Oxford Literary Festival

Sunday 25th March 2012

Oxford Literary Festival - Drawathon

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!

Hope you all have a brilliant Christmas and a great year in 2012!

Arvon 2011

I've just come back from teaching for a week on an Arvon course, which was brilliant!

http://www.arvonfoundation.org/

The course was entitled "Writing and Illustrating" and was focussed on the ins and outs of the creation process that is involved in the making of a picture book.

My co-tutor was Peter Bently and the house was set in the midst of the beautiful countryside of Devon. It was great working with Peter and all those who signed up - who were a mixture of wonderfully diverse backgrounds, talents and full of interesting/exciting ideas.

Tessa Strickland from Barefoot Books was our mid-week guest and Claire and Ollie - the Centre Directors - did a wonderful job organising everything and making us feel at home.

Thanks everyone! The work that came out of the week was amazing and I hope that everybody will go on to do really well. Also, if anybody is interested in doing an Arvon course, I definitely recommend it!

Sheep Pom Poms

Here are some sheep that I've made as part of THE GREAT SHEEP SHENANIGANS events!

THE CILIP KATE GREENAWAY MEDAL

The Great Sheep Shenanigans has been nominated for the 2012 Kate Greenaway Award!

http://www.carnegiegreenaway.org.uk/pressdesk/press.php?release=pres_nom_green_2012.html


The winning titles will be announced at an awards ceremony in June 2012

The Greenaway Medal is a very prestigious annual award for children's picture books, which specifically awards excellent illustration. It has been going since 1955 and is named after the popular 19th century illustrator Kate Greenaway.

It was also featured in the Guardian's 'Reading With Kids' suppliment published a couple of weeks ago. The suppliment is full of brilliant recommended reads for children aged 0 - 7, both classics and new. It also gives you tips on how to get your children into reading and a helpful Q&A by Julia Eccleshare.

Bath Literary Festival

Peter Bently (Pictured) and I did a THE GREAT SHEEP SHENANIGANS event at the Bath Literary Festival on Saturday 24 September.

It was a brilliant workshop with lots of enthusiastic and creative children (and adults!) They made some amazing fluffy sheep! Thanks to everyone who came to the event and looking forward to more fun sheep-making at the Cheltenham Festival next month.