Mouse in Edinburgh

This week was mainly about “The Mouse Who Reached the Sky”. It started on Monday at “The Tea House Theatre” next to my my publisher Walker Books.

The publisher invited children and their parents who are enthusiastic about picture books. There was a presentation by editors from Walker Books, a storyteller, I did my talk and some drawings, and then we all ate lots of delicious cakes.

I also got a present. Lucy gave me a picture with all the characters from my books. I love the penguin bouncing on the giraffe’s back.

It’s always nice to meet parents who love books and their children.

Then it was Edinburgh International Book Festival. Edinburgh is such a nice city and the Edinburgh International Book Festival is definitely my favourite festival. Well, after talking to other authors and illustrators, I have a feeling that it’s everybody’s favourite festival.

Whole event is so well organised. Everybody who is involved and everybody I met were friendly, smiley and always happy to help. And let’s not forget the great audience as well!

For authors the festival is also a great opportunity to catch up with fellow writers, illustrators and people who are involved with books.

I stayed for a couple of days and even managed to see a couple of events myself. There is so much to see, but one of my favourite talks was Best of the Brits: Celebrating our Young Adult Fiction. It was a discussion between Elizabeth Laird, David Almond, James Dawson and latest Carnegie Medal winner Tanya Landman and was chaired by the brilliant Daniel Hahn. Very entertaining was also Rev Richard Coles, who was chaired by the equally brilliant Richard Holloway.

Apart from my two events in the festival I also visited Gilmerton Library in Edinburgh and talked to a bunch of lovely kids from a local nursery. I’m not sure if the children were carefully selected, or if I was just lucky, but they were really well behaved and they were a great audience.

I don’t know how, but I also managed to deliver a couple of pictures for the new book I’m working on with Nicola Davies.

Here are wolves and a sketch for a chameleon with Nicola’s text.

and the final picture.

I looked at my sketchbook for more chameleons and here is one.