Hey, guess what I'm doing right now? I'm listening to the SEAWIGS AUDIO BOOK! The actor's doing the Iris the mermaid voice at the moment and it's making me laugh so much. Mr and Mrs Crisp, Oliver's parents, don't sound at all like I imagined but much better and more funny. Here's the brilliant chappie who reads it, actor Clive Mantle. (You can read about him here.)



And here's the Oliver and the Seawigs audio book! I think you can download it several places, but this BBC site has a very reasonable price. Of course, it's not as good as the printed book because you MISS ALL MY ILLUSTRATIONS, but it's a great companion piece, or for car journeys, or if you're visually impaired. I would make a terrible audio reader because I'd keep stopping to tell people about the pictures and go on and on.



And on another subject, here's a fascinating thing I found on the Internet, tweeted by Emma Kennedy: the art of fore-edge book painting. I occasionally did this to my school text books when I was a kid (no one could see, ha ha!) but I can imagine it might take off again, with all these beautiful gift books coming out, to rival digital books. You can read about it here and watch several videos.