Monday 24 August 2020

The Pigeon HAS to Go to School!




We all remember what it was like to start school. The worries of leaving your parents, making new friends, having too much stuff to learn, AND having to be up the same time, every. single. day! 

It is all just a bit much.


Well, Mo Willems' new picture book, The Pigeon HAS to Go to School!, the tenth installment in his best-selling pigeon series, is sure to settle the nervous tummies of your little ones.






The Pigeon is about to get SCHOOLED. Do YOU think he should go?


Why does the Pigeon have to go to school? He already knows everything! Well ... almost everything. And what if he doesn’t like it? What if the teacher doesn’t like him? I mean, what if he learns TOO MUCH!?!







It all starts with the why... 



Then they remind you that they already know everything already, so there is definitely no reason to go.




And finally, comes the worrying: Will the teacher like me? Will I like the teacher? What will the other boys and girls think of me? 

But in the end, all is well, as Pigeon soon discovers. 

The Pigeon HAS to Go to School! is the perfect summer read to remind all new school children that not only is there nothing to worry about, but they will soon learn to love heading off to school!


 “As the summer holidays begin, and you’re looking for literature to line little stomachs, you are unlikely to find a funnier, jollier, truer book than this on the subject. […] Willems plays with scale and colour to express the pigeon’s feelings in his utterly distinctive illustrations. The words and pictures are as strong as each other. […] This got a big laugh with my one-boy focus group.” - The Times, Children’s Book of the Week


Wednesday 19 August 2020

My First Cook Book by David Atherton, illustrated by Rachel Stubbs

My First Cook Book by David Atherton, illustrated by Rachel Stubbs


Today we welcome award-winning illustrator Rachel Stubbs to Picture Book Party to tell us a little more about illustrating My First Cook Book, the brand new first guide to cooking for kids from the winner of The Great British Bake Off 2019, David Atherton.

1. How did the book come about?

David got in touch with me shortly after winning The Great British Bake Off in 2019 about collaborating on a project for children together. We already knew each other prior to this, and had lived together whilst I was studying for my MA, so he knew my work well and the kind of things I liked to draw. I’d always wanted to work on a food-related project for children, so the idea of getting to work on something together was very appealing as I trusted his taste and knew he was an incredible cook! We both felt strongly that combining the cookery element with a sense of community was important, and played around with various ideas before finally settling on the idea of an illustrated cook book.


2. How do you and David know each other?

My husband Jonathan met David when they were teenagers, and introduced me to him when we were at university. Much later, we all ended up living together for a couple of years in London and as you can imagine, he was the ideal housemate! Very clean, a great cook and an avid gardener. We had a lot of fun and the house was always full of David’s various craft projects and delicious food. We would often dream of doing some sort of creative project in the future, so it felt really surreal (in a good way) to see him win Bake Off and to then go on to make this book together.





3. You’ve just published your first picture book with Walker, how did you find the transition to food illustration?

I did find drawing so much food difficult at first, as I am so much more used to drawing people! People exude personality so I found it challenging to inject the same amount of life into inanimate objects. But I soon found ways to make it work, like adding in small details such as utensils, cutlery, chopping boards and napkins - and actually really enjoyed creating these small still lives. Once I’d found a way of illustrating the food that worked for me, the next challenge was to get all the other elements to work together visually; the illustrated ingredients, the step by step illustrations, and the drawings of the different families cooking.


4. How did you decide on the look of the book?


I’d worked with a very limited palette for my first book with Walker (My Red Hat, published in May 2020) and we were both keen to try and keep a similar look for this project. However, we soon realised that sticking to the same limitations within the context of a cook book would be tricky, as the food and ingredients needed to look recognisable. Especially as it was for children, who might be cooking for the first time! So, in the end, we decided to just keep red and blue as the base colours throughout the book and added in different colours where necessary - which helped bring a sense of clarity and cohesion to the book as a whole. Having illustrated step by step instructions did mean that the layouts were quite restricted, but thankfully our excellent design team at Walker had a clear idea of how they wanted it all to fit together. 



5. What made you decide to include lots of illustrations of families, rather than focusing solely on the food?

We were both keen for it to be more than just a recipe book and felt that having illustrations of families cooking and eating together would add a sense of fun, community and inclusivity - as well as giving it more of a picture book feel. There are so many different characters to follow and stories to invent, that hopefully even the most reluctant of young cooks will find something to amuse themselves within its pages.

 


That is all from the lovely Rachel Stubbs. My First Cook Book is available where all good books are sold! 

