A big congratulations to Julia Donaldson on the last day of being Children's Laureate. She gave some parting words, about children's books in the media, which you can read here. Being Children's Laureate isn't just an honour, it's a big job. I recently talked with Jon Klassen, who won the Caldecott Medal in the USA for I Want My Hat Back, and I could hardly believe the amount of stuff he's expected to do.



A few more links:
* Did you see Chris Riddell has a new sketch blog? Amazing stuff. You can see some photos from a visit I made to his studio awhile back, here.

* Alex T. Smith has drawn a lovely tribute to his grandmother. You can follow his sketchblog on Twitter under the hashtag #DrawnDiary.

* And Nick Abadzis linked to an article on Jezebel about a new Cheerios ad featuring a biracial family that apparently has had very mixed reactions in the USA. I forget, living in London in 2013, that this is still an issue in places, but kudos to Cheerios for the ad. I've just finished drawing a picture book with a biracial family and I've been told by some people that this might injure my chances of getting a co-edition in places like the USA, Japan and Scandanavia. But perhaps other people will like the book more because of it, who knows. Anyway, the people in the book are more concerned with a shark in their bathtub, not their race.