events – Page 4 – Daisy Hirst

Launching the parrot

The Girl with the Parrot on her Head has been out in the world for two days now, stomping about, sneaking into bookshops. Already Julia Eccleshare has written about the book at LoveReading4Kids where it’s also debut of the month! EXCITING TIMES. I’ve written about the process of making The Girl with the Parrot on her Head over on Walker’s blog Picture Book Party (where you can also find out how to make a parrot, or SOMETHING ELSE, to live on your head).

Two days before publication we had an amazing launch party at Daunt Books in Hampstead (thanks to Trudi Esburger for the better photos). If I’d put as much thought into the speaking part as the snackfoods I might have said something sensible. We had bears, hula hoops, not-actually-broken-umbrellas and truly incredible wolf biscuits by my cake-genius friend Emily of Love & Cake.

We also had a lot of lovely people and a counter covered in books. In a weird reversal of my expectations, we ran out of books and had wine left over. It was totally predictable, however, that the wolves all vanished in no time at all.
Here are my entirely brilliant Editor and Designer from Walker Books:

Me drawing in books (when does it stop feeling like defacing school property?):

And illustrators! Some of the many excellent friends, family and book-people who made it so grand:

Very many enormous thanks to everyone who helped and all who came along!

Follow Emily of the wolf biscuits @MissWilko or on Instagram.

Read about the making of The Girl with the Parrot on her Head at Picture Book Party.

Watch out for parrots!

Here is a heap of my first book, The Girl with the Parrot on her Head, published by Walker Books on February 5th – which now, finally, actually feels quite soon.

Many exciting things will happen around the launch to help introduce the parrot, and the Isabel under its feet. For starters, I’ll be writing about the process of making the book over on Walker’s Picture Book Party blog. Then during February half term I’ll be working with children in Chester, making animals to go on our heads and incredible cardboard dens, as Resident Illustrator at Wayword festival. I’ll also give a talk and reading, document the festival on the Wayword blog AND do a picturebook jam with Kate Pankhurst! See: MANY THINGS!

Details of further events will follow soon – including something at House of Illustration which I think will be GRAND.

Postcards for Japan – exhibition

Some people from my MA course (including ME), and also some Famous Children’s Illustrators, are having an exhibition of original postcard-sized art in Cambridge the week after next (5th-11th ofSeptember). The postcards will be sold to raise money for Teachers for Japan, a charity set up by teachers after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami to help children in Miyagi prefecture stay in school, and to rebuild damaged schools.

So if you are in or near Cambridge and innerested, go see. If innerested but in or near impossibly elsewhere, go see some of the postcards on the exhibition site. It’s all anonymous but maybe you can recognise my two. This most excellent poster is by Jemima Sharpe who is in my class – how good are those mice?