Here's a shaky picture I drew on the train up to Worcester, where I was going to do author events for Worcester University's Beeline Storytelling Festival:



The first thing I noticed when I arrived in Worcester on Thursday afternoon wasn't the bees, it was the swans. SO MANY SWANS.



On Friday morning, schools bused in children from nearby towns to join me for a big rollicking Grumpycorn session. Here's a photo tweeted as the children were arriving by Mrs Beasley from Somers Park Primary (@SomersPark2LE):



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Neither Philip Reeve nor I had been to Wimbledon BookFest before, and we had no idea when we went along yesterday, what a fabulous festival it would turn out to be!



The theatre space in the big festival tent was top-notch and it quickly filled with eager schoolchildren ready to talk books and draw with us. Here's a photo tweeted by Bishop Gilpin Primary School in Merton @BishopGilpinPS, where we're taking suggestions from the audience:



One of the amazing things about Wimbledon BookFest is that they got the sponsorship to give EVERY CHILD A BOOK! When you've spent an hour getting kids excited to read a story you've created, it's wonderful to know that they'll be able to go away and read it straight away. And it was wonderful getting to connect briefly with hundreds of children individually, to give them a book signed and dedicated specially to them. Here are a couple photos tweeted by Hall School Wimbledon @HswJunior:



Getting people drawing is a huge part of what we do at events; it pulls everyone in and gives them confidence that they can create a storybook character, and a structure that they can adapt to create different characters of their own. This time I taught them how to draw Cardigan Faun, one of the mythical creatures featured in our second Roly-Poly Flying Pony book, Kevin's Great Escape. (We have this and more free drawing tutorials on my website.) Aren't these great?! I love how they're all very competently drawn, but also each faun has its own fun personality.




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Here are some sketches I made of speakers at the SCBWI Picture Book Day conference on Saturday, in the beautiful CLPE children's book library behind the Old Vic Theatre in London. I'll try to blog more and post a few more photos soon!



Photo by Candy Gourlay, who organised the day with Mo O'Hara:





Edit: Wow, artist LZhi Ling Lee drew me - Thank you! 💛 Do go look at more of her art over on Instagram, at @curioszhi.

Today The Bookseller has run a version of my blog from yesterday, slightly rewritten so I could include some of the useful comments I got about it. You can read it in full here.



Here's yesterday's blog, with quite a few Twitter comments added at the bottom.

Check out these Seawigs tweeted by Holmewood House School in Tunbridge Wells! They're absolutely epic!!



This takes Flotsam and Jetsam to a whole new level.



Hat designers take note!



If you want to build your own Seawig, there are some materials on my website. Or just come up with a whole lots of stuff like Holemwood House and go EPIC with it!