Petr Horáček's Blog, page 8

Lumb Bank Arvon

The Ted Hughes Arvon Centre, Lumb Bank is an 18th-century mill-owner’s house in West Yorkshire, which once belonged to Ted Hughes.

It’s almost impossible to spend week in this place and not get inspired.

When I was asked to be a tutor on a course for writers and illustrators of picture books I was honoured, but at the same time I was worried. Teaching and giving people advice …. on anything is a big responsibility. I needed somebody I could rely on. Somebody who has done similar projects before, has great experience in writing, is able to work with other people and is able to run such a  course.

And then I realised that Joyce Dunbar was going to be my fellow tutor! My decision was made. I couldn’t miss the chance to see Joyce teaching, talking about her work and about the world of picture books.

My hopes overcame my expectations. The blog would be far too long if I start praising Joyce about the way how she works with students and what a good friend she is. Joyce is not just an experienced, clever and brilliant writer, but she has the gift to teach, share her experience and ideas with others and make it all fun at the same time.

I can say that Joyce and I teamed up really well and the whole week was a great success.

Another real treat was  a short visit and a brilliant talk by Polly Dunbar, one of my favourite writers and illustrators of picture books. Her contribution to the course was appreciated by everybody. Thank you Polly.

And the biggest thanks goes to everybody who came on the course. The students were truly amazing. Lovely, kind and friendly people, who had one thing in common – they all sheared a love for picture books.We all worked very hard.

Before I went to Lumb Bank I was trying to prepare myself for any possible situation, because you never know what can happen when you are working with a group of people who have never met each other. What I didn’t expected was that I’d be leaving so inspired myself, tired, but happy with a feeling, that I’ve made a bunch of new friends.

At this point in the blog I’ve realised that I could go on and on and I would love to show some of the students amazing work, but I won’t be able to fit everything in and besides, some of it may get published and I can’t give it away.

So perhaps just a couple of pages from one of the more visual exercises we did together.

There is one very important thing I must mention and it’s all the hard work of everybody who runs the Arvon Centre in Lumb Bank. Rosie, Becky, Mark, Jean, Jill and Jack.This is him – Jack who is everywhere and always ready to help and do an extra work. Thank you to all of you!Over the five days of the course I had only one chance to explore the surrounding countryside, but I’ll remember the walk for a very long time.

How about this chimney in the middle of the valleyy?

Walking by the river was magical.

Oh well, I’m on my way back sitting on the train and soon I’m off again. This time to my favourite event of the year – Edinburgh International Book Festival.

I’m going to meet Nicola Davies, the writer of  my latest book. I’m looking forward to our joint event very much!

Shakespeare, Arvon, Edinburgh

I took part in Shakespeare’s Telling Tales Literary Festival last Sunday. I had a great time.

I met some of my friends and fellow writers and whole bunch of clever children. We did a workshop loosely based on Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer’s Night Dream”.I was too busy to take photographs, but here are at least some of the masterpieces.Aren’t they great? The room and I were covered with  glitter. It was magical.I also read from my favourite books and talked about my pictures.“Tales on Moon Lane”, a great independent bookshop was selling books and I signed some of them.It was all fun.

I’m now getting ready for my next trip to Yorkshire to Lumb Bank to take part in  an Arvon course. I’ll be sharing my experiences as an author and illustrator with people who like writing and illustrating picture books.

It’s going to be very inspiring I’m sure and it’s going to be a very busy week (I’m sure of that too), but I’m looking forward to it.

I’ll be back home on Saturday just to change my socks and then I’m off to my favourite festival of the year “Edinburgh Literary Festival”.

I’m looking forward to it very much, because the festival is always full of lovely people who organise it and lovely people who come to the events. I’ll be  promoting two new books.

“The Greedy Goat”

and “A First Book of Animals” which is written by the amazing Nicola Davies and I did the illustrations.

Nicola’s events are always good fun and she is so enthusiastic about nature and the animal world. We are going to share an event together! It’s a big responsibility, because if I mess up my event I can only blame myself, but if I mess up somebody else’s event….I’m a bit scared, but excited at the same time.

So apart form this I’ll be doing another two talks at the festival, so if you are around, please come to see me.

I’m currently working on presentations for my next events and looking through my sketchbooks. Here are couple of my drawings I fnd interesting.A cyclist and a toucan passing by.A moose about to kiss a penguin.And the last one is a beautifully smelling carnivorous plant.

THE GLOBE

Next Sunday at 2.15pm I’ll be in the Watkins Rehearsal Studio in Shakespeare’s Globe doing a workshop.

