Ever changing Mole

This week’s gone quickly. It’s March, so I keep traveling, visiting schools, showing pictures and talking about books. This week more than ever I’ve spoken to children in nurseries. I like this age. They can be a really good audience. The secret of handling the event with very small children is to have a small class, make your self also small (not so easy in my case) by sitting on a small chair and start with some colourful pop up book. I use Animal Opposites. I also do drawings in my talks. It does the trick.

On Thursday I was in Frome. Hunting Raven Books organised their annual ABCDay. I had a nice day and managed to meet  fellow writers and illustrators. Here is a picture -from left Christopher William Hill,  Anna Shuttlewood ,Karin from Hunting Raven Books who organised the event, Fleur Hitchcock  and  me.   

Covers of Christopher’s, Anna’s and Fleur’s books in order.

Mark Robertson  was also there, but had to go before the photo was taken.

It’s always nice to talk to other people who make books, but on occasions like this there is never enough time as you can imagine. We all are busy doing our part in the event. But I could see children walking out of each session with smiles on their faces and I could hear them shouting and laughing with excitement. I actually did managed to see a big part of Mark’s talk and it was brilliant.

It’s sunny outside and it’s so hard to switch from school visits to working on a book, but I did work a bit more on my “Mouse book”. Can you spot the differences?It’s the mole who is changing  shape.

I was also commissioned to do a picture, so I started working on it as well. Here is the work in progress.

On Wednesday I’ll be at Sambourne Primary School in Warminster. My wife’s cousin Sarah is teaching there, so I’m looking forward to it!