Here are some details of an event I’ll be running in Tokyo in August with SCBWI. Please do come along if you’re able! SCBWI Tokyo Illustration Day with John Shelley: Breathing Life Into Your Pictures Power up your pictures! Give your illustrations vitality and zest! This SCBWI Tokyo Illustration Day featuring illustrator John Shelley will focus on techniques that children’s illustrators use to create resonance in their work and will explore how visual psychology works to co

With a picture book deadline around the corner I wasn’t sure I’d be able to get away to Bologna this year, but thank goodness I did go, it was an excellent Fair. As one of the organisers of the SCBWI Illustrator’s Display Portfolio my involvement in the Fair began several months ago. Just before flying I was interviewed for the Cynsations blog, before putting paint brushes aside and jumping on a plane to Bologna. I arrived in the middle of the first day of the Fair and went s

Recently I gave a talk in London at the Japan Foundation for the UK branch of the International Children’s Bunko Association. The ICBA is a volunteer organization which provides Japanese language books and other materials like kamishibai for independent children’s library reading groups (called bunko) in various countries across the world. The UK branch has been running since the mid 1970’s and maintains many bunko groups in locations across the country. I was originally sche

Recently I was in Paris to run a workshop at the SCBWI France Conference and attend the Salon du Livre Jeunesse (Children’s Book Fair) in Montreuil. It was actually touch and go whether I’d get there at all, as services on both sides of the English Channel were crippled by severe winter weather. My Eurostar train was cancelled, passengers for all journeys were left in a first-come-first served queue that stretched almost outside St.Pancras Station. After a two hour wait I was