cake – Daisy Hirst

ALPHONSE launch: biscuitmania at Gosh!

My second picturebook, ALPHONSE, THAT IS NOT OK TO DO! was launched on April 20th at London’s most splendid comics shop, Gosh! by a crowd of very lovely people and an unreasonably delicious new instalment in the Emily-Wilkinson-bakes-my-books saga (see here, and here, and here, and here for Emily’s page).

I arrived in a tiswas, thinking, “AIEE, what if no one comes?” followed by, “AIEE, what if someone comes?” and, “AIEE, biscuits stuck in traffic! What if people come mainly for biscuits and get justifiably enraged?” But those nice comics folks calmed me right down with tea, and got me started on signing The Heap.

I was overwhelmed by so many friends and relations coming along to celebrate Alphonse, and that was before the biscuits and Natalie and Alphonse arrived to make sense of it all – sitting down centrepieceishly in the space between all the books and drawing their giant pig (which was eaten and magically regenerated two times! And then decisively consumed in our third attempt).

Thanks so much to everyone who came, and to Gosh! and Walker Books. If you couldn’t make it but would like a signed book, I think Gosh! may still have part of The Heap.

Advent jam the third!

Ho-HO! It is that time of year again when Becky Palmer and I start a day late on our gloopy pot of Christmas comic jam and continue posting a panel a day (sometimes with gaps and gluts) throughout advent. If your toast needs MORE jam, you can catch up with our 2013 and 2014 comics here or on Becky’s blog, and ahem well I’m to go first:

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.

Banoffee jam

Another jam comic – that’s me first, followed by Becky.

Some monsters are cake

Can you BELIEVE the ridiculous splendour of this cake? Love and Cake made it for our private view on Thursday because she is cakemaestro extraordinaire.
It’s not even the first time she has rendered my persons in cake. Just too good, I can’t even.

It was also exciting how Elena was striding purposefully around the gallery delivering slices on the point-forwards blade of the knife – although this resulted in surprisingly few maimings. Whoever snuck into the box in the pub afterwards, when only the monsters were left, and transplanted the red eyes onto the blue monster, is a monstrous human indeed and likely to be eaten when found out. Nyahaha!