Shockheaded Peter
Nine of the ten stories in Dr Heinrich Hoffman’s seminal picture book are what you would call cautionary tales. Misbehaving or disobedient kids get their comeuppance: some consequences are rather lenient – the boy who walks around with his head in the clouds gets rescued from the river and loses only his writing book; some […]
The Word Tree
I confess I have spent too many minutes gazing at the image below: a tree made from the words used in the book. It works better as a summary than any of the blurbs I’ve composed so far. It’s all there. You get the main players in one glance (Boy, Girl, Park, Tree). Linger for […]
Who is FF Williams?
Who is FF Williams, the illustrator of my new book? Truth is, I don’t know. I have never met him. And perhaps it is better that way–it preserves the mystery. Fred was recommended to me by my friend the graphic designer, Joseph Bradley Hill. I looked at his work on his now-defunct tumblr ‘Themanwhohasfailed’ as […]
First Post
Oh, the anxieties of the first time. You want it to be special. You want it to be right. You want to make an entrance, to set the tone, to start as you mean to continue, as if your first words will be more significant than those that follow, as significant as those you utter […]