Hi everyone,
Norm and I have some excellent news to share for 2012. The Last Viking has been shortlisted for three awards!
- 2012 Western Australian Young Readers’ Book Awards
- 2012 Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature
- 2012 Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators’ Crystal Kite Awards
It’s a great honour to have The Last Viking listed alongside books by Australian and international greats, like Shaun Tan, Bruce Whatley, Alison Lester and Chris van Allsburg.
There’s a scene in Last Viking where Josh arrives at Nan and Pop’s house, says goodbye to his mum and dad, and watches them drive off. Sounds simple enough. It took Norm and I a few goes to get it right.
The text and pictures would have to achieve a number of things- introduce Nan and Pop, introduce the setting, and show Josh’s close relationship with his Mum and Dad. The text and pictures couldn’t show Josh’s parents leaving in a way that implied they were dumping him so they could go away for the weekend together… it had to be sensitive.
The first and second goes didn’t achieve these things :p
It was a dark and stormy night…
Actually, it was. Norm and I had been watching the weather forecast all week, wondering what the heavens would bring on the Friday night of our launch. By Tyr’s Day, we could see that rain was likely. By Wodin’s Day, rain was certain. Come Freyja’s Day, when the wind didn’t let up all day, we knew a storm was brewing. Thor was angry. The joke going around was that his invite had been lost on it’s way to Asgard. But maybe that was true, and he thought we were snubbing him… and when you snub a Norse god, you get a once-in-10-years weather event. Thirty millimetres of rain fell in 30 minutes: the precise 30 minutes in which our guests were en route to the launch.
Thanks to Rebecca Newman of Alphabet Soup magazine for the following review of The Last Viking.
If you don’t know anything about Vikings yet, you’ll know heaps about them by the time you finish The Last Viking. The illustrations are fun and cartoon-like and if you’re a super sleuth, you’ll notice that on some of the pages there are messages written in code—rune carvings. At the back of the book (on the endpapers) you’ll find the key to crack the code.
Keep an eye out for the ravens in the book, too. In Norse mythology they are Odin’s messengers, and in The Last Viking, they keep the Viking gods updated on Josh/Knut’s progress.
The Last Viking is an exciting adventure about courage, imagination and dealing with bullies.
Time to go a-viking!
You can read the whole thing here.
It’s only three weeks until we launch The Last Viking!
The Last Viking launch
Friday June 24
6pm for a 6:30pm start
Fremantle Children’s Literature Centre (Old Prison Hospital)
cnr Knutsford and Hampton Rd, Fremantle
RSVP to Fremantle Press on (08) 9430 6331 or email admin@fremantlepress.com.au
Come invade the Literature Centre and help us celebrate.
Here’s the book trailer to get you in the Viking mood…
It’s here: an honest-to-goodness book trailer for The Last Viking.
Everyone’s doing book trailers these days, so we thought we should too. Yep, that’s how Norm and I roll, so easily swayed by peer pressure.
Hope you like it.
There’s only four weeks to go until the launch!
So here’s four sneak peeks to celebrate.
Here’s Josh meeting the bullies…
Prince Knut and his trusty Wolfhound going a-Viking…
a proper Viking funeral…
and Odin, Thor and the Bezerkers preparing for battle.
My favourite part of this last image is the bottom right-hand corner. I put in a bird poo for a joke. At the time I didn’t realise that when people were going to turn this page, that’s exactly where they would have to put their thumb.
Over the last 3 weeks I’ve shown the process of developing the opening scene of Last Viking. I covered the first roughs, some more developed ideas, and the final pencils.
I’d gotten up to here:
and now this week: the final colours.
My first go wasn’t too bad- but the night-time panel wasn’t dark enough. It seemed like early morning, and Josh would (should) be asleep by then 🙂 I wasn’t sure about the colours in the day-time panel either. But I liked the blur of colour from the left-hand panel across the gutter.
When I had tried colours for a few pages, I started to see that sometimes it looked good if just a few things were coloured in, and other parts were left white. So I tried that. And I darkened up the night-time panel.
Continue reading “The all important opening scene- part 4 (final colours)”
The first review appeared in the inboxes of Norman and I this morning…
The Last Viking scored 4 out of 5 stars and made the Top Picks list in the upcoming issue of Junior BOOKSELLER+PUBLISHER.
“Norman Jorgensen’s writing and James Foley’s illustrations complement each other perfectly in this charming story about courage and imagination. As in all the best picture books, the words allow room for the cartoonish, expressive art to expand and deepen the story.
Keen readers can even decipher the runic inscriptions adorning the illustrations with the help of the decoder in the endpapers.
This is recommended fun for primary school readers.”
Heath Graham, educator, State Library of Victoria- reviewing for Junior BOOKSELLER+PUBLISHER
Over the past two weeks I’ve shown the development for the opening scene of Last Viking. Here’s the first roughs, and here’s some more developed ideas.
This week I’ll show the final rough and pencil outlines, and how I got there.
I’d decided the scene would take place in Josh’s bedroom. He’d be in a cubby house with his dog at night, and there’d also be a panel on the right set in the morning.
Here’s the closest I’d got so far:
My next experiment would be trying a more dramatic birds-eye perspective. I did some smaller thumbnails:
James Foley 