’t have many picture books when I was growing up, but I remember my parents reading fairytales to me. When I got a bit older, I got into comics. I liked a Danish comic about pancake-loving bear cub Petzi – in Denmark he is called Rasmus Klump. I then moved

-witted and almost invincible.* His sidekick Snowy is a constant companion (since the ageless Tintin never has any love interest) and with his fondness for whisky he makes a great comic contrast to goody-goody Tintin.  * The baddies are just so bad - and very un

’re not “proper reading”? I think it’s the fact that my cartoons are in book form that is elevating them from comic books to something that feels a little bit more like literature, but I don’t think anyone really takes these books seriously, including myself

lovely hand drawn picture of Father Christmas - but pointed out that he already had an idea for his next book. Raymond Briggs' comic-book style with minimal text was a real inspiration for me. It's part of the reason why my first attempts at writing

The blue, Belgian community-dwelling cartoon characters can only reach a maximum height the equivalent of three crab apples but have made an enormous cultural impact with their own comic books, television series, music career, films and computer games

from the “whirr, whirr” of the sewing machine, a chirpy “pom pom pom de pom” as Archie takes a stroll, and a “ring, ring” as the phone tinkles with orders. “I’ve always been a fan of those kinds of words that have a comic-book feel,” she says. “Plus

popular books including Each Peach Pear Plum (I spy Tom Thumb) and The Jolly Postman, both of which were illustrated by his late wife, Janet. In this instance, the initial inspiration was not actually literary, but musical. “It’s based on Bach’s Goldberg

http://www.madeformums.com/cl.asp?cn=648Keep it simple with babies“Choose books with simple images and text – remember you are buying the book for your baby, not for yourself” says Rod Campbell, author of Dear Zoo. “Point to objects and say

Park to sketch the birds, and I was listening to all the different calls and thinking it would be lovely to include them all in a story somehow. It seemed very comical, as one bird would start squawking, then others would join in until they were

their parents read them a book about pants. Beyond that, Andreae’s flowing rhymes and Sharratt’s comic illustrative style raise the silliness stakes as the book explores various pants and how they might suit different incongruous settings. Great fun