Invitations, Amnesty International, Long Melford, Norfolk and Tanya Davis

With a new book out I have a busy couple of weeks ahead. Here are a couple of invitations. The first is for an auction of artwork to raise money for Amnesty International. I will be at The Illustration Cupboard, to sign books maybe on the evening of the auction. I am told that you WILL need an invitation or to be on teh guest list for this event so please email Amnesty if you intend to come. You can also bid over the phone I think. No bids in yet, so there is a strong possibility of getting a bargain.

Later in the week I will be at The Norfolk Children's Book Centre for a launch, on National Poetry Day of The Cat and The Fiddle. Then off to Suffolk for an exhibition and third 'launch' this time with artwork.

I will also be signing books around independent bookshops in London and will post a list of the shops for people who would like to get signed copies. And signed copies are always available from Solva Woollen Mill.

And one more invitation. I have been loving listening to Tanya Davis over the last few days. Beautiful. Hard to know which track to show, but the first I heard was this one.

The Cat and the Fiddle, Solva Mill and the Chinese Dragons.

Yesterday was the first of a series of launches for The Cat and the Fiddle, a selection of nursery rhymes. The Mill at Solva looked beautiful and Anna had dressed it to fit, with collections and gatherings of things that went with different pages in the book.

In keeping with the theme Rosie came too. She is such a star of the book and she was a star of the book launch too and enjoyed making sure that the floor was clean of crumbs.

So many people came, the Mill looked wonderful and there was a lovely buzz to the event. It is still possible to buy signed books from Anna from their website, and she will be ordering more copies of The Cat and the Fiddle as we sold all of them and more last night.  

Today is a day of sunshine and showers. I have walked to the sea and watched seals embracing, new pups on the beach and a rainbow. 





On coming home I found a parcel and in the parcel, dragons. Chinese dragons. The pages are so very elegant with the beautiful Chinese script, and it is always a thrill to see my words written in languages other than English, and so very wonderful to see such elegant script.

The next launch for The Cat and the Fiddle will be in Norfolk at The Centre for the Children's Book, on 6th October, then at The Imagine Gallery in Long Melford on 8th October. Meanwhile I have plans to run away with wolves next year.

Book Launch

Almost finished 'I am Cat'. Just a few words to gather up now. My mind has begun to search for wild dogs. 

Meanwhile The Cat and the Fiddle should be in the warehouse now in the UK, so, enterprising book sellers, contact Frances Lincoln and get stock early.

At Solva Woollen Mill we are having a book launch on 16th September. For those far away you can still pre-order signed books and with each book purchased you get a raffle ticket and a chance to win a drawing that was a prelim from the book. One book, one ticket.

Contact Solva Mill if you would like an invitation to the launch.

Astonishing things.

1. Jon Mayle has made a clock that looks just like the clock on the endpapers of The Cat and the Fiddle. For me it is strange and magical to see this 'made real'. The clock will be exhibited at The Imagine Gallery, Long Melford, Suffolk, for an exhibition themed around nursery rhymes, opening on 8th October.

2. Dropping Hannah off in town yesterday I heard someone talking about the van. It was a family on holiday. I stopped to talk before heading off shopping. The mother had made a cake based on one of the images in Tell Me a Dragon for her son's birthday. So lovely. The dragon curled around the sleeping child. I asked her to send me a picture so that I could put it here. She did.

A small deluge.

Last night,peaceful wanderings around the village with my healing bowl. Across the fields a forlorn fox sang a duet with the deep resonance of the bowl's song. The darkness had texture, brought on by close cloud. All around a quiet calm.

Just off to bed and a sound like waterfalls outside. Rain? Rain on one side of the door only. Then rain in the house and panic as I realised the water tank was overflowing!

I was rescued by my neighbours who turned off the water at the stopcock and then found the switch for the tank and while the ceiling drip dripped my heart began to slow down and calm return.

This morning I texted Graham, the plumber and he came and made all well again with a new ballcock and a new stopcock and a fix to a joint in the tank that had leaked into the house. Brilliant.

Graham also pots and paints and his beautiful bowls are available through Cole & Co.

Print outs arrived from Frances Lincoln and now my head is unsteady and too full with text and design and page orders and waiting to hear if East of the Sun will get a definite go ahead. So hard to find that still point required to work. Caught up in the past with The Cat and The Fiddle finishing and moving on to I am Cat.

 

Back in the office.

Always a strange feeling to have finished something, especialy something that has taken so long. The Cat and the Fiddle began years ago and then turned into The Barefoot Book of Classic Poems.

Although I enjoyed working on Classic Poems I still wanted to go back to nursery rhymes. Their strange, anarchic rhythm and rhyme appealed so much and gave such a freedom that I just wanted to play. But not just play. So many very young picture books are simple, strong  bold images. I wanted to do something with more detail, more complexity. From my own experience of reading picture books when my children were young they just loved books where the pages were packed with detail and pattern, stories in the pictures. And the time we spent in the company of books like The Little House By the Sea by Benedict Blathwaite were precious hours. Always more to see each time.

So.

Finished now.

