Frances McKay Illustration

Hack and Whack

I love Norse mythology, Icelandic sagas, and am fascinated by all things Viking, so it’s been a joy for me to write my first picture book featuring the worst Viking children…ever.

Hack and Whack are the terrible twins terrorizing their village, and I’ve loved imagining a Viking world where children are told off for sword-fighting on the table, but essentially run wild. All the normal constrictions of modern kids are brushed aside—these are Vikings.  They fight, they steal, they’re bold and they’re rude.  Children need a safe outlet for their emotions and aggressive feelings—what better way to explore their riotous natures than through literature?

 

was delighted when Faber’s Leah Thaxton suggested Charlotte Cotterill to illustrate, as I needed an artist with a wild sense of humour, and Charlotte has brilliantly captured all the antic fun of this book.  Long may Hack and Whack be on the attack.

 

Francesca Simon 

Hack and Whack was published by Faber and Faber on 5th October 2017.

 

 

Splendid Silliness: Elys Dolan's Knighthood for Beginners

Daily Mail, Best Summer Books
“Better known for her picture books, this first foray into young fiction by Elys Dolan is a laugh-out loud triumph. With plenty of wildly imaginative black-and-white illustrations, this is the perfect step up from picture books.”

Mail on Sunday, Best Summer Books
“This laugh-out-loud delight for young children is about Dave, the dragon who wants to become a knight.”

The Sunday Times, Children’s Book of the Week
“The inventive, zany text and captioned pictures are laugh-out-loud funny, and if you are not amused then, as Albrecht would say, you are probably a ‘dummkopf’.”

The Guardian, Children’s Book Round Up

“Full of splendid silliness, Elys Dolan’s Knighthood for Beginners will have readers cackling from start to finish. A highly illustrated hoot, full of outrageous medieval mash ups.”

The Financial Times

“Elys Dolan, who illustrates as well as she writes, seems to know just what tickles a kid’s funny bone, while imparting the message to be yourself, no matter what.”

The Press Association (syndicated in over twenty regional newspapers)
“Author and illustrator Elys Dolan (Steven Seagull Action Hero) has penned her first young fiction book –an epic David vs Goliath tale, that’s sure to treat the imagination and tickle the funny bones of all young readers. At its heart, it’s a story of friendship, finding your strengths and the love of books.”

The Guardian, Independent Bookshop Week
“Full of quirky detail and laugh out loud pictures.”

The Bookseller, “One to Watch"
“One of my favourite picture book creators (I’ve read Weasels and Nuts in Space aloud hundreds of times and they’re still funny) now turns her genius to young fiction with great aplomb. Both words and pictures zing with her distinctive bonkers humour; children will adore the slapstick silliness and there are crossover jokes aplenty for their parents.”

 

The Booktrust
“This book will make a fabulous first chapter book for a child to read alone. It is also a real laugh to read out loud, particularly the words spoken by Dave’s ‘trusty steed’ Albrecht.”

LoveReading4Kids
“In a nutshell: hilarious courtly adventure from one of our funniest, most inventive writer-illustrators. There’s something funny on each page either in the text or illustrations and this will have every reader laughing. Underneath the humour is a lovely message about being true to yourself.”

Books For Keeps
“Readers will love the fact that this hero is a dragon hooked on books. They will love his dedication to his quest. Most of all, they will love that he is called Dave.”

Parents in Touch
"A laugh-aloud book for newly confident readers, or for sharing aloud, this will have kids in fits of giggles - guaranteed!"

 

Frances McKay Illustration

"Champion!"

 

Literary Festival at St Mary's Lower School in Colchester

On July 8^th St Mary’s School had their book festival, several local authors were there to talk to the children and in the afternoon four illustrators from FMI went to educate and entertain the girls; Bee Willey, Tom Morgan Jones, Elys Dolan and Nicola Pontin, all volunteered to come to Colchester.

Click on images to enlarge

Bee had copies of her new book Dreamer, soon to be published by Otter Barrie Books. It is a wonderful, lyrical story written by Brian Moses, with a boy dreaming of a world free of pollution and trouble.

In the Art Room, Bee read Dreamer to a group of girls and then helped them create a frieze using the themes from the book. Considering the short amount of time available, it was a terrific result. Colourful and exotic animals spread across the wall, they all had a great time.

Tom, Elys and Nicola were all in a large marquee, busy with different age groups. They read from their recent books and then got the children to join in with different activities.

Tom’s group all drew portraits of Shakespeare, based on the book, The Boy at The Globe, that he has recently illustrated for Barrington Stoke.

