Rats, Rickets and Robbery

The cheerful pic above is the cover artwork of book one in a new Scholastic series by the seemingly unstoppable Terry Deary. The books detail the adventures of a gang of (early) Victorian street urchins who rob from the rich and give to the poor. They are very entertaining and I'm told the illustrations are rather good too. There are four books in the Crime Academy series; Burglary for Beginners, Robbery for Rascals, Classes in Kidnapping, Safecracking for Students. As you can see from the scene depicted, it's all good clean wholesome fun and should inspire and uplift the youth of today. The cover artwork was entirely produced in Corel Painter (apart from the original drawing which was produced entirely in good old-fashioned graphite pencil 7B). Hope you like. John Kelly