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.

 

 

Steven Seagull Action Hero

My new book, Steven Seagull Action Hero, is published today!

It’s about Steven, a retired police detective, who’s called back into action for one last case when someone starts stealing sand from Beach City and leaving massive holes.

On the way to solving the mystery Steven and his ex-partner Mac (who’s a goldfish) question various suspects including Lola the Lifeguard (Hippo), Ice Cream Harry (ice cream van owning rat) and Rick the volleyball referee (great white shark).

As a FMI exclusive I’ve put together a mini-comic introducing Steven and some of Beach City’s criminal underworld:

Steven Seagull Action Hero by Elys Dolan is published by Oxford University Press. You can find out more about Elys and her work at elysdolan.com and elysdolan.tumblr.com or follow her on twitter and Facebook at @ElysDolan and facebook.com/elysdolanillustration.

The Great Big Sleep

‘The Great Big Sleep’, like most of the stories I write, is semi-autobiographical and inspired by true-ish events.

It is a tale of two friends, Squirrel and Bear who are preparing to settle down for their long winter nap. But even after they’ve both had their supper, drank their milk and had one last mess about in the snow, Squirrel is still not tired.

As Squirrel tries his best to make himself sleepy in a number of ever increasingly noisy ways, he begins to test the patience of his friend, Bear. Not wanting to keep his friend awake any longer, Squirrel leaves the den and heads out into the snow.

With the night growing colder and the snow beginning to fall harder it’s up to Bear to find Squirrel and bring him home to the warmth of the fire.

‘Meanwhile, the den was so quiet that Bear couldn’t sleep because he was worried. Where was Squirrel? Bear lit his lantern and headed out into the snow to search for him.’

Although I have illustrated many picture books over the years, ‘The Great Big Sleep’ is the first I have both written and illustrated. It feels like it was a long time in the making but now it’s here I’m really proud of all the hard work that both myself and the publishing team have put into it. The book is published in the UK on 7^th January 2016 by Penguin Random House.

I hope you enjoy reading it with your family and have a Great Big Sleep of your own.

http://www.randomhouse.co.uk/editions/the-great-big-sleep/9781849419888

 

Sean Julian

 

Howard and the Three Billy Goats

Having just finished two books for Ladybird that I can’t quite sing about just yet, I’ve put my writing hat back on and dug out The Troll and the Three Billy Goats Gruff.

Introducing Howard, the misunderstood troll with a passion for baking.

In this most recent spread I’ve coloured up he is making one of my particular favourites, the Bakewell tart.

The story is perhaps a sequel to the original Norwegian Billy Goat Gruff fairytale, but reveals a little more about Howard the troll and what lies under the bridge.

The story also includes a lot of cakes and possibly a new career for Howard.

 

Nicola Pontin

 

Baa-gains to be had at a Shaun the Sheep Auction

The auction of Shaun the sheep brought the Shaun in the City trail to an end. The auction of 126 Shaun the sheep sculptures raised £1,087,900. Amongst the many Shauns decorated by Axel Scheffler, Lucy Cousins, Chris Riddell and many other renowned artists and illustrators was "Primrose", designed and painted by myself earlier in the year. Here is a picture Primrose, Nick Park and myself.

 

 

Primrose  sold for £ 10,000, raising money for the Bristol Children's Hospital. Thank you to all the bidders who made the evening such a success.

 

 

Bye bye Primrose, I hope you will be happy in your new home and that they will look after you!

 

 

Henning Löhlein

 

 

 

 

Shaun in the City

Henning Löhlein gets up-close and personal with world-famous film star Shaun the Sheep, and, no doubt, has some gossip on Wallace and Gromit - but it's all in good cause.

Shaun in the City, the Bristol trail is on, and I can finally reveal "Primrose". I was chosen from 2000 entries to decorate one of 120 Shauns, which are on the London and Bristol Shaun in the City trail and which will be auctioned off in the autumn for charity.

 

Here a few pictures of the painting process, and the finished Shaun, sponsored by Triodos Bank, which is now placed at St Werburgh's City Farm in Bristol until the end of august.

 

 

 

 

 

It was a great experience to paint on a much larger scale than usual, as well as working surrounded by other artists, all working on their own design.

 

 

Henning Löhlein

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Messed Up Fairytales

Don’t pick you nose Pinocchio!

I hope you’ve had a lovely Christmas and are having a happy 2015 so far!

I have been super busy over the last few months. To follow up ‘Keep Running, Gingerbread Man!’ I was asked to illustrate 4 new picture books, penned by Steve Smallman, in the ‘Messed Up Fairytales’ series for QED publishing.

And I'd like to give you a sneak peak at the covers!

Jack and the Beanstalk! 

 

Get some rest Sleeping Beauty!

 

Rapunzel, Rapunzel, Wash your Hair!

 

Princes are just too fussy these days!

Happy 2015,

 

Neil Price.

neilpriceart.co.uk