the girl with the parrot on her head – Page 4

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.

The girl, dem papagei, le loup

I was quite thrown by the appearance last week of The Girl with the Parrot on her Head as a REAL BOOK – there seem to be a lot of milestones in this process but this one made me feel quite giddy. Here’s Walker’s picture of the three editions:

The book will be published on February 5th by Walker, Albin Michel (France) and Aladin (Germany), and a year later by Candlewick (USA). It’s amazing to me, and funny, to see the translations and the differences between them – lamely I am having to get friends to help me with the French and German, but both seem to have been really nicely done. Yikes it is just really exciting.

The German “Enten, Hula Hoop” box necessitated this drawing for twitter:

And a most excellent response too.

Four months of not nothing

I have not done nothing since May, not quite.

For one thing, in August I got proofs of The Girl with the Parrot on her Head:

The design and printing are lovely, thanks to Walker, and it will really be a book on February 5th (pre-orderable even now!).

In the meantime I am finishing my second book, which now goes by the name of ALPHONSE, THAT IS NOT OK TO DO! Here are Natalie and Alphonse watching bad TV:

This book is mostly face acting and involves a lot of drawing the same monster MANY TIMES:
Who invited elephants? And the one with the orange dot gets it:

Sneakery peekery

Here is first smidgen of the screenprints for my second book for Walker: it’s about some monsters called Natalie and Alphonse, and will hopefully be published in 2015.

Natalie won’t always look this concerned, but, like The Girl with the Parrot on her Head, this book does sort-of feature an angry little girl – and a cardboard box. Hum. So, next book: cheerful little boy and the gelatinous dessert. Or, peaceable giant squid and the macrame lampshade.

Natalie and Alphonse grew out of these red and blue monsters, or shrank out of them in fact as they have got quite a bit younger. I am only just beginning to make the pictures and there is an awful lot to work out. When I last made a lot of simple monster-on-white prints, I found I was getting quite obsessed with their few bits of furniture or fruit: now it’s the same with Alphonse’s pushchair – he’s got five upholstery options. Oh but, I do very much like to draw monsters. NYAHAHA!

COMING not very SOON: a book!

Apparently I am delivering my first book to its publisher tomorrow, so I thought it might be time to say I have a publisher. Walker will publish The Girl with the Parrot on her Head in 2015, which is just grand and the luckiest thing. It does not make me feel like this:
I haven’t written on here about this story since January 12th, 2012 when I handed its first incarnation in for marking as part of my MA. I re-started work on it with Walker last February and it has been dead innerestin turning it into an Actual Book. It even has endpapers – though they are of course inferior to John Burningham’s Avocado Baby masterpieces, which are my favourite ever. I am going to miss Parrot Head, especially this colour parrot red: