Happy Hugglewug's Word Cloud!

Wordle is where you can make beautiful word clouds. Great for generating ideas and playing about with type. This is one I made of The Happy Hugglewug Song.

Chris Raschka

"The Artwork is the book itself, not so much the individual illustrations."
Another amazing video about dummy books by Chris Raschka. There is a great review of his work over at the brilliant blog Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast.

Dummy Books

Thank you to everyone who came along to The Paths to Publication talk on Saturday. Myself and Deirdre McDermott talked a lot about dummy books. As a follow up I thought you would like to see this video.
Simms Tabak's There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly is a fantastic book. This is a great insight on making dummy books. Simms talks about the making of his dummy book from thumbnail to finished book. Enjoy!

Holmpatrick National School

I have been working with 5th and 6th Class in Holmpatrick National School painting a large canvas for part of the Skerries Soundwaves Arts Festival which launches tonight in Skerries, Co. Dublin. The canvas will be on display in the sailing club tonight for the launch.

The class were amazing to work with: we had a really tight deadline, first we brain stormed and came up with the ideas last Friday. Then everyone drew out thumbnail drawings of key words and ideas. We all had an open discussion of the best ideas, then I drew up the shortlisted designs on the board.

The theme was Making Waves and you can see how imaginatively it was handled. There's a scuba diving dog being chased by a lobster, even the sun is made out of music notes! They worked together as a team, all taking different parts of the piece to work on. There was plenty of glitter glue, I really think they did an amazing job and I had a brilliant time too!

If you are in the area, come along tonight for the launch and the fireworks at 8.30pm.

Paths to Publication

Children's Books Ireland and The Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators have joined forces this weekend to present a seminar for aspiring and established children's books authors. I will be one of the speakers along with Deirdre Mc Dermott the senior Picture book Editor with Walker Books. It is fully booked I'm looking forward to seeing everyone that day! Details here.

First Picture Book on the iphone!

The Surprise by Sylvia van Ommen is the first Picture book for the iPhone.

I was only thinking about this 2 weeks ago as Aoibhe my daughter loves scrolling through photos on the iphone. I thought wouldn't it be great to have a picture book in this format. I googled it and it looks like that the first one was released this week! I would love to have The Ravenous Beast or Hugglewugs in this format. He looks good hey! Things are changing so fast we will be like old fogies to our kids :-)

The screen will never replace the smell and tactile nature of a book, as an author and lover of books I fear that books will become obsolete. However I do believe that when we share stories together we foster a love of reading that could last a life time. For little ones the screen is not alien they see it as a set of visuals that tell a story. You can even read the stories together in the dark! I would of loved this as a kid, I used to read from the light of a street light after lights out time. Had to get glasses when I was twelve :-)

Happy September Everyone!

Sorry I have been off the radar, I took two weeks off with the kids before they went back to school and I have been busy painting Christmas cards for Trocaire and Temple Street Children's Hospital. This year they will be available in Easons for sale so they had to be finished extra early! I will post up the link nearer the season if you want to order them for your bookstore or just for you.

My boy Oscar started school yesterday so we are in full autumn mode. I am totally free now to work on new ideas I have been cooking up in my notebooks. I have been cleaning my studio this morning I will post up some photos when it is all clean! I have so much to do. I was going to take Marie Louise Fitzpatricks advice and start to work in coffee shops. No distractions... coffee could give me the jitters though!