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Children's author, illustrator, screenwriter

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Hotel Flamingo

Hotel Flamingo Frosty Fiesta is coming!

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I’m excited to reveal the cover for HOTEL FLAMINGO 5!

I’ve wanted to write a new Hotel Flamingo title for ages. It continues to sell well (I learned last week that the series has sold over 440,000 copies in the UK including audio and digital, which is mind-bogglingly brilliant,) and find new readers six years on, so I think my publisher finally felt it was a good time to go back on holiday to Animal Boulevard!

Needless to say, writing about all the animals at the hotel was like hanging out with all my old friends. It was joyful. I’d write another four in a heartbeat.

Frosty Fiesta!

This new story is all about Mrs Turpington (remember the tortoise from book one?) holding a little party before going into hibernation. FUN FACT: this was the book I was supposed to write for the fourth in the series but schedules drifted and, suddenly, a winter book publishing in Spring didn’t feel like a great idea.

I love snow and I love snow sports, so there’s a whole snowboarding and skiing competition taking place at the hotel, and there’s a very fun, very chilled out pair of board bunnies taking part – one of them is there on the cover!

It’s already up for pre-order on Amazon and at Waterstones, and as soon as I find a local bookshop to help out I can maybe organise sales of signed copies through them!

I can’t wait!

New series coming! Big Sky Mountain unveiled

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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

Hotel Flamingo wins Brilliant Book Award 2020

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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)

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Hotel Flamingo: Fabulous Feast out now!

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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!
https://www.instagram.com/p/B_h0OYQnvJd/

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.