Elys read them her best selling Steven Seagull Action Hero, and then had an observation quiz for the girls based on the book.

Nicola, read her book about the Baker Troll and then had all the children designing their own Troll characters.

A local photographer took some great shots, which appeared in all the local papers.

It was a really fun afternoon and the local Colchester bookshop, had a pop up shop, selling copies of all the new books to the children and parents at the end of the day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Boy and the Globe

I'm delighted to say I have illustrated 'The Boy and the Globe', it's written by the dashing bard that is Tony Bradman and published by the lovely folk at Barrington Stoke.

 

The Bookseller wrote "This entertaining novel, for readers aged seven to nine, features drawings throughout by Tom Morgan-Jones which have a touch of Ronald Searle about them: it also includes a section of 'Funne Activities for Boyes and Girls'. Perfect for reluctant readers and youngsters new to Shakespeare."

 

 

 

 

Whilst the author Philip Ardagh has since thoughtfully 'corrected' the bookseller and has written "...features drawing throughout by Tom Morgan-Jones which have a touch of Ronald Mcdonald about them…". I have to say that I'm happy that either have anything to say about this new book. And can't decide which comments I prefer.

A great way to celebrate the release of our book was a visit to Stratford Literary Festival. They invited myself, Tony the author, and Mairi, the top cheese at Barrington Stoke, along to the festival. We were chuffed. Not only was this a chance to wear a new dress (for me) it was also a chance for us all to share our love of Shakespeare with Stratford and Moreton Morrell Primary schools.

 

 

 

 

I live illustrated Tony's talk and then went on to do live draw alongs, encouraging the pupils to flex their own marvellous pencil skills. Pupils at both schools voted to draw an angry Shakespeare. Who doesn't like a villain after all? It was moving to see a sea of Shakespeare faces looking back at us at the end of each session - and due to the childrens excellent skills a little terrifying too.

 

 

 

I had a ball at Stratford in my dress and I'd like to thank Stratford Literary Festival, all the teachers and all the pupils. Also special thanks to Mairi at Barrington Stoke for making it such fun, and very importantly for the choice of my dress. And of course not forgetting Tony, he was a pro, a gent, and he did write the book after all.

 

Barrington Stoke have also produced a "Make a Globe and stage the Tempest" with Boy & the Globe puppets, downloadables. If this intrigues you, have a look and give it a pop by downloading it here: 

http://www.barringtonstoke.co.uk/books/the-boy-and-the-globe/

 

 

And one last thanks, I'd like to big up the clever designer Julie-ann at Barrington Stoke, she did a great job on the whole book. I particularly liked the endpapers she created from my inkings. So for those of you that love an end paper, and in this case you'd be mad not to, here are the lovely endpapers…

 

  

Tom 'Nibs' Morgan-Jones
dip pen inker of ink, inker thinker, illustrator & cartoonist

 

 

 

The Folio Society Book Illustration Competition 2016

I'm delighted to have won The Folio Society Book Illustration Competition and a commission to illustrate War Horse by Michael Morpurgo. The result was announced by Michael at The House of Illustration in London on Thursday 25 February, and a very good evening it was too.

With The Folio Society’s reputation for excellence and some beautiful entries from the other illustrators, I was chuffed even to have made the longlist. Here’s a link to the list as featured in The Guardian.

The Folio Society makes lovely, covetable books. Quality of binding and paper and reproduction are, rightly, important to authors and illustrators, as well as to readers of course. But I went into the competition because of the choice of book. War Horse is a great story and its themes obviously still resonate.

The central relationship of Albert and his horse, Joey is key, as are the expectations of the time and the industrialisation of  war that took men and horses for fodder. For me it’s not the horses that are difficult to get right (though I could always do it better), it’s the apparatus and devastation of war that is hard to fathom. Barbed wire, for example, has a particular way of contorting; a calculated menace.  Together, these elements create a tension for both the narrative and the pictures.

It’s a terrific commission; it’s one of those jobs where I think, ’this is what I’ve always wanted to do’... actually, there are one or two more Michael Morpurgo stories that I'd love to illustrate. 

 

Alan Marks

High Tide for Horseshoe Crabs

Lisa Kahn Schnell writes about her new picture book published on 14 April by Charlesbridge Publishing.

“Horseshoe crabs?!? Why did you want to write about them?” I’ve been asked, more than once. The question is always accompanied by an expectant look: there is a reason, right?

