step to give them a character to work with. It’s just like learning a new word or a sentence: you can use it over and again, and build on it.
That’s where this free download comes in handy…
It’s a step-by-step guide to drawing and it’s so easy to follow. Pretty much all of my characters start out as a circle, and Iris and Elsie from Big Sky Mountain are no different. You can then colour and design it in your own unique way.
Once you’ve designed your beaver – or perhaps your own family of beavers – I’d love to see what you’ve achieved. If you want to tag me on Instagram or share on my Facebook page, that would be brilliant.
The Big Sky Mountain series feature many ‘Keystone Species’ animals. These are species that make a huge and important impact on our planet and its ecosystems, fundamentally shaping our world. You’ll be seeing some of our other wonderful keystone species in upcoming Big Sky Mountain books.
Elsie and Iris, the parachuting beavers in Book One were inspired by two true stories. Conservationists really did drop Beavers from an aeroplane in a bid to move them to a new home (they survived the drop, you’ll be glad to hear). And beavers are often re-homed in same-sex groups to avoid overpopulation. The fact that it’s impossible to tell males and females apart from their appearance makes that harder than you might imagine!
As you may have seen over on Instagram, we are currently isolating because a family member tested positive for Covid. Not fun, but we’re getting by. In trying to think of things to occupy ourselves, my creative inspiration has mostly revolved around baking cakes and cooking food…you get the picture. And I have to say I am particularly proud of my spectacular Guinness cake!
We also unearthed some pretty amazing tiles under the carpet in one of our rooms. It was like finding buried treasure! Now I have a tiny inkling of how amazing it would be to uncover a Roman mosaic… I may have got my hopes a little too high for what we might dig up in the garden (so far we’ve only found old iron and drink bottles from the 80s).
The good news is, I’ve also found time to start the next Big Sky Mountain book. Stay tuned for more news, including sneaky peeks at the artwork and other exciting snippets!
Until next time, take care of yourselves. And remember, download your free Iris and Elsie drawing guide here.
In the rush before the launch of Big Sky Mountain, I somehow managed to get eight songs written, finished and up online at Bandcamp. I can’t quite believe it now!
https://alexmilway.bandcamp.com/releases
Albert the Moose is proving a very popular hit in the classrooms and workshops I’ve been running (via Zoom) in the past few months. Here’s a taste of what you can expect to see if your school runs a Big Sky Mountain event!
As you can see my antlers are a little bit too big for effective Zoom calls…
If you’ve already bought Big Sky Mountain, thank you so much! Your support is amazing. It’s not easy launching a new series in the middle of a pandemic. Usually, I’d be doing school and bookshop tours and events, running lots of workshops and doing signings.
I have done a few shop windows, however, and I ventured back into London to run a session at the Barnes Children’s Literature Festival.
Here’s my window for Pickled Pepper Books in Crouch End, London. (By the way, the parachuting beavers were inspired by a REAL THING).
This series means the world to me. I already mentioned that I based the relationship between the two main characters on my relationship with my grandma. Rosa, a young girl, goes to stay with her grandma, in a cabin out in the wilderness. She learns to survive in the great outdoors, but she also learns about the natural world, ecosystems, and why all creatures are important.
In many ways, it has the same spirit as HOTEL FLAMINGO, and looks the same as well (since I did all the illustrations again), so if you liked that series hopefully this won’t disappoint.
And if you did read and enjoy BIG SKY MOUNTAIN, please consider leaving me a review on Amazon (even if you didn’t buy it there). It makes an enormous difference to people finding the book.
Thank you LoveReading for making BIG SKY MOUNTAIN book of the month!
It’s Big Sky Mountain day! (Also known as Dress Like A Moose Day! – in my house, anyway) Out now in all the wonderful independent bookshops and online stores of the world!
Big Sky Mountain is the first book in my new series and I feel a celebration is in order. Obviously, launching a book is a reason to celebrate in itself, but so much has happened over the past eighteen months that I’ve been working on it, it feels like a particularly big achievement.