Friday 14 August 2020

Ride the Wind by Nicola Davies & Salvatore Rubbino - Guest Illustrator Post

We are delighted to invite Salvatore Rubbino onto the Picture Book Party blog to tell us all about the making of his new picture book, Ride the Wind. You can now read the full post below!

“In this beautifully told and emotive picturebook, a motherless boy breaks rules for the sake of an injured albatross and is reconciled with his harsh father. Salvatore Rubbino’s clear, colourful draughtsmanship is deft at evoking the story’s South American setting.” – ‘Watch Out For’, The Sunday Times

Guest Illustrator Post - Salvatore Rubbino

Making a book can sometimes feel like sending a message in a bottle.

During the making of a book, I am saturated with the story, live with the characters and feel their emotions keenly. After an intense period of painting and drawing, the book (with some relief) reaches a conclusion. Then all goes quiet for about a year! 

I move on to other projects and new challenges and almost forget about the hopes I have for the book.

The book is sent off for printing and in the meantime, the wonderful marketeers at Walker Books find a home for the story with bookshops and other distributors. When the book arrives back, it’s the first time I will have seen it in its printed and bound form. The book and its story message is at last ready to meet its readers and continue its journey.

 When the first copies arrive it’s like an old friend I haven’t seen for a long time. There’s a little hesitation too! Did I do a good job? Are the characters believable? Have I managed to communicate the essence of the story after all? Of course, each book is like a stepping stone, a chance to experience and try something new and develop my picture-making a little further.

(character sketches, Tomas the ‘strict’ dad, kind uncle Filipe and Javier, the boy)

I’d certainly never drawn an albatross before I was invited to illustrate Nicola Davies’s wonderful story, ‘Ride the Wind’, set in a small fishing village along the coast of Chile.

I begin a new illustration project with a careful reading of the text then I try to let the story sink in. Before making pictures for the book I try to find tangible examples that resonate with the characters and setting to look at and draw. Most albatrosses, however, live in the Southern Hemisphere, beyond my reach from East London and a trip to Chile just wasn’t practical.

There are fortunately taxidermy examples in museums that helped give a sense of their majestic wingspan and scale, although ‘my’ bird doesn’t open its wings until the end of the story. I was worried that the albatross might look like a large goose so needed other distinguishing features and discovered that they also have large hook-shaped beaks and strong-looking necks. I drew the albatross until I felt I knew it and also other sea birds from museum specimens and gulls whenever I walked along the Thames. 

(early drawings for the albatross and other sea birds)

(practice pictures for the albatross)

I wanted to experience sea weather and salt spray. So, I took the train to Hastings rather than South America, to the ‘Old Town’ where the boats are launched from the beach and winched back in. It meant I could walk in between the boats, observe them closely and also experience something of the daily rhythm of hardy fishing people. Maintaining nets, making repairs, gutting fish, whilst all around, piles of floats, impressive anchors, weathered fishing huts and even a local museum with a model of an albatross which I took as a good sign. 

(location drawings at Hastings)

(the fishing boat arrives back to the village with Javier and the albatross, from the book)

I see characters everywhere! On the London Underground, on the street, in the supermarket queue. I’ve never met a person I haven’t found interesting and we all come with a story. The characters in the book are a composite of relatives from Southern Italy I remembered from my childhood, farmers this time who had also been shaped by the weather and tough physical work. I borrowed attributes from different people; there’s a little of me in the dad and a little of my son in the boy too.

 (sketches for Tomas and Filipe, and Javier with the albatross)

(Javier smuggles the albatross home to help nurse it well again)

I’d found ‘my’ albatross and ‘my’ village and could now begin to populate it and make the story come to life!

 As I write I’m still awaiting the first copies of the book; I look forward to meeting my ‘old friend’ again.

- Salvatore Rubbino

A special thanks to our guest illustrator this week, Salvatore Rubbino!

Ride the Wind is now available to buy from all good booksellers.


Wednesday 12 August 2020

Ride the Wind by Nicola Davies & Salvatore Rubbino - Guest Author Post


A heartfelt story from the author of King of the Sky and The Promise, with an important point to make about male mental-health:

Javier has a secret. On one of his father’s fishing trips, he finds an albatross caught on the hooks – alive, if only barely. Against his father’s orders, Javier smuggles the bird to safety and begins nursing it back to health. Every day the albatross accepts a little more food, but she shows no sign of wanting to use her wings. And if Javier's new friend refuses to fly, how will she ever find her way home? With words by award-winning author Nicola Davies and dramatic watercolours by Salvatore Rubbino, this is a beautiful story about the power of empathy.

