Guest Columns
Lisa Stickley: On Books and Blancmange
The lovely Lisa Stickley is an all round creative power house, bursting with beautiful design ideas and writing and illustrating the cutest children’s books (Handstand, My New Room, Dress Like Mummy and her latest offering, The New Baby). We caught up with her to chat about books, blancmange and everything in between (just don’t mention FROGS!)
Writing Tips and School Assembly Slips by Lisa Thompson
Lisa Thompson is one of those rare authors that seemed to burst into children's literature to instant and spectacular success. Her first book, 'The Goldfish Boy' was published in 2017 and quickly became a bestseller that was published all around the world and nominated for a raft of awards including the Carnegie Medal. Her second novel, 'The Light Jar' was published this year to similar acclaim. Read on for her advice on getting started with writing and what she'd be doing if she weren't wowing kids around the world with her thought-provoking yet deeply entertaining reads. Clue: It's not singing.
In conversation with Nick Ostler and Mark Huckerby
Mark Huckerby and Nick Ostler are the Emmy-winning and Bafta-nominated writing partnership behind most of your kids favourite TV shows – Peter Rabbit, Danger Mouse and Shaun The Sheep, to name but a few. Excitingly, they are also currently scripting a new TV show of some of our all time favourite kids lit characters, The Moomins. We can hardly wait! Not happy with conquering the world of TV, this eye-wateringly busy writing duo are a force to be reckoned with in the world of kids books too. If your kids haven't tried their fantastic adventure series, 'Defender of the Realm', we highly recommend it.
Paper bags and potholes by Clara Vulliamy
Clara Vulliamy is an author and illustrator who has children’s books running through her blood. As it turns out even her jokes have a literary twist. The daughter of Shirley Hughes (who doesn’t own Dogger or an Alfie book?) Clara chose to follow in her family’s footsteps with a career in illustrating and writing children’s books. Hugely successful, she has trodden her own distinctive path. You will know her as the illustrator and writer of many well-loved book series including Dotty the Detective, Mango and Bambang, and Martha and the Bunny Brothers books. Just don’t ask her to go potholing (or look in a paper bag), OK?
Puppets, paints and superpowers with Polly Dunbar
When it comes to bedtime stories, they don't get much better than the books of multi-award winning author and illustrator Polly Dunbar. Her 'Tilly' book series is so well-loved that it's been turned into a BBC cartoon, the wonderful 'Penguin' is way up in our picture book hall of fame, and her latest offering 'A Lion for a Lion' has all the hallmarks of a classic in the making. Polly has that rare gift of making books and illustrations that kids want to look at over and over again, and that parents genuinely enjoy re-reading to their childrenAll this, and she has a superpower that means NO MORE TIDYING. Seriously, we'll have whatever Polly's having please.
The World of Norm… and Tractors by Jonathan Meres
He’s a best selling children’s author who is perhaps most famous for his hilarious World of Norm book series (if you haven’t read them, what have you been doing?)
Jonathan Stroud: 5 surprising things your kids will learn from being bored today
Jonathan Stroud is on a mission to unlock our children’s imaginations and natural creativity. How? “Give your child the time and space to start creating and there’s no limit to where they’ll go,” says the Lockwood & Co author. His Freedom To Think campaign, launched last year, calls for parents…
Talking Point: Why children’s books are the most important books of all. By SF Said
I write children’s books because I believe they’re the most important books of all. I remember reading Watership Down by Richard Adams when I was eight, and thinking it was the best book I’d ever read. I re-read it when I was 35, and thought it was even better! But where…
Talking Point: “I want books that show my daughter there isn’t only one way to be a girl.” Clare Furniss on feminism in YA fiction.
“Mum,” my soon-to-be-teenage daughter said to me recently. “Why do people think that anything teenage girls like is stupid?” She’d summed up in one question the way that society so often makes teenage girls feel: silly, dismissed, unsure of who or what they are supposed to be. In my latest…
Talking Point: 10 reasons why Sean Taylor always reads to his children
As well as being an author of some books for children, I am the father of two boys under 10. Like many (most?) parents, I can sometimes feel regrets about the things I’ve not managed to do together with my children. We’ve never built a tree-house. I haven’t…
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