The world has definitely changed, and my world equally so. I certainly didn’t see a move to the seaside, or a global pandemic coming, and nothing changes how much work goes into making a book. When you have two children to homeschool for most of a year, you realise just what a task it is (especially when you decide to move home in the middle of it all.)
I know many other authors and illustrators have dealt with similar issues, and to that I absolutely salute them. I also hope that one day soon I’ll share a beer with them. (Goodness, those days can’t be too far away?)
It’s been quite an emotional thing making Big Sky Mountain. This new series came out of a desire to write about the wilderness, and the natural world, but it was about my relationship with my gran. I dedicated it to her for good reason.
While she had many years bed-bound towards the end of her life, in her younger days, gran was always so full of energy. She’d easily outlast me on those long walks across the Malvern Hills, and still come home ready to cook tea and knit into the wee hours. She’d always be the first to swim in the sea on holidays, putting me absolutely to shame, and there was a real sense of fearlessness about her.
Gran could be difficult and definitely rubbed people up the wrong way at times (including me,) but that was all part of what made her into the force she was – and she was definitely a force of nature.
There are many stories about her, but one I remember particularly well was when a car crashed on the busy road outside her flat late one night. She rushed outside with her St John’s Ambulance training and jumped right into the thick of it all.
As a young lad, you don’t realise what it takes to do that. Now I do.
As for the story, what started out as a tale about a pair of eager beavers settling nearby, became a book about becoming part of a new community, possibly even a family, and learning to fit in and survive.
It’s a story about doing good in the world, learning to look after yourself and finding your own place to fit in, and I’m really excited about that.
In many ways it feels much like Hotel Flamingo. There are jokes, animals – lots of new characters – and there’s even a little sadness, but I think it’s a little bit more personal, and there’s a lot of me in it. I hope you like it; it was a real joy to make 
(By the way, if you want to watch the vide of me singing a song as Albert the Moose, you can find it here: https://www.instagram.com/p/CP7ovT7qWUV/)
If you haven’t entered the competition to win one of four signed copies of Big Sky Mountain along with an original illustration, you can enter now! The more people you share it with, the more chances of winning you have!
I’ve got four signed copies of Big Sky Mountain, each with an original pencil illustration from the book to give away!
All you have to do is head to the competition page and answer a simple question to be entered into the draw! The competition is running for a week, and the more you share it with friends, the more chances to win you get.
Good luck!
This week sees the publication of Big Sky Mountain, the first in a new series, all about a young girl called Rosa, who goes to live with her gran in the wilderness.
The story is really important to me, born out of my relationship with my grandma, who would always take me ‘trekking’ up the Malvern Hills.
She’d march us up there, come rain or shine. It really helped foster my love of the outdoors, and hills in particular.
The stories are stuffed full of my favourite things, such as canoeing, sitting around campfires, a friendly moose, a pair of diligent and very busy beavers, and of course, cabins.
I hope you like this world of Big Sky Mountain as much as I do!
It’s lovely weather here today. We moved to the seaside six months ago, so you can imagine we have been making the most of the glorious weather. Lots of swimming in the sea! Because I don’t have lovely thick fur like the beavers in Big Sky Mountain, I have to admit to being a big fan of the wetsuit. If you follow me on Instagram, I’m sure you’ll have seen a LOT of photos of us on the beach – whatever the weather!
I’ve got some freebies to give away in the coming days, so stay tuned!
My mum died from a rare form of cancer in 2014. Her death shocked everyone who knew her. At the time, I found it particularly difficult talking about it to my young daughters and nieces.
In trying to broach the subject, and somehow explain how a person lives on in memories and the things you do every day, I wrote a story about Harold the Hamster and his granny. It talks about what happens when someone you know and love isn’t there anymore.
Writing it was as difficult as you would imagine! Although this story is deeply personal to me, I hope it will resonate with you, and maybe help children understand and come to terms with losing a loved one.
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.
(Also featuring exclusive FREE CHAPTER of my new series: BIG SKY MOUNTAIN (available for pre-order now!)
