Frances McKay Illustration

The Unlikely Outlaws

The Unlikely Outlaws, written by Philip Ardagh, illustrated by Tom Morgan-Jones and published by Barrington Stoke has just been released.

Here the brilliantly bearded Philip talks about the release of this book.

"The Unlikely Outlaws, illustrated by Tom Morgan-Jones is an interesting book for me. It's made up of three books: two previously published and one about to be published, all about The Green Men of Gressingham and all illustrated by Mike Phillips. The Green Men of Gressingham are a bit like Robin Hood's merry men, except that they wear brown -- the Green Men that is -- because it's cheaper and hides the dirt better. And their boss is a lady called Robyn-in-the-Hat. With me so far? Good.

Anyway, I was well used to Mike's interpretation of the characters. Then along came Tom who made them all his own. Of course, Big Jim had to look big and Friendly had to look friendly and the evil Marshal Guppy had to look evil, but Tom's style is very different to Mike's, so The Unlikely Outlaws has a very different feel to it. It's loose and crazy and zingy and zappy and all those other terms which are useless unless you've got the Tom Morgan-Jones illustrations in front of you but, if you DO have them in front of you, you'll know exactly what I mean.

 

 

Tom's fab pics add to the pace and comedy of some very silly adventures indeed. What a pleasure doing business with him."

Here's a link to the Barrington Stoke page (just look at those end papers...)  

 

Philip Ardagh

Illustrations by Tom Morgan-Jones

 

 

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.

 

ARCHIE GREENE AND THE MAGICIAN’S SECRET

Archie Greene and the Magician’s Secret is a children’s novel, written by me D.D. Everest, and beautifully illustrated by James de la Rue. (The book has been short-listed for the National Book Awards, for Children’s Book of the Year.)

It tells the story of a young boy called Archie Greene who receives a mysterious present on his twelfth birthday. Deep within an ancient wooden box he finds an old book, written in a language he doesn’t recognise.

With the book comes a Special Instruction – Archie must return the book to the Flame Keepers of Alexandria – a secret community devoted to finding and preserving magical books. 

Set in (and below) the ancient, winding streets of Oxford, the book is very atmospheric. The action takes place at several magical locations – including the Museum of Magical Miscellany; a bookshop called the Aisle of White; and Quill’s Chocolate and Coffee House. 

Any book about magical books had better be a bit special, and I was lucky enough to land Faber & Faber as my publisher. Leah Thaxton at Faber Children’s wanted to include line drawings with the book. It was clear to me from the start that this would work well – but only if the illustrator really captured the spirit and mood of the characters.

We worked with a couple of US-based illustrators, but in the end Faber chose the UK illustrator James de la Rue. I knew the moment I saw his drawings that it was the right decision. James immediately captured the quirky, Englishness of the characters, and produced what for me is the defining image of Archie himself. 

For an author it is a magical moment when the characters you have created in your head come to life in illustrations. Some authors are fortunate to be blessed with drawing skills that enable them to capture the images from their imagination. Think of JRR Tolkien’s stunning drawings in the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, for instance.

My drawing isn’t up to that, so I have to rely on someone else doing my characters justice. It could be a big disappointment. But instead, it was a revelation.

By some curious process of creative osmosis, the characters that James has drawn bear a resemblance to my own children who, in turn, influenced the characters in the book. And yet when he produced them James had never seen my children – or even met me.

Reviewers have (rightly) heaped praise on the illustrations. They give the book a magical feel. Everywhere I go to promote the book, the children always ask about the illustrations. Did I draw them myself? If only!

 

D.D. Everest

Illustrations by James de la Rue

 

 

Creativity or Control?

Author Cathy Farr shares her thoughts on the process of working with FMI illustrator Alan Marks on the interior illustrations of her book 'Moon Chase'. 'Moon Chase' Book cover by Sam Wall.

VG Lee's Guest Post

I am a writer, but for the last two years I’ve also been a stand-up comedian.

At the age of fifty my first novel ‘The Comedienne’ was published, ten years later in my sixtieth year a friend enrolled me on a comedy course.

“You’re hilarious,” she said.

Carey Morning - Mysterious Births

 
What a mystery! We give birth to our stories - conceived in what impenetrable realms? - and they fly off into the world, a few hundred words, flapping black and white. If we are very very lucky some may return to us as full-grown books, in full-colour, to perch on many strangers' shelves! What a miracle! What gorgeous plumage!

The Electricity of Ideas - D J Connell on Creativity

I’m a novelist and write books for a living. But my first love was illustration.

I can’t remember learning how to draw. It was something that fell from the sky and landed in my lap.I was never formally taught techniques but as soon as I was old enough to hold a pen, I was drawing.