A Spot of Spying...

This morning, I sat in on the launch of my new friend, Caryl Hart's latest picture book: Don't Dip Your Chips in Your Drink, Kate! in Sheffield's Central Library.

It was a real treat, not just because the book is great fun, or because I got to see Caryl again and meet her lovely family, but because it's rare I get the opportunity to see fellow authors or illustrators strutting their stuff.

It all went brilliantly. Caryl's book is in rhyme, so she invented a rhyming machine especially for the launch. The invited children from Watercliffe Meadow School loved it, and we made up of silly food-based rhymes:

Jake, Jake baked a cake,

Jelly, jelly in your welly,

Bread, bread, crumbs in your bed!

At the end of Caryl's story, a little girl goes to tea with the Queen (another little girl, with even worse table manners!). Orchard Books printed the tea party scene (wonderfully illustrated by Leigh Hodgkinson) as a massive board. The children were given fairy-cakes to colour and stick onto the picture. Even we grown ups had great fun with it.

And then... there were REAL fairy cakes, in all colours of the rainbow, one for everyone! The kids were in heaven as you can imagine and, thank goodness, nobody was sick...

Caryl and I resisted temptation because, after the event, the publisher took us out for a lovely lunch (thanks Nicola!).

Back to work now though: my new batch of visits has started in earnest, with Sheffield's Off The Shelf festival today, then Monday starts Corby's 2 day Big Draw extravaganza I blogged about earlier, followed by a Wednesday at my exhibition (more details in tomorrow's post).

Then on Thursday I am with Looked After Children for Bag-A-Book Day at Sheffield Wednesday Football Club, of all places. I can't kick a ball to save my life, so thank goodness I'm just reading stories and drawing as usual!

I'll let you know how it all goes, when I've time to draw breath.