Frances McKay Illustration

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

Voices of the Child

Occasionally I get a commission that makes me look up from my drawing board and think about the real world. Through dialogue, Penal Reform International advocates justice reform in diverse countries around the world. I was recently asked by PRI to illustrate three covers for reports on children in detention centres, state-run care homes and police stations in Central Asia (although this is a worldwide issue): Voices of the Child is about shining light into these dark places; to raise awareness of and address the rights and conditions of young people. I was also made aware that other cultures are sensitive to these issues.

It was the use of light and shadow in my work, something that has always been important to me, that prompted the commission. But I did I wonder if they had the right illustrator; I started out working for editorial magazines but have largely illustrated children’s books for the past thirty years. I imagined how well Ralph Steadman or Brad Holland would handle the job, and took a deep breath.

It’s more difficult to give potency to interiors than landscapes, I find, and prison buildings are, intentionally, quite dull places; there are a lot of straight lines and blank facades. Watercolour will readily create atmosphere but here I think the now unfashionable use of drawn perspective was important to draw the viewer into these bleak, anonymous surroundings; to shine a light on the issues. 

 

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

 

 

 

 

Thank You Teacher

Last Autumn I was asked by Little Tiger Press to work on my 7th book with them, to add to their current range of Gift books that were launched in the Spring of 2012.

 

 

The range has seen publications now released in 8 different countries, the U.S. being our most popular customer it seems, and so this particular book has been specifically published for Thunder Bay Books.

  

 

 

I worked to illustrate the beautiful text by Josephine Collins again in this new book, "Thank you Teacher." 

The artwork needed to work alongside the current books in the range, simple line, produced using my "Inky Stick", and gentle use of watercolour inks. A lot of these marks were applied with my fingers. I was very lucky to be able to come up with the choice of character that I felt worked for each phrase myself, and worked closely with Little Tiger Press to decided on the best flow for the pages. 

 

 

 

 

I wonder if book 8 in the range may follow one day?  : )

 

Jill Latter

 

 

 

A Christmas Carol

Top hats off to Usborne Publishing for their beautiful new edition of A Christmas Carol.

This is the second time I’ve worked with them on Charles Dickens’ Ghost Story for Christmas. About ten years ago I did an abridged version for the Young Readers series. I like working on these and Usborne takes great care with the adaptations; capturing the essential characters and story to entice budding readers. But I was delighted to be asked to illustrate the complete and unabridged story. There’s so much more in the detail even when you read a story you think you know.

I don’t find Dickens an easy read but he does repay the effort, and his characters, their names alone, cry out to be illustrated. They are often described as ‘grotesque’; they are vivid, certainly, but I think of them more as ordinary people in grotesque situations; fashioned and constrained by circumstance.

I’ve always liked working on mysterious and gothic stories. There is something about watercolours that really suit atmospheric, ghostly subjects; the washes so readily suggest crepuscular light, half formed figures emerging from dark spaces, foreboding shadows, mists and uncertainty. 

The ghosts in the story are fantastic and frightening and profound: There’s Marley, of course, bound in the chains of his former life and career, who comes to warn Scrooge that he will be visited by three more spirits. Then comes the Ghost of Christmas Past; perhaps one of the strangest creatures in literature; ‘ - like a child, yet not so like a child as like an old man, viewed through some supernatural medium.’ It’s a shapeshifter and more strangely has a jet of light coming from the crown of its head for which it carries its own extinguisher.

The Ghost of Christmas Present, preceding Coca-Cola’s red-coated evocation, is a Father Christmas figure, full of the joy of good things, but different from him in that he is aware too of darkness and hurt in the world; harbouring, as he does, children called Ignorance and Want in his robe. 

The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come; cloaked in mystery, shows Scrooge his possible, desolate end; disregard from his fellow man and a neglected gravestone. It’s the darkest moment in a story that ends happily when the repentant Scrooge begs on his knees,’ Oh, tell me I may sponge away the writing on this stone!’

 

Alan Marks

 

Animals ABC

A is for anthropomorphism

That is attributing human characteristics to things that are not human; and it happens a lot to animals in children’s stories. And why not? Some of the best characters in children's literature are animals with all the complexities and foibles of humans. The white rabbit from Alice in Wonderland is a classic example. Lewis Carroll takes the nervous nature of the rabbit and gives it human reasoning; ‘Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be too late!’ And he adds the natty clothes and the pocket watch to imply fastidiousness. Beatrix Potter also mastered this and had a great understanding of animal anatomy too. Think also of The Wind in the Willows and of the animal characters that Pinocchio encounters; the fox and the cat; the talking cricket who Walt Disney turned into Jiminy Cricket... and perhaps of the puppet itself; a toy given human feelings.

B is for biophilia

Biophilia is the idea that there is a bond between humans and nature; that we have an innate love of animals. Not all people love all animals and we could probably do without mosquitoes, but the bond is real. We might live more removed from nature now but people and pets work together and we are drawn to David Attenborough’s brilliant TV documentaries and other wildlife programmes.   

C is for conservation 

This matters; loss of biodiversity; loss of habitat; loss of the iconic, the unconsidered and the yet to be discovered species will affect us all. It seems that we value only what we understand, so books might still have a role in widening our understanding of the world around us. Biophilia and bibliophilia ought to play an important part in conservation.

Oh, and C is also for cute.

 

Alan Marks 

War Boys

With this year’s centenary in mind, last year I did a series of three books with Harcourt Education set in the trenches of the First World War.

Jill Latter and Little Tiger Press

Jill Latter shares with us this amazing batch of work she has done for Little Tiger Press.