A love letter to illustrators

I love art. I love drawing and painting and snipping out bits of paper and material, making little gorgeous things from fimo... I could go on. So when I realised my writing was heading in a picture book direction, I wanted in! I wanted to do the illustrations and create the theatre, the magic between...

The Lost Books

I love books! Had you noticed? I love to stroke them and sniff them. I love the words and the stories and the rhythms and the structures. I love the illustrations and the play between them and the text, and the theatre of it all. I love getting review books and exploring my amazing local...

Books matter! How books saved our week

I had such a lovely response to yesterday's blog post with lots of Twitter discussion about the importance of books in the school transition process. It all made me feel so privileged to have access to such a wonderful range of picture books to support my daughter, her friends, and the children from The Rainbow...

Fitting in – help with new places and faces.

Sometimes a book comes along at just the right moment. September is the month for starting school, moving into a new class or to a new school, getting used to new places and faces, finding out about yourself and making new friends. It can be a challenging and emotional time. What better way to help...

The Rainbow Library Two

On Friday evening my good friend Gem came over to pick up the first batch of books for The Rainbow Library's second location. Alcohol was consumed, pizza was made and munched, and books were rifled through. There was much chatter about how to encourage the children and adults to get involved and use the library,...

Gender non-specific characters

During discussions about the lack of female characters in children's picture books, I've noticed a few people saying that they swap the genders of characters as they read books to their children. It's easy enough to say 'she' rather than 'he' as you read along, and it can do wonders to balance out the genders....

The Rainbow Library is expanding!

The summer holidays are coming to an end. Parents are hurriedly labelling uniforms and buying last minute lunch boxes and pencil cases. Children are squeezing as much fun, sun and ice cream as possible into the last few days. I am sorting books. This summer, our house has been entirely taken over by books! I...