For about four years now I have had a story lurking. Ever since I painted the small dragon in Tell Me a Dragon, hatching from his egg, he has been stomping around inside my head demanding attention. A few times I have tried, eventualy caught the idea for a story, the shape of it, but try as I might I couldn't catch the words. Next week I am going to Norfolk for the Norfolk Children's Book Award, very much looking forward to meeting Kazuno Kohara.
 I was hoping to catch the words for Little Dragon Small and the Search for Story before I went so that I could try it out on the children in Norfolk. 
I finished the last bit of painting on the cuckoo and headed for the door with a notebook, a pen, three dogs and Elmo. Up to the top of the hill where the sun shone and there was space to let go. A pair of ravens flew by close as we sat on the hill. On the way up something had clicked, a small dragon hatched, a character was dropped, things went like the cogs in a watch and each piece turned so that while I sat and ravens flew in tumbling flight the words fell onto the paper.
It was cold. Elmo snuggled up and pushed his way inside my sweater like a ginger hot waterbottle with purrs. The ravens flipped in courtship, tumbling for the sheer pleasure of flight.

The story had been struggling to hatch out for days now and just needed time for the rhymes to be cleared away. 

 

Back home and back to the computer and email came in with the most amazing review from Judith Philo at IBBY.

The Ice Bear
Jackie Morris, London: Francis Lincoln Children’s Books, 978 1 8450 7968 0, £11.99,
2010, 32pp.
The portrait of the ice bear on the front cover, in close up, seizes the attention of the reader, inspiring a shiver of awe. On the back cover a dark-eyed boy, brown hair covered by a fur hood, studies us. These two figures direct us into the book inviting us to see the world through their eyes.
Themes of birth, loss, separation, restitution and new beginnings shape a dramatic narrative of mythic dimensions, set in the vast open space of the Arctic region. This landscape of far horizons contrasts with representations, in close up, of the principal
characters: the ice bear and her offspring, the hunter and his family. There is also the dark brooding presence of the raven. She acts in ways that are catalytic to the bears and the humans and to the child who is bound to them both. When a choice has to be made, this child declares that he will live with the bears during the winter and spend the summer months with his human family. In this way the relationship between and the
understanding of the two worlds will be strengthened.
This is a beautiful, painterly book. The unframed pages place the reader at the scene at each turn of the page. Small children will be engrossed by the close-up nature of the pictorial representations. For older readers, the visual power of the illustrations is amplified by the poetic sensibility of the narrative text. Jackie Morris reminds us that we are caretakers of the natural world, especially that far-off region where bears and hunters inhabit the earth and the sky. Such mindfulness for the outer world will also enrich our inner world.
Judith Philo

 I wrote The Ice Bear on the hill, on a blue sky day while ravens flew in the sky. I always think of Raven as the heroine of the story. In some ways it seemed as if the ravens told me the story because it was theirs.


Yesterday I finally got round to sending a biog to the Kids Need to Read Foundation, a wonderful organisation who aim to get books into the hands of children, through libraries in the USA. A few weeks back they asked if I would like to be on their advisory council. I had given them a couple of ideas for fund raising, hopefully good ideas. What could I say except, "Yes please". Made my day!

A Spell for Beauty.

Today when I walked I found some cow's eggs, tangled tight and watered by fog. Rare ones, from the Welsh Black.
Back home I prepared a print that is going to America once it has been mounted.

 

Finally I began work on the last piece from The Cat and the Fiddle. And I wondered what it would feel like when it is finished. It has been a long haul.

 

The fair maid who on the first of May

Goes to the field at break of day

And washes in the dew of the hawthorne tree

Will ever more handsome be.

Only one left to go

Four and twenty tailors

Went to catch a snail.

The bravest one amongst them

Dare not touch her tail.

She put out her horns

Like a little kylie cow.

Run tailors run

Or she'll catch you even now.

Monday

Third, fourth or fifth time lucky?

 Take one frosted feather.......

..later, elements from the studio and some from the imagination......

.....to make a perfect long day painting.

( Hickory dickory dock, the mouse ran up the clock, and A B C tumble down D, the cat's in the cupboard and he can't see me!)

Step by stepping stones.

 Here am I little Jumping Joan,

When nobody's with me I'm all alone.

and

Little Thomas Tittlemouse

Lived in a little house.

He caught fishes

In other men's ditches.

Walked the dogs on the beach at Abermawr, through the woods and down to teh sea. On the way home Rosie did some posing.

Thursday

New cover. Looking good.

Kingfisher

Today I have help from my silent fishing friend.  

Almost finished, not quite.

Beginnings

While I was drawing this image out two of the weasels fell in love over a tin of black treacle. My paintings seem to be taking on a life of their own.

Closer to the end

This morning, walking early on the beach, moonlight on the water. Between the land and the sea, between the night and the day. And on the beach a log. But then the log began to move and the dogs watched and we stood, amazed. In the moonlight, daylight,  dawning, a seal.

Small pieces of magic are always welcome, especialy when it is wild magic.

Gray goose and gander

Waft your wings together

And carry the good king's daughter

Over the one strand river.

Sometimes things change

So much has happened over the last couple of days, and every time I have walked past my easel with The Cat and the Fiddle on it has stopped me and made me pause and look. So when my editor phoned and had a few coughs and erms and then said how much she liked the cat and the fiddle I knew what was coming next. Suffice it to say that A Rhyme in Time is now called The Cat and The Fiddle and has a new cover. 

I think it is much stronger, more eye catching and amazingly looks as if it was designed to be the front and back cover.

I still have 5 spreads to complete in about 3 weeks. Time to work hard.