“So what does winning mean to you?” I ask my ten-year-old daughter, after the initial excitement subsides. We had noticed Ginger & Pickles’ flyer advertising a Halloween poetry competition on a visit to their snug children’s bookshop in Edinburgh, during a family getaway. Their prompt was to write about a potion. I thrilled to see […]
Tag Archives | parenting
A journey to be savoured and shared: Illustrator, Judi Abbot talks about how to get more out of reading picture books with your kids
For artist, Judi Abbot, each book she illustrates is a journey, often lasting three months or longer. First, she reads the manuscript, “starts to understand the characters” and scavenges the text for clues about setting. “A reference to a scarf can suggest an entire world,” she notes. Then she experiments with exploratory sketches and researches […]
A Year in Squiggles
T’was the night before Christmas, and in my bright kitchen, I sat at my table, a scribblin’ and skitchin’. I wrapped up the skitchin’ (or rather, sketching) around midnight, and eight hours later, my kids (aged 9 and 13) discovered this under the tree: So begins my new annual tradition of tracking their year […]
I Will Survive (Just About…)
These days, I blink back tears when people try to make me laugh. I am too edgy to eat proper meals, and crave supersized sundaes with extra hot fudge. For breakfast. I tune out during business strategy meetings and scribble wish lists into the margins of my legal pads — “Good sense of humour. Cooks […]