Tom and Matt: The Baddie and The Horrible Princess

How exciting!

Sarah, the brilliant art director/ book designer extraordinaire over at Meadowside Children's Books, has just sent these photos over.

They show the hot-of-the-press advance copies of my two new books.

(Brilliantly) Written by ( the very nice and tremendously talented) Anna Maxted, they tell the story of brothers Tom and Matt (and their little brother - Baby) who go on two amazing adventures.

THE BADDIE takes place in Deep Space when Tom and Matt find that their parents have been kidnapped by the dastardly BADDIE. Thank goodness the two brothers have their blasters and a cardboard box spaceship so they can come to the rescue and (hopefully) save the day!

In THE HORRIBLE PRINCESS, Isabella (or IS-A-SMELLA) the little girl from over the road, kidnaps Matt's best toy - Baby Dragon. The boys, their little brother Baby and a new, enormous, fire-breathing friend, are determined to get Baby Dragon back. What follows is a terrifically exciting adventure involving knights and dragons, a castle with a deep, dark dungeon, Kung-Fu fighting dolls and lots and lots of enchanted frogs!

Both books were such fun to illustrate and I can't wait for them to hit the bookshops.

The Baddie is publishing at the end of July this year with The Horrible Princess following in September. You can pre-order both books here and here!

Mysteries ( of all descriptions!)

Another image from my sketchbook.

A mystery story seems to be developing within the pages of my sketchbook. Firstly there was the siblings following footprints across a frosty moor, then the rabbit and mouse investigating a doorway in a dark alley and now this - stern faced Victorians and a little boy and his uncle following a thief  in a jungle temple who is making off with some treasure. I think a story might be brewing  and that's exciting.

Talking of mysteries and treasure look what I found at the weekend:

Jem's parent's were up to visit us this week and after having afternoon tea in Betty's tearoom we went for a rummage in an antique fayre. I got the above - it's a child's film star scrap book from the 1930s and it's incredible. The effort put into cutting out these images and gluing them in is fantastic and this will be a brilliant resource for my artwork... but I'm just wondering who created it??

And here is something else I've been meaning to show you:

A while ago we bought a chest of drawers from a vintage furniture shop and all the drawers were stuffed full of brown paper and card - I'm assuming to protect the drawers whilst it was being transported. Once we'd got the chest of drawers into position I cleared the drawers and found this tucked into a crack at the back. It was actually a negative, but a bit of photoshop magic revealed the picture - a family portrait from I think, the 1930s. Isn't it brilliant?! But what I want to know is who are they? Where did they live? What did they do? 

I'd love to know... but maybe the magic comes from the mystery of not knowing.