The Shakespeare’s Telling Tales festival is a great event so I’m already  preparing to make sure that everything runs smoothly on the day.

I am basing the workshop on Shakespeare’s play A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

I’ve prepared some pages in advance so that I can give them to everybody at the beginning of the workshop.  Then the children and their parents can draw and add to these pages and make themselves a small concertina book that they can then take home at the end.

We are going to look at the magical forest in the play and explore how magic transforms things, just like Puck transforms Bottom into a donkey.

With all the magic and transformation in the original Shakespeare story, there will be plenty of space for little creative minds.

I found inspiration in my old sketchbooks.I was wondering if we can change Bottom into something else other than a donkey?

How about a goat?

Perhaps a pig?

Or elephant?

May be a cat?

A proper cat!He could change into …a bird! A rather strange looking birdand then fly away!So I did a lots of drawingand cutting and gluing.

It’s all ready now and I’m looking forward to next Sunday!

It should be exciting and fun, just like art should be.

 

The Greedy Goat

This magical place is in the Czech Republic. I go there from time to time to walk, paint and write stories.

Sometimes I’m there on my own for weeks and the only company I have are deer from the wood and a goat.The goat comes to visit from a nearby farm. Goats are usually nosey and rather naughty. This one is not different. She goes everywhere and she eats everything.

I have to chase her away from the vegetables and flowers in the garden. The goat runs away and pretends to be scared, but as soon as I turn around, the goat is back.

As I go to this place to work and write new ideas, it wasn’t a surprise to me when a goat popped into one of my stories.

Let’s face it, goats are funny.Here is a picture of a goat by Josef Lada.  He did lots of drawings of goats and they are very funny. I love Lada’s work.

So one day I started sketching a story.

I knew right from the beginning that a picture of a goat eating a pair of boxer shorts must be in the book.I also knew, that if you do eat boxer shorts it will make you illand somebody, to whom the boxer shorts belonged would miss them.

Writing the book was great fun.I was very pleased when my publisher said that it’s going to be published.I love the moment when all the sketches and the text is finished and you can get on with the final artwork.I try to lock myself in and work and work.Working on this book was special, because I kept thinking of the real goat and of the place I love so much.I have already forgiven the goat for eating…everything.

Oh, by the way this is not the last picture in the book!

A couple of days ago a parcel arrived. It was full of freshly smelling books sent to me by my publisher!

I hope you will like the book.

Oh, one more thing. Look what lovely pictures were sent to me from the children in Field Place Infant School in Worthing.

The pictures were inspired by my books, which makes me very proud. Thank you for sending them to me!

And now for a bit of advertising:

The Family Literary Festival’s events at Shakespeare’s  GLOBE . Join us for a weekend of stories 29 – 31 July

The book is finished

I’ve finished all the illustrations for my latest book. It will be the fourth in the series about Little Mouse.O.k. I’m saying I’ve finished, but there is still the cover and endpapers to do, but this fact doesn’t stop me celebrating a little.Working on the book with the character Little Mouse was like going on a walk with an old friend. This time we walked through the wood.

Walking through the wood was fun

and a great adventure.

I enjoyed working on this book so much, that I did the pictures almost in one go over a couple of months.

Although some of the characters in the book may be familiar to you,  this book is rather different from the previous three in the series. It may even be a bit scary, but Little Mouse in the book is not scared of anything.

The book is now in the post.This is how a finished book looks.

The last week I travelled to Worthing to do a talk in “Power of Reading in the Early Years” conference organised by Centre For Literacy in Primary Education.

The Power of Reading project is entering its 12th year and during the life of the project around 2,500 primary schools and 4,000 teachers have been involved.  This year alone they have had nearly 600 primary school teachers on projects in London and across England and are expecting to recruit the same number on the project next year. More than 1000 schools have subscribed to the Power of Reading website.

BLUE PENGUIN has been chosen as a Power of Reading text for 2016-17, so I’m very pleased about it.

The conference was a good fun. I arrived in the middle of the day and I don’t know exactly what happened in the morning, but there was a great friendly atmosphere and everybody was smiling.

Just before my talk I realised, that I’m the only man in the building. It was a bit a nerve-racking, but with the first laugh I relaxed. Talking to  adults may be a bit different to talking to children, but if the adults like picture books there is no difference, really.

Thank you CLPE for inviting me!

 

about books

The media writes about the importance of books for children roughly about once a year. Usually around World Book Day. So it was a pleasant surprise to open The Guardian last Saturday and see an independent Supplement all about books for children.

