very serious meeting notes

I finished my picture book! Hurrah! Yesterday was my deadline and I rode the Underground to the Scholastic offices to deliver my artwork to my designer, Zoe Waring. She was thrilled with how it came out, relief! I was absolutely shattered, but I dragged myself to the Society of Authors for a meeting of the Children’s Writers & Illustrators Group, where, besides cookies and tea cups, the secretary had laid out little notepads at everyone’s place, just like you get at a hotel. In a frantic attempt not to fall asleep, I started doodling like mad… I mean, taking very serious notes about the meeting. Here they are:

Inspired by a recent design by Anthony Browne for the IBBY Congress brochure. But a mean version of his nice monkey.

Inspired by listening a discussion of using a church for a conference venue while sneaking peeks at a mustachioed bust sitting up on the meeting room mantle piece

Hey, I have two pages in the latest Spring Issue of Carousel magazine! I’ve written about my comics, making collaborative comics, a couple activity ideas, and the amazing way that reading comics gets kids immediately wanting to make their own stories. I’m chuffed they decided to use the sheep-robot combat photo with Mo-bot High author Neill Cameron and me, and the cover of Airship by David O’Connell and me (which you can read here).

Here’s the Carousel cover. You can also catch a one-page article by the writer of Morris the Mankiest Monster, Giles Andreae.

Back to meeting doodles. Here’s novelist Bali Rai.

Just before the meeting, I grabbed a quick bowl of Ukrainian borsch at a Polish restaurant near South Kensington tube station with three of the committee people. Here in the foreground you can see writer and poet Helen Pielichaty and writer-illustrator Nicola Smee; writer-poet-songwriter John Dougherty and I are mucking about in the cafe mirror.

There’s a bust of Voltaire that keeps the mustachioed dude company in the meeting room. He looks a bit envious, his toga is no match for the ‘tache.