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Children's author, illustrator, screenwriter

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The end of a busy year

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2010 has been a huge year for me. It’ll take a while to fully comprehend what’s happened, but to summarise – and blow my own trumpet a little – here are a few of the highlights:

1) I now have a baby. She’s cute, she shouts at me, but I think she likes me.
2) In January, the final part of the Mousehunter trilogy, Mousebeard’s Revenge, hit the shops. I was really excited to see it through to the end. I always hoped to write a trilogy of books, and I have, so there. I still can’t quite believe I finished it.
3) In June, the first yeti book, Operation Robot Storm was published. The Mythical 9th Division were set free into the world!
4) In October, the second Crystal Palace Children’s Book Festival took place. We visited local schools, saw well over 500 children, and even made our very own Monster Book. It was a real success.
5) At the start of this month the second yeti book was released into the wild. Terror of the Deep is my favourite book to date, featuring all manner of sea creatures, and a yeti wrestling a sea monster on the cover.
6) And best of all I’ve made some new, really brilliant friends, and many of them have seen terrific success in the past few months.

These are exciting times and I’m thoroughly worn out. I don’t think I’ve ever been quite so tired. But to celebrate the snowy weather and the end of the year, here’s a pink penguin.



Books that children really like: Into the Wild by Lerryn Korda

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So many christmas top tens of children’s books rely on the views of us adults, and I always think it’s a shame that we don’t know more of the titles that children themselves pick out or like. These could be an old book found in a library, a tatty picture book from a charity shop, or something weird and wonderful that jumped off the back shelves of a children’s bookshop.

My daughter’s just turned into a one-year-old, but she’s already loving holding books and flicking through the pages. We’ve her given books from the age of zero, and one that really gets her attention is Into the Wild by Lerryn Korda. Cecily is a tricky one to film, being as, if not more, interested in the technology of the camera than whatever it is she’s currently doing, but I think on this bit of film we navigated the perils of tiny fingers clawing at the lens quite well.

She really does love kissing Little Nye. And what a beautiful book it is too.

Are there any books that children you know really like?

The yeti mouse at Beckenham Library

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I’ve done a couple of events at local libraries of late. We still don’t know how they’ll be affected by budget cuts, but both Penge and Beckenham library were so welcoming, and clearly playing a great role in the local community. The children were really kind to me, and some had even read the Mousehunter! Who’d have thought?

Any way, If you live near me and aren’t members at Upper Norwood, Penge or Beckenham libraries, please go join and support them – they’ve got great teams of staff and deserve all the help they can get.

And this here picture is of a Yeti Mouse. I’ve never seen one of this rare species before, but last Friday, in the middle of the library, I was asked to draw one. This was how I pictured it…

The Terror of the Deep surfaces

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I’ll be celebrating on 6 December as my fifth book will have been published. Five books seems like an extraordinary number to me. I’m no Barbara Cartland, knocking out ten books a year (or whatever), but it does mean that I’ve dealt with all the issues and complications that arise from making one book, five times over, since 2007. That’s a point worth celebrating right there!

The Terror of the Deep, the second of the Mythical 9th Division series is probably my favourite of all of the five, simply because it’s the one where the art is really starting to work with the text as I’d always hoped it would. Everything takes time to evolve and grow up, and I’m finally feeling more confident about my illustration. I’ll never be Tenniel, but I may just one day be Alex Milway.

And so enough about that.

This blog is now live, and the one where I’ll be posting from now on. It’ll take a while to look right, and I’ll twiddle a few setting till I’m happy, but I might even try to compete with Sarah McIntyre for frequency (NAH! Who am I trying to kid!?). And while I’m there I should say that her marvellous Morris The Mankiest Monster deserves to win every award going, not just the Sheffield Children’s Book Award that it won yesterday. Fabulous news!

And so, as a parting gift, here’s a hamster carrying a lunchbox.