Winners of the Independent Bookshop Week Book Award 2016 were announced!

And the winners are…..

                

Adult Category

The Green Road by Anne Enright (Vintage)

Children’s Category

Pugs of the Frozen North by Philip Reeve and Sarah McIntyre (Oxford University Press)

Children’s Picture Book Category

Stanley the Amazing Knitting Cat by Emily MacKenzie (Bloomsbury Children’s Books)

CONGRATULATIONS TO THE WINNERS!

I was pleased to see the cover of ”The Mouse Who Reached the Sky”  on the cover of the mentioned supplement. Unfortunately the shortlist of the nominated books didn’t make it to the supplement, so let me get the things right - here it is.

I value the importance and hard work of independent booksellers very much , so it was a great honour to be on the list.

I looked at the list yesterday, saw the name of the amazing Judith Kerr and remembered this beautiful documentary - Hitler, the Tiger and Me . If you haven’t seen it yet, do have a look. You are in for a real treat.

This week I continued working on my new book.

I do lots of painting and printing. Just the way I like it. I really want to keep the art work loose and fresh. In fact so much, that my editor told me off at the last meeting. I have to calm down a bit and do a bit more detail in the book. I know she is right.I added little changes to some of the finished illustrations.Do you know who is hiding behind the tree?

More about more books later.

Meeting people, drawing Mouse

I had to look at the calendar to make sense of what I did in last two weeks. I started to work on the final illustrations for my new book about Little Mouse, which is very exciting!Here are some of the finished pictures.

Not everything went smoothly. This picture was a disaster. It was too late and I wanted to finish it off before I went to bed.As my grandfather used to say: “When you’re rushing, do it slowly!”  He was right. Since then I’ve changed the picture.

As I was working on my new book I got an email with an image of the window of the  Children’s Bookshop in Huddersfield.The window display was dedicated to “The Mouse Who Reached the Sky”. Thank you!

The last couple of weeks wasn’t just about drawing and painting. I did a couple of talks and a couple of festivals. One of them was the very first book festival in Ilminster in Somerset. It was probably the very first time when an event of mine consisted of more adults than children, but it was really good fun and it all went pretty well.

Then it was Wychwood  on Cheltenham Racecourse. I like the atmosphere of the Wychwood festival and I like the people who organise it, so I go every year. This year I teamed up with my friend Tony de Saulles and we did a joint event together. We’ve never done anything like this before and we had lots of laughs in the morning rehearsing.   Tony is very funny and very quick with his pen. I think everybody who came to our event had good time, at least it’s what we were told when it was all over.

It was nice seeing Tony and when I’m talking about festivals and meeting people… when I was at the Bradford Literary Festival a Czech writer Ivana Chribkova came to see me and we swapped books.

Ivana gave me her new book, the title could be translated as “Dry Rag on the Bottom of the Sea”. 

I’ve finished reading the book now and loved it. Although Ivana is younger than me, she also experienced the time before and after the Czech Velvet Revolution. The book is about growing up, being a teenager and young woman in the time of change. It’s well observed and very funny. Ivana is now living in England and I think she is keen to find an english publisher for her book, so good luck.

Bradford and Andover was next

Last week was rather busy. It all started at the Bradford Literary Festival. I was doing a talk in the prettiest Waterstones I’ve ever been in. Just look at the picture.

The event went very well. It’s always nice doing a talk and reading at the festivals because the parents who bring their children to the events are parents who read books and their children are use to being read to. They all like picture books.

After my event I stayed to see my friend, the wonderful Vivian French. did you know that Vivian has written more than 270 books? This book is one of them. It was very popular in our house a long time before I met Vivian. My daughters loved the book also for the illustrations by Alison Bartlett and I hope I’m not telling a secret, but Vivian and Alison are having a new book together. I can’t wait to see it.

The next day I met with one of the organisers of the Bradford Literature Festival Irna, who was very nice and she took me to Canterbury Children’s Centre where I talked to a bigger group of children and parents. It was a nice event and my publisher Walker Books gave every child who came one of my books! How nice! It was like Christmas in the spring and it was really nice to see children so happy and proud to have a new book. Thank you Walker Books!

On Monday afternoon I traveled from Bradford to Andover. Luckily I had a very big book to read. It’s a long journey to Andover from Bradford.

I visited Portway Infant School in Andover. I’ve been to the school before and it’s  definitely one of my favourite schools. It was like coming home. All the teachers at the school are so friendly and jolly. It works, because the children are the same. everybody in a happy mood, no shouting no crying, just fun.

