There’s a new page here (top right) called SCHOOL THINGS. It has colouring-in sheets, a word jumble, the sheet of images of “Strange” the cat from The Night Garden, and a rogue’s gallery of some of the pictures I’ve created when visiting schools – as directed by the kids in the class.

They’re free to use but subject to copyright (so do let CAL know you’re using them and ask me if you want to reproduce them in a publication).

I’d love to know what you think and if you have any suggestions. And I’ll be gradually adding more things so keep coming back to check.

Also if your kids have used the material and come up with something special – send it in and we’ll make a gallery of their artwork. Then they’ll be famous!

And there’s a new thing…

I know how hard it is to draw a character over and over again in the same story, so I’ve put together a sheet of images of Strange, the cat from The Night Garden. So kids, how about you make your own stories about Strange? What adventures will you give him? What backgrounds will you come up with? Simply save the page to your computer, print it out, then cut and paste him into your own book. Maybe you’ll make your own front cover for the book? Don’t forget your teacher may be able to use a photocopier to make the pictures bigger or smaller.

And if you do use them I’d love to see your books! Maybe we can make a gallery of some of your favourite pages. Keep in touch

Hey guys, I’m going to be doing an online chat for an Online Literature Festival next Tuesday 15th September at 1.30pm (EST). It’s all about making characters and is officially geared at Lower Primary. Schools may well still be able to join in and I’d love to chat and share ideas for coming up with cool characters for your stories.

x

elise

The Night Garden $25
Where’s God? $25
The Elephants’ Big Day Out $20
Maximilian Jones $20
A Dream of Bunyips Dancing $20
Ali the Bold Heart $20

If you’re a school wanting to do a big order please email me and I’ll send details of how to do that.

It’s possible that I have some of the only copies left for a couple of those books. Very sad but true. And seeing as I will have the rights back for a few of them soon I have to decide what I will do. Can I reprint myself? Tricky as it’s so expensive in Australia. I still like the books very much and so do the kids! They don’t date and the idea of having the books disapear from the world is just so sad.

Maybe a great-looking dvd with the books being read aloud, the illustrations on screen and an accompanying colouring-in book?

What do we do when we want our books to live on?

Speaking of monsters – I must tell you about what I saw in the night-time in Ipswich… I was by the river bank, standing on the cold planks of the boardwalk with the stars overhead. Lights were reflecting on the river from the buildings across the way. Dark shadows obscured the far shore, beneath us the poles disappeared amongst the reeds. I was watching branches and shadows floating in the current. “Just wait,” said Jenny. “I don’t know if they’re out tonight. It may take a little while…” But there they were. A light shape in the corner of my eye. I looked again. Rising up from the river’s depths – a ghostly shape, and then another, flitting past – fins swishing, tails a quick flick under the water. I stood there for a long time as they slid past again and again. Once one of them paused, slowly turning a eye to the night sky and sinking deep again. Three monsters. You may see them if you go. But then again, you may not.

The next time I post I will be in Broome, or just returned. A week of visiting kids and communities… of sun and pearls and sand and stories. Wish me luck!

The evening before I was driving back from a Bendigo festival.

The festival was a good event. I was there for a joint exhibition of my and John Nicholson’s work, with accompanying talks. Early Friday afternoon I arrived at the Phyllis Palmer Gallery at Bendigo’s La Trobe Campus and set up a glass case-full of my thoughts, inspirations, art materials, and nick-knacks. There was so much inside… A model plane Pete made for me as reference for a book, roughs, foreign editions, origami rabbits, a little plastic Eiffel tower, japanese prints, a fake eye, owl sculpture, feathers… that kind of thing. It felt weird to basically put my brain on display. Everything was meaningful – especially early sketchbooks from my first year of uni and a drawing my grandfather did when Pete and I moved into our house in 2000. The rest of the exhibition was put together wonderfully by the curator, Paul Morris, who framed and hung and documented it all despite being sick and having had a hell of a month himself. Thanks Paul! We had the opening that night, dinner at a local restaurant and welcome sleep at the beautiful Bishopscourt B&B. I must mention that Hazel Edwards, a co-presenter, had a confessional in her room. I don’t know if she used it. Mine had a little heater which I curled up in front of on the floor and could easily have spent the night there until I found the bed had an electric blanket. The next morning there was ice on the windows of the car so it wasn’t just me!

