Update: Stars With Flaming Tails Won the CLiPPA Award!

Stars With Flaming Tales won the CLiPPA award for poetry!

The CLiPPA (Centre for Literacy in Primary Poetry Award) is solely presented for published poetry for children in the UK. Established in 2003, the Poetry Award encourages and celebrates outstanding poetry published for children.

– CLPE

Here are some poems from the collection.

I enjoyed working with poet Valerie Bloom on the anthology of poems for children called Stars With Flaming Tails. It was the first time I have illustrated poetry, and hopefully not the last.

A few years back during a literary event, we had talked about possibly working together, but neither of us knew how exactly that might happen… the catalyst turned out to be our publisher, Janetta Otter-Barry.

I worked digitally in black and white. Together with the team – Valerie Bloom, Ariana Osti (designer), and Janetta Otter-Barry (publisher and editor)- we created a very powerful, meaningful book.

But don’t take my word for it, the reviews from Achuka and the blog of the live event hosted by the University of Manchester give a really good idea of what to expect if you get a chance to buy the book.

Illustrating digitally meant that I could use the time-lapse feature to great effect during the live event. This was a great alternative to trying to do a live drawing in front of a camera!


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