Aye Write!

It must be spring if it's Aye Write! Another wonderful, exhausting, exhilarating trip to Glasgow to meet up with the marvellous Moira Munro, illustrator of my PUPPY and KITTEN books, and MONKEY BUSINESS. Moira is a whirlwind of creative talent, writing and illustrating her own picture books about the lovable teddy bear, Hamish, as well as illustrating my books for Macmillan and other titles for educational publishers.

The children we met were blown away by Moira's Rolf-Harris-style superfast sketches which she produced on a large flip chart to choruses of "Oooooh!" and "Wow!" We had a lot of fun getting our audiences to suggest silly scenarios for animals getting stuck in weird and wonderful places, and Moira sketched the lot. Then it was the children's turn to pick up pencil and paper and scribble away. From there we moved on to inventing short stories about how the animals might have found their way into those strange places.

Uncle Zed, from MONKEY BUSINESS had an outing too. Not only did Moira produce a perfect picture of him (she can read my mind, that girl), but I also had to act him out so that the children could ask him questions. One question was "You have a secret habit you don't like to talk about: what is it?" Thinking fast, Zed replied: "It's a bit gross, man, but I have to say I just lurrrrve to chew my toenails."

Hmmm. I think I'll be having words with Zed.