Our Book

Today is the first day of Rosie's end of year exhibition and since Tuesday we have been beavering away to bind our book ready for her to exhibit.

It looks fabulous and Rosie and I were knocked out at actually being able to hold it like a real book. On another level it doesn't look that good because bookbinding is a new skill to both of us so there are badly cut pages and glue bubbles where there shouldn't be, but that didn't stop us both cooing over it like new parents.
In a last minute improvement last night Rosie designed some end pages for us to stick in which caused another outbreak of cooing.

 Rosie had already submitted the illustrations to college as her Final Major Project and was very pleased to gain a distinction for it. Selfishly, I was also pleased by the accompanying comment 'The story is great fun and your illustrations complement the quirky humour perfectly'.
This is possibly my favourite page from the book:

Or maybe this:

Rosie's exhibition is at Leeds College of Art in the Vernon Street building from today until next Friday
http://www.leeds-art.ac.uk/home/news-events/events/end-of-year-show-2013/

Today is a private view (swanky eh?) after that it is open to the public. She has set Oliver's play tent up as a reading corner and the book is on display there. I am hoping for older and less flexible visitors it will also be on a table or somewhere where it can be read without having to sit cross legged in a miniature big top.

Trying Something New

When I did my balanced scorecard assessment at the end of February, I said I enjoyed writing and would like to do more. I was pushed into actually doing something by Rosie wanting to enter the Macmillan Prize for Children's Book Illustrators. She could have chosen an existing story and was quite tempted by complicated and unsuitable Nordic fairy stories but we decided it would be better to have an original story.
Consequently I have written a story about two woodland creatures who are being terrorised by their own shadows

The shadows, despite their appearance in Rosie's drawing are more mischievous than malevolent and a firm talking to by the girl sets things right. The girl who lives by herself in a cottage by the wood, is not quite an ordinary girl. For one thing, her own shadow can act independently of her.

Although I want to refine and rewrite the story, the bulk of the work falls on Rosie. Illustrating a story is much harder work than actually writing it, I don't feel that the illustrators get enough credit. Would the Gruffalo have been such a huge success without Axel Scheffler's creation?
So given that she is at college and has other commitments and deadlines, not to mention a nearly three year old son, it might not get finished to a standard we think good enough to enter the Macmillan Prize this year (closing date 30th April) but it is something that we will work towards in the future.