Sort of. Like many children, if I ever thought of horseshoe crabs at all, it was mostly while I pried sharp bits of their shells out of my sand castles, or while I plugged my nose near the animals’ stinky remains. Then one morning a few years ago, I came across the beautiful track a single horseshoe crab left as it dragged itself back toward the water. Poignant, I thought. What’s up with these guys, anyway? 

At the time, I was exploring ideas for a new research project. I wanted to write about a natural phenomenon that not only fascinated me, but that I connected with at a more personal level, too. And I wanted to share what I learned with children (and adults!) in a way that would encourage them to go out and see it for themselves.

A little internet searching and a few hundred pages of reading later, I knew that in horseshoe crabs, I’d met my match.

Natural phenomenon? Check! Horseshoe crabs have predictable mass-spawning events (high tide, under the springtime new or full moon—so romantic!). Clouds of shorebirds—and a long list of other animals—gather to gobble up horseshoe crab eggs. Some of the birds eat so many tiny eggs that they double their body weight in two weeks.  

Fascinating? Absolutely! Horseshoe crabs and their ancestors have been on the planet for hundreds of millions of years. They’re much older than even the oldest of the dinosaurs. I also discovered that we humans are utterly reliant on horseshoe crabs for our health. Who knew? A simple test using a chemical derived from horseshoe crab blood ensures that everything from vaccines and needles to pacemakers and replacement knees are free of harmful bacteria. The same chemical (Limulus amoebocyte lysate) is even used by astronauts to make sure spaceships are not contaminated.

The challenge, as I saw it, was to make horseshoe crabs feel as alive for a kid in Chicago or Canterbury as if that child was actually there on the ocean’s edge. (Bonus: the book comes sans biting flies and the inevitable sand in bad places. Yay!). I volunteered to help out with research so I could watch the birds and horseshoe crabs up-close myself. Those experiences made the writing process much easier--and much more fun! 

This was my first time through the picture-book-creation process, and it was a terrific opportunity to learn how much teamwork goes into making a picture book. It turns out that the intertwined relationships horseshoe crabs have with shorebirds, humans, and other animals are similar to the relationships required to create a picture book.

Once my manuscript was accepted, the editor helped me polish it. Then the publisher recruited Alan to bring the story to life visually. I loved the way Alan used my words as a jumping off point for sketches, and then graciously responded to the feedback of some very exacting experts. The art director, marketing experts, and others have worked together over the past couple years to make the book possible. I’m thankful to have had such a wonderful team to work with while creating High Tide for Horseshoe Crabs. Now we can more easily tell the world about this incredible creature. 

So in answer to that expectant look, I wrote about horseshoe crabs because they fascinate me, and because they have a lot to teach me. But mostly I wrote about horseshoe crabs because I fell in love with them. Now I hope you do, too. 

 

Lisa Kahn Schnell

Illustrations by Alan Marks

 

 

 

 

Three Cheers for the Extras!

To mark the publication of their new book The Clockwork Dragon author Jonathan Emmett and FMI’s own illustrator Elys Dolan have written about the little ‘extras’ inside this book.

Jonathan says:

The Clockwork Dragon is about two children who come up with a clever plan to rid their kingdom of a greedy, man-eating dragon. The children are called Max and Lizzie and the dragon is called Flamethrottle. But this post isn't about them or any of the other characters that I wrote about in the story. This post is about the book’s extras, the unnamed characters that appear in the background or in the corners of Elys illustrations.

A good illustrator doesn't just illustrate an author’s story, they extend and embellish it. One of the things that make Elys’s illustrations for the book so appealing is the wider world she’s created around the textual story. The extras in The Clockwork Dragon look every bit as engaging as the story’s main characters. And they all look like they might have their own stories to tell!

Take this first spread for example:

The action described in the text is taking place in the foreground, but there is so much more to look at and enjoy in this illustration: the kite maker entangled in string or the distracted carpenter sawing through his workbench. However my favourite extra on this spread is not, strictly speaking, a proper character. It’s this little pink elephant toy on the workshop floor.

It has such a magnificently supercilious expression, as if it feels that its involvement in this slapstick scene is beneath its dignity. This next spread, showing the town square, is teeming with characterful extras…

… but the ones that immediately caught my eye are this family with the polar bears.

Who are they? And why do they have such unusual pets? These characters are part of a visual subplot that unfolds over the following pages. When Max and Lizzie make a nighttime visit to Flamethrottle’s cave, we see the dastardly dragon asleep with a polar bear tucked under his arm like a teddy.

When I first saw him, I assumed that this teddy substitute was one of the bears from the town square spread, but at the end of the book we discover he is a third member of the polar bear family who Flamethrottle must have snatched before the story started.