"Nicola Davies is one of the best children's writers in the business." Huffington Post

“In this beautifully told and emotive picturebook, a motherless boy breaks rules for the sake of an injured albatross and is reconciled with his harsh father. Salvatore Rubbino’s clear, colourful draughtsmanship is deft at evoking the story’s South American setting.” – ‘Watch Out For’, The Sunday Times

Guest Author Post - Nicola Davies

Albatrosses are magical birds, adapted to stay on the wing in gales and storms that would drive other birds out of the air. Their vast wings, with spans up to three and a half metres, carry them almost without flapping, over many thousands of miles of ocean. And if that wasn’t enough, they find the way back toting, remote islands to meet their lifelong mates. 

But albatross are in trouble. Longline fishing boats that use thousands of baited hooks on lines miles long, catch sea birds as well as fish. Hundreds of thousands of albatrosses die this way every year. Marry all that with the effects of pollution, causing adult albatross to return to hungry chicks with bellies full of plastic rather than food, and you have 15 of the 22 albatross species on a collision course with extinction.

I’d wanted to write about albatrosses and the threats they face for years but when my daughter was travelling in coastal Chile, that was when a story about them finally landed in my brain. She sent me photos of fishing villages and the long line boats who fish the Humbolt current, right where albatross too search for food. These small fishers, whose lives are hard as those of the seabirds catch sea birds by mistake and drown them, just as the big commercial boats do.

That gave me the setting, but the human diaspora out of South and                Central America gave me the story: like albatross, many South and Central American people, travel far from home to make a living. Families are divided, and sometimes, like pairs of albatross, never reunited. At the time I was writing Ride the Wind, two close friends also had children travelling the world. I think our longing for our wandering offspring made me feel the story of the separated albatross pair more keenly and helped me to make the emotional link between the human family in the story, and the albatross.

I’ve never seen an albatross and I probably never will. But I still want to know that they are there, riding the wind far from land. If you do too please find out more here:

http://www.birdlife.org/news/tag/albatross-task-force

or donate here:

https://www.rspb.org.uk/join-and-donate/donate/appeals/gough-island/

- Nicola Davies

A special thanks to our guest author this week, Nicola Davies!
Ride the Wind is now available to buy from all good booksellers.

Thursday 6 August 2020

Top Picks of the Month for August!

Make sure you keep an eye out in your local bookshops for our top picks in August!

1. Ride the Wind by Nicola Davies and illustrated by Salvatore Rubbino

Javier has a secret. On one of his father’s fishing trips, he finds an albatross caught on the hooks – alive, if only barely. Against his father’s orders, Javier smuggles the bird to safety and begins nursing it back to health. Every day the albatross accepts a little more food, but she shows no sign of wanting to use her wings. And if Javier's new friend refuses to fly, how will she ever find her way home? With words by award-winning author Nicola Davies and dramatic watercolours by Salvatore Rubbino, this is a beautiful story about the power of empathy.

2. Red Red Red by Polly Dunbar

Every toddler feels frustrated sometimes, every toddler gets ANGRY. They scream they shout, they see RED RED RED. Now, in her singularly expressive style, the beloved Polly Dunbar brings us the perfect picture storybook to share with those little ones overwhelmed by their emotions; a true-to-life, upbeat story about a toddler tantrum that offers a meditative way to calm them down. “Why not count to ten?” Mum suggests to her son. “One … two … three…”

Now out in paperback.

3. Mr Scruff by Simon James

Polly belongs with Molly, Eric belongs with Derek, Perry belongs with Terry – everyone knows that owners and their dogs belong together in their own unique way. But for Poor Mr Scruff, alone in the dogs' home, there's no one – that is until a very special little boy arrives looking for a friend...
A wonderful, witty and warm story about the true nature of friendship from award-winning author-illustrator Simon James.

Now out in paperback.


4. Handa's Noisy Night by Eileen Browne

When Handa has a sleepover with her friend Akeyo, the girls are allowed to spend the night in a little hut near the house. They’re excited to be on their own, but as they get ready for bed, Handa feels more and more nervous. She keeps hearing things – strange snorts, chitter chattering, a big thud. Akeyo says it’s only her noisy family, but on the opposite page the reader sees the nocturnal animals who are really making the noise – and while some of them are familiar, others are very peculiar-looking indeed!

Now out in paperback!

Get your copies of our top picks of the month now at your local bookshop!