As soon as I arrived I heard two little girls talking to each other. One of them said: “I think this is Peter Horacek!” and the other little girl said: “Whoopsy Daisy – IT IS!” I knew straight away, that this will be another good day with lots of fun. And it was!

As I was in Portway Infant School before and we’ve already made two big murals, one about an Elephant and one about Suzy Goose, I was asked to help the children making a picture about Blue Penguin.

So Blue Penguin it was.I think there was about 80 children who worked on this masterpiece with me. We had lots of fun and I think the mural looks pretty good!

I also did some reading and drawing and it was nice to see children doing their own sketches inspired by some of my books.  Here are some of them.

I like this one very much.In the afternoon I did book signing and I talked to the parents of the children too. The book sale was organised by a great independent  book shop P&G Wells in Winchester. Thank you for that!

And a Big THANK You to Portway Infant School in Andover for making me so welcome – again.

Something scary

I’m in the middle of sketching my new book “Little Mouse and Something Scary”.

Little Mouse is a character which has appeared in my books previously, so it’s like hanging with an old friend, taking an old friend for a walk….for a walk in the woods.

Yes, the book could be a bit SCARY.

I love this part of work. Drawing the main characters, thinking about how to paint the background and still being able to listen to audiobook as I’m sketching.I always draw all the characters from the book first. This way I can keep the continuity of the character in the book.So as I’m working on my book, some other books have been published. I would like to mention one of them. The book is called “Perfect”.

The book was just published by the independent publisher “Graffeg”. It’s beautifully illustrated by Cathy Fisher and written by award-winning children’s author Nicola Davies.

But what is really interesting about the book is its subject. The book is about a disabled child being born. It’s a subject of great importance, close to many of us, because we all know of somebody who is, or was dealing with a similar issue. You would think, that a book like this would find a publisher easily, but the opposite is true. It took a long time, before a publisher brave enough to publish the book, was found.

You can listen to Nicola herself talking about the book here – click.

So CONGRATULATIONS to Nicola and Cathy and WELL DONE to Graffeg.

I’ll have to leave my book on my studio table for a couple of days, since I’m traveling to Bradford Literary Festival and I’m also visiting two schools on my way home. I’m looking forward to it. Wherever I go, I do get little presents from children – little drawings. I love children drawings.

These pictures are drawn by Vojta Kalenda age 9 and they are characters from my books. Pretty good, what do you think?

How to write a picture book

At this time last year, I was rather busy. I was working on a book called “A First Book of Animals”.  The book is written by Nicola Davies and has about sixty illustrations. At the same time I somehow managed to finish my own picture book called “The Greedy Goat”.

At the end of June, a year later “The Greedy Goat” is going to be published. I’ve just received a first printed copy of the book!

I almost forgot how much fun I had working on “The Greedy Goat”.I opened the book.

I looked through my sketches and folders on my computer.It’s the same as looking through the diary. 

The memories come back to me.

I did enjoy looking at the old sketches and through the very first versions of the book. It was interesting to see how many changes my editors and I did since the idea of writing about a greedy goat came to me.

Writing and illustrating books can be sometimes be a rather lonely job and getting the story, the text and the illustration into the final shape can take a long time. Sometimes longer than you think.

I’m often asked by people who write, illustrate, or do both, for advice about how to get published. As much as I would like to help, it’s impossible for me to do it through an email. There are lots of books around, which will give you an idea of how to approach an agent or publisher, but none of these books can help you with your story on which you are currently working.

Well, here is an idea:

This summer I was asked to be a tutor in a course at The Ted Hughes Arvon Centre at Lumb Bank.  The course will be running from the 8th to 13th August. Please read about the course here.

In case you don’t know Lumb Bank, it is an 18th Century mill owner’s house in Yorkshire which used to belong to Ted Hughes.  It is set in a beautiful wooded valley close to Heptonstall village where Sylvia Plath is buried, and is 2 miles from Hebden Bridge.

It didn’t take me long to accept the invitation, especially after learning that my co-tutor on the course will be Joyce Dunbar.

Joyce is a great writer and author of more than 7o books for children. She has tutored on Arvon courses before and you can’t wish for a more experienced writer than her. Personally I can’t wait to work with Joyce.

The other great news is that Joyce’s daughter Polly Dunbar is going to be the speaking guest on the course. I’m a great admirer of Polly’s work and her book “Penguin” is still one of my favourite picture books.

So if you are serious about writing, illustrating or both, please join as at The Ted Hughes Arvon Centre at Lumb Bank this summer. You are more than welcome and as far as I know there are still some spaces left.