Pete Marley, the book’s editor, was also a fan of Elys’s extras and asked me to give some of them names so that they could be credited on the book’s endpapers.

So the polar bears were christened Fahrenheit, Celsius and Kelvin and their owners are the intrepid mother and daughter explorers Elma and Thelma Amundsen.

The supercilious elephant is not featured on the endpapers (I suspect it might have made more of an impact on me than it would most readers) but, in case you’re wondering, I think it’s a he and his name is probably Augustus.

The endpapers also have a map of “Rodney” the playfully anachronistic kingdom in which the story is set. If The Clockwork Dragon proves popular, Elys and I are hoping to revisit Rodney in another Max and Lizzie book. We already have a plot in mind and if you study this last spread of the book you might spot a new character that’s sneaked in from that story.

Elys says:

Sometimes when I’m in my studio adding polar and supercilious pink elephants that no one asked for into picture books I wonder if this is helping the story or if it’s just the behaviour of a crazy lady. With this in mind you can imagine how pleased I was to discover that Jonathan, the author who has given over his story to me and was no doubt praying that I wouldn’t ruin it, actually liked these odd details. To celebrate here’s a few of my original character sketches from my Clockwork Dragon sketchbook where I came up with all these extras. I’ll give 10 points to anyone who can spot where in the book all these folks ended up.

The more eagle eyed of you may notice the very first incarnation of Augustus the supercilious pink elephant. Now that he has a name I’ll have to give him a cameo in any future books. I just don’t think it would be the same without him.

Jonathan and I did put quite a lot of effort into developing the world in which The Clockwork Dragon takes place. I’m a firm believer that a good story needs to happen in a convincing world that obeys it’s own internal logic. I spent many a long hour designing the geography of The Kingdom of Rodney and Jonathan seems to have written its entire eccentric history (perhaps we got slightly carried away). So to mark the publication of The Clockwork Dragon I’ve done a full colour version of the Rodney map for your viewing pleasure.

If you want to know more about the places marked on it can download the official Kingdom of Rodney Visitors Guide here.

http://www.scribblestreet.co.uk/pictures/dragon2/RodneyGuide.pdf

 

The Clockwork Dragon, by Jonathan Emmett and Elys Dolan, is published in paperback by Oxford University Press on 5th February 2015.

You can find out more about Jonathan and Elys at their web sites scribblestreet.co.uk and elysdolan.com or follow them on Twitter on @scribblestreet and @ElysDolan

 

 

 

 

 

Darkmouth

Author Shane Hegarty tells FMI about his hugely exciting debut from HarperCollins, illustrated by our own James de la Rue.

A couple of years ago, I wrote a book. Darkmouth is the story of a boy who must follow 50 generations of Legend Hunters in a town plagued by monsters. HarperCollins offered to publish it. I picked myself up off the floor and accepted their generous offer.

"We'd like to illustrate it," they said.

"Well, ok," I replied. "I mean, I'm not very good at drawing, but I could give it a go..."

"Not you," they said. "A proper illustrator."

"Oh, thank goodness for that," I said, putting down the hurriedly purchased ink pot and quill.

Off the book went, and I thought little of it. There would, presumably, be a cover image. Maybe a detail or two to kick off some of the chapters. Sure, hadn't I described it all so perfectly that no pictures would be needed.

Then a selection of illustrations came back. James de la Rue was the artist. We had never met. Never even spoken. Yet, it was if he had rummaged around my head and seen exactly what I saw.

I was just a little freaked out.

But I was delighted. Utterly wowed by it. And I had learned one particular secret of just when the collaboration between illustrator and writer works best: where James had added details, he had put them in all the right places.

I knew then that the illustrations running through the text were going to bring the book onto a whole other level I had never envisioned. The characters and the action have been brilliantly shown, but James had also captured something very important in the story - which is that it is contemporary but should feel timeless.

Ultimately, it's incredibly satisfying as a writer, having imagined this world, tried to grab hold of it in my mind, lived with it for so long, to see it be brought to life in an extraordinary way. And, because Darkmouth is a series, it is great to know that the words are in very safe hands. Literally.

On a couple of early school visits, the reaction to the illustrations have been immediate and resounding. The young readers love them. They see the text and pictures working perfectly, as if one springs organically from the other. As the writer, it is wonderful to feel the same way too.

Although, in retrospect, it would have been fun to have had a go at the illustrations myself. Stick figures are very big these days, apparently.

 

Shane Hegarty

 

Darkmouth (HarperCollins) is published on January 29th.