Category: books

Children’s Book Council of Australia Awards, 2012

Brilliant brilliant news…

The Last Viking cover

My debut book The Last Viking, written by Norman Jorgensen, has been shortlisted in the Children’s Book Council of Australia Awards 2012!

We scored two mentions:

  • Notable Book, Picture Book of the Year category
  • Shortlisted Book, Early Childhood category

I’m very surprised and very chuffed. It’s one of those cliches… ever since I was a kid, I dreamed that one day one of my books would have the shiny CBCA sticker on the cover- and now it’s happened, hooray! It’s a great honour and a great affirmation. Congrats Norm! And thanks to the CBCA 🙂

Last Viking shortlisted for 4 awards

Norman Jorgensen and I received great news this year regarding our children’s book, The Last Viking. It has been shortlisted for 4 awards!

  • the 2012 Western Australian Young Readers’ Book Awards
  • the 2012 Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature
  • the 2012 Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators’ Crystal Kite Awards
  • the 2011 Aurealis Awards for Australian fantasy, science fiction and horror creators

It’s a great buzz to be nominated with Norman, and also to be nominated alongside illustrators that I look up to.

Award nominations

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.

The goodbye scene

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

earlier-goodbye-scene
First go
early-goodbye-scene
second go

Continue reading “The goodbye scene”

The Last Viking launch

Viking VIPs
(L-R: Author Norman Jorgensen, Illustrator- me, Kris Williams, our editor Cate Sutherland, Fremantle Children’s Literature Centre director Lesley Reece)

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.

Continue reading “The Last Viking launch”

Review: Alphabet Soup magazine

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.

Let the Pillaging Begin!

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…

More sneak peeks…

There’s only four weeks to go until the launch!

So here’s four sneak peeks to celebrate.

Here’s Josh meeting the bullies…

pg 15 final colour

Prince Knut and his trusty Wolfhound going a-Viking…

pg21 colour

a proper Viking funeral…

pg22 colour

and Odin, Thor and the Bezerkers preparing for battle.

pg25 colour

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.

The all important opening scene- part 4 (final colours)

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:

p2-3-pencils-final
final pencils

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.

p2-3-colour-v1
The light is too bright, almost like a spotlight, or a UFO

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)”