GOING BETWEEN WORLDS

There's always a scary moment, going between worlds - a shock when Alice falls through the rabbit hole or, in The Lion the Witch and theWardrobe, when Lucy pushes through the fur coats at the back of the wardrobe and  finds herself standing in the middle of a dark,snowy forest.

'Lucy felt a little frightened but she felt very inquisitive and excited as well'. 
In my new book, The Little White Sprite, I've used these three feelings:  fear, curiosity and excitement in a story suitable for picture book age, where a child squeezes through a hole in a hollow tree and enters another world. This is the picture that shows the scary moment of entry. I make sure I follow it with a much more reassuring one once the child finds his feet. I won't give away what happens but, once in this 'other' world, the child will have to eventually find his way out again and arrive safely back with his family.

COLOUR



The other day, I looked through the completed spreads of my new picture book. I find, if I refrain from looking at them for several days, I can see everything afresh and any anomalies jump out at me. As I followed the visual sequence, my eye moved smoothly from page to page until I reached the tenth spread when I got a colour jolt where there was a sharp colour change, quite out of sync with the rhythm of the story. I'd forgotten I still had spread  9 on its board and so had accidently jumped from spread 8 to spread 10.   Had I needed a climax there, a colour jolt like this would have been a good way of achieving it.
    So it was with relief I inserted spread 9 in its correct position and could see it act as a colour transition, in harmony with a change taking place in the story at that point.
  I'd always known that each page of a picture book has its own feeling and atmosphere but I don't think I'd been fully conscious, while painting, of the subtle part colour plays in the dynamic and overall rhythm of a story.

THE PHILIPPA PEARCE MEMORIAL LECTURE

This year the Philippa Pearce Memorial Lecture was given by Michael Morpurgo in the Seven Stories Children's Book Centre in Newcastle. It's normally held at Homerton College in Cambridge. Here some of the Cambridge contingent, among them Morag Stiles and Diana Boston, are met by the Collection Director, Sarah Lawrence.

Michael talked about following in Philippa Pearce's footsteps. Afterwards he and his wife, Clare, joined  members of the Pearce Memorial Lecture committee and Seven Stories for dinner at the Hotel du Vin.

    The following day a group of us was shown around the archive which is in Gateshead, some distance from the Seven Stories Centre. I loved seeing the artists' dummies and roughs. On this occasion, Sarah got out ones by Harold Jones, Edward Ardizonne and John Lawrence as well as showing us the new Enid Blyton archive.

Follow the link to find out more about the Pearce Memorial Lecture: http://www.pearcelecture.com/ and come along next year to hear Philip Pullman.

DRAWING DOGS

I'd love to have a dog but cannot, so I draw them instead. Dogs feature in the three books I'm currently working on. There's a small dog with those little eyebrows that dogs sometimes have in The Little White Sprite. In the story, it's the dog who sees the boy disapppear through a hole in an old hollow tree. And it's the dog who is able to call him back to 'where he belongs' - back to his family.

In the book that is to follow The Little White Sprite the dog is large and shaggy. I once had a dog like that - half sheepdog, half wolf hound. This story explores a friendship between a little girl and her Dear Old Dog - a friendship that doesn't always run smoothly.

Now I'm beginning to think of another story and another dog- one that manages to undo all the hardwork of two boys. I think it will have to be one of those sharp nosed whispy dogs, though I do like this little terrier called Buttons:



MOVED

This blog has moved from its old URL: http://grannytale.blogspot.com/

GRANNY'S TALE

When I called my blog Granny's Tale I had in mind my father, Paul Coltman's poem, Granny's Tale. Here's an extract from the first issue of Words-the New Literary Forum by Phillip Vine about Granny's Tale:

'In 1980 four of the United Kingdom's foremost poets met together under the auspices of the Arvon Poetry Foundation to decide upon that year's prizewinning poems in one of the most prestigious of the national poetry competitions. This foursome, who in 1984 might have formed the final shortlist for the vacant Poet Laureateship, were struggling for agreement upon a poem called GRANNY'S TALE. Seamus Heaney did not like it much  and talked of its whimsicality; Ted Hughes was explaining that when he started reading it he thought it was mere whimsy but that it had got a hold on him and he now thought it "strong"; Charles Causley, however, was the poem's strongest advocate, talking of its brilliance and of the "real invention of its language" and describing it as a "tour de force. In the final analysis, all four judges, including Philip Larkin, agreed that it was one of the most original poems in the competition and awarded it a fourth prize of £250'.

In 1985 Granny's Tale was published by Andre Deutsch and Farrar Strauss and Giroux with my illustrations as a sort of cross-over book for both adults and children. This proved a bit innovative at that time and, despite being highly Commended in the Kate Greenaway Award, it didn't take off.

The granny I painted was inspired by two old sisters living in a remote part of Southern Ireland - the Miss Collins. I'd visited them once with my father-in-law, a man of the cloth. He warned me not to accept any food  or drink unless it was pure spirits on account of the filthy state of their cottage. The old ladies, in sack cloth aprons, were delighted with our visit and were not at all put out when I refused a raw egg to suck. They enjoyed being sketched. 

As I'll shortly be changing the name and URL of this blog, I'd like to make this post an epitaph to both Granny's Tales.

AUGUST RECOLLECTIONS

I find August a relaxing month even when I work right through it - something to do with everyone around me going away and leaving behind a quiet absence - or recollections of all those long gone August seaside holidays which cast a pleasant atmosphere over my working day. I recall it rained a lot on those holidays confining three energetic boys and a very large dog to a small cottage for hours on end. It was John Verney's books that always saved the day - each holiday he leant us a new one for reading aloud - Friday's Tunnel, February's Road, Seven Sunflower Seeds, Samson's Hoard were the ones I remember.

They were humorous and had rip roaring adventures and everyone became absorbed  and listened quietly until the sun came out again.

Later, I read Going to the Wars, a story of Verney's time with the North Somerset Yeomanry and then the Royal Armoured Corps after war broke out in 1939.  It was a wonderful book crying out for a sequel about his escape from an Italian POW camp, but nobody could persuade him to revisit that time of his life and he settled down to humorous painting. I still have his Dodo-pad and one of his Culpepper Cushions and my last memory of him was in his studio, painting chests of drawers with naughty knobs.