penny farthing

Here’s today’s morning sketch. Yesterday my friend Dan and I went on a long cycling adventure through London that took us up the canals, past the pirate ships in Wapping, through the Dickensian backstreets near London Bridge and by the houseboat neighbourhoods in the Surrey docks. It felt great to get out.

Right now all the publishers are trying their darnedest to sell books at the Bologna Book Fair, the biggest children’s book selling event of the year. If Random House and Scholastic can sell the rights to reprint our books to lots of other countries, it could make finances much easier around here, fingers crossed! I went to Bologna last year to get a first-hand look at the fair, eat gelato, drink prosecco, and attend the bi-annual SCBWI conference. Lots to do here, but I’m kind of sad I’m not there this year; I had so much fun running into all sorts of writers and illustrators and browsing through the French and Korean book stalls.