Books! Drinks! Comics! Probable baked-goods! Free FAIRY ALPHONSE stickers! Please come and help celebrate my fifth book and Natalie and Alphonse’s third adventure at the exceedingly good comic shop that is Gosh! It would be extremely lovely to see you – more info on the Facebook event page.
Even if I get to keep making books for years and years and years, I can’t imagine that receiving advance copies of a new book will ever stop being REALLY EXCITING. This is my third Natalie and Alphonse story: it’s about mud and sticks, living in a flat in the city and being wild. The best place to hear more about the book is probably on my Instagram.
ALPHONSE, THERE’S MUD ON THE CEILING! will be published by Walker Books UK on the 6th of June. Links to editions in other languages will be on the Books page.
It’s taken me a L O N G time but here at last is my first online shop, with a selection of original screenprints from the same editions as my picturebook illustrations, three kinds of Christmas cards and various OTHER THINGS.
It’s a bit like this but on the internet, and with less fairy lights:
(this was my stall at House of Illustration’s 2017 Illustrators Christmas Fair).
Also, I recently won some FREE Newt with crisps STICKERS (based on my screenprint) from @freestickerfriday so naturally I am slipping one into every order to pass on the freestickeriness.
On Saturday 30th June, Matt Berry read my second book, ALPHONSE, THAT IS NOT OK TO DO! on CBeebies Bedtime Stories and it was dead exciting and also FUNNY. You can find it on BBC iPlayer for a few weeks, and here’s a little teaser that CBeebies tweeted:
Can you hear us Matt Berry? Matt, can you hear us? ?
Get ready for his #BedtimeStory ?????
He reads Alphonse, That Is Not Ok to Do! tonight at 6:50pm ?@Deenface@porksmith pic.twitter.com/H3GPtmQCI9
— CBeebies Grown-Ups (@CBeebiesHQ) June 30, 2018
So that clears up one of the questions raised by the endpapers of my new Natalie and Alphonse book, I DO NOT LIKE BOOKS ANYMORE!
But still, where ARE all the peas? And also, what is it with peas and telly in these books? They always seem to come together – this is from ALPHONSE, THAT IS NOT OK TO DO!
Well that was a lie. I had a monstrously good time at the launch for I DO NOT LIKE BOOKS ANYMORE! at Gosh Comics on 10th May – so many of my favourite people in one room and oh my giddy aunt THE BISCUITS!!
The biscuits were made by the completely amazing Emily Wilkinson who has been baking my books since before they were books (see previous biscuitmania). One of my favourite things was seeing photos of children clutching monster biscuits at breakfast time – very impressive of their parents to get them all the way home without even nibbling their ears (the BISCUITS’ I mean!).
I’m so hugely grateful to everyone who came and made it such a lovely evening, and to Gosh! for being grand hosts again (and just the most brilliant shop). And I was extremely touched by the things Deirdre and Lizzie, Walker Books Publisher and my Editor, said – I’m very very lucky to work with them.
Many thanks to Emma O’Donovan and Penny Dixie for the photos.