On Saturday I did a couple of talks – to adults for a change – walking around the gallery and moving through ideas, showing dummy books and ending up at the Night Garden work, my Moleskines and a couple of the oils I’ve done for my forthcoming exhibition. This was the best part. It’s pretty strange and wonderful to get the opportunity to gather work representing the last 12 years of illustration, what I have tried to achieve and how the work and the way I work has changed. There were over 20 paintings – encompassing Bunyips, Elephants, Max, Where’s God, What About Me, the Night Garden and the dummy book from Ali the Bold Heart. I got to read The Night Garden and got a few join-in Awroos too

Going further back into the week saw me fly to Brisbane on Monday evening, and drive out to Ipswich with Jenny Stubbs and her sister for three days of school visits and a workshop. I went to the wonderful West Moreton College and had a lot of fun with the kids there. And then to Lowood who had never had an author or illustrator visit them before. They were terrific – with questions and honest enthusiastic responses to everything. It was an absolute pleasure! And then on the last day, a workshop with talented young artists… as seen here!

Which brings me to the secret pleasure of Festivals. Amongst everything is the odd moment to talk, in between things, to other authors, illustrators, lecturers, librarians and people who just love what they do. You trade experiences, insights, thoughts and processes. You cut straight to the things that you want to talk about most. In the last week I’ve had many opportunities for that and it’s been great. Talking to Jenny Stubbs who took such good care of me and organised everything in Ipswich, talking to the organisers and presenters at Bendigo… what a pleasure. A much as we do these events for the kids – I think these opportunities are even more important sometimes – especially to those of us who work so much in isolation.

It’s been very interesting to see how my approach to story has changed when I’m not getting tied into knots by the words. Like any story I have a certain amount of plot worked out early on, but whereas normally I’d jump straight in and begin writing, this time I have to work more thematically and structurally. When I talk to kids about planning pictures and why you’d want to do it, I often ask if they’ve even drawn a person, starting with all the fun detail of a face but by the time they come to draw the feet – there’s no room for them on the page. It’s much the same in writing – that temptation to leap in without a plan. When I wrote the Night Garden, I had a lot of ideas and a string of scenes I liked. I rewrote each page so many times, coming up with dozens of alternate sentences. There were some lovely phrases and images, bits of word play and patterns but I was floundering around. And I wonder now if the experience might have been different if I’d spent more time right at the beginning without the words, imaging the story and what was behind it and what I really really wanted to convey. Would it have been easier to write?

I did finally do some thematic work. Pete just reminded me that he made me do lots at one stage when I was particularly lost. I had written a version with quite a bit of rhyme but was asked to pare that back by the publishers. When I stripped it away, I realised that there just wasn’t a strong enough story beneath it. I had some good parts in the middle, but I was finding the beginning and end difficult. So I stopped and thought about what it was really all about. I decided that the story was about a few things – wanting change and new things, the two-edged nature of having your wishes answered, and how you really see the good in what you have when you remove yourself from it for a while. And finally I knew what the beginning and end needed to say.

And it did help.

With this new wordless book, there is no safety net of words to fill in the gaps and give us extra information. I have to make the pictures, or sequence of pictures, give us everything – feelings, plot, thoughts, emotions… convey confusion and misunderstanding, express reasoning, and at times, dialogue! I can’t link scenes together with repeated phrases, I can’t convey advanced concepts by describing them. I have to find visual metaphors for everything, from the smallest idea to the biggest underlying themes.

Stripping away the text could be something I make myself do with every book, just for a little while. To make me ask – what is really happening here and what is the story trying to say? What would the pictures have to convey at any certain time if there were no words, nothing that said – he was very sad, or she realised as soon as she stepped out of the house that she had chosen badly. How important is that information to the story? How else can I show it? Now putting back the words I ask myself – do these actually work hard enough?

I don’t think there’s any one way to write or illustrate. Different methods achieve different things. If you want to just play and see what happens (and it doesn’t matter if the feet don’t fit on the page) then leap, dive, pull off your shoes and socks and get creative. See what happens. I bet you’ll get lots of ideas and feel invigorated. But when it gets complex and when it does start to matter that the feet are on the page, that the story is strong, that the book says something, that we’re going somewhere in the story – perhaps a little silence can help to get to the core of a project.