If you would like to send me work that your class has produced, I can display the best examples in the website gallery.

NB: If you would like to send illustrations by e-mail, please bear in mind that they must be saved correctly to keep them small enough -

When I do illustration workshops with children, they often ask me if they can use speech bubbles for their characters. There is never any misunderstanding about what kind of text belongs in the speech bubbles. Quotation marks though, might seem a bit more confusing. However, the direct parallel between the two methods of indicating dialogue presents an ideal means of explanation, and a basis for activities.

Read the story 'I'll Be Your Friend Smudge'.
Discuss the difference between the narrative text and the dialogue.
Look at how dialogue is indicated by the use of quotation marks.

Cast children in the roles of the various animals then re-read the story, acting out the parts and using narrators to read the narrative text.

'I'll Be Your Friend Smudge' is told over 15 illustrations. Divide the class into groups of 15 and give one illustration, with it's associated text, to each child.
Ask each child to re-illustrate their page of the story. This may mean simply copying (but not tracing!) their picture, but encourage them to add as many new elements of their own as they can. Crucially however, in their version of the page, all dialogue should appear in speech bubbles.

Is all the non-dialogue text still needed? Can some of the narrative text be reworked to appear as dialogue instead? How does a play, or a television program, tell a story without any narrative text at all? What about a radio play, where you can't even see what's happening?

Back in their groups, get the children to re-write the story as a radio play, so that all the narrative sections are now told through dialogue and sound-effects. Responsibility can be divided between writers, transcribers, performers and sound-effects makers. Perform the different versions of the story and record them onto tape.

Some animals are always cast as 'baddies' in stories, even if they turn out good in the end, like Big Bad Wolf. Which other animals are often baddies? Which are usually goodies? Why do you think this is? Is it true? (discuss stereotypes) Which animals are associated with specific characteristics? (eg wise owls)

Sometimes the funniest or most interesting characters in stories have personalities opposite to what you would expect . Can anyone think of any examples of this in stories they know?

Read the story The Show at Rickety Barn. In what ways are the animals realistic / not realistic? What are the clues to their different personalities? Why might authors & illustrators create unrealistic animals? (discuss the humour in the book)

Invent some funny animal characters by using their features to suggest their personalities, or by reversing their usual characteristics.

Choose 2 or 3 characters from the ones you've created. Now think up an adventure for them and turn it into a story.

Which of your characters would make the best hero? Are the animals friends or enemies? Where do they live? Is it the animal's particular personality that creates the storyline, as happens in 'Big Bad Wolf is Good'? Can any of the animal's physical characteristics be of use in the story? Does your story have 'goodies' and 'baddies' or is there good and bad in them all?

Choose one of the Rickety Barn Farm animals. Write their diary entry for the day of the show. Try to remember their personality in the story. What would they think about? What other silly things might they do during the day?

What would it really be like to live on a farm?
What would it feel like to be one of the animals on this real farm?
Discuss different kinds of stories - what makes more realistic stories interesting if they are not as funny?

Now write a diary for the same animal as before, but this time write a realistic animal's day. What does your animal feel about being on the farm? What does it smell like? Which animals are they friendly with? Are they scared of anyone on the farm?

1: Get the children to illustrate the two different diaries they have written. Look at different kinds of animal illustrations. Should the animal's appearance differ for the illustrations of the realistic and fantasy diaries?
2: Collect photographs of farm animals and non-fiction accounts of farm life. Make a display of the different diaries & illustrations alongside the non-fiction & photographs. Discuss what is real, what is realistic and what is not realistic. Are both the different kinds of diaries 'fiction' even though one is realistic?
3: As a group, write a diary of a day at school. Now create a fictional account of the same day.

Look at picture books and discuss the two different ways the story is told.
Which comes first - the words or the pictures?

Write a story - see earlier workshop ideas.
(NB for the purposes of the rest of this workshop, stories should not be too long - look at the word count in picture books and set a limit.) Now do an illustration of the main character in the story.

Who chooses the illustrator to create the pictures for a storybook? (publisher)
How do you think they choose the right person to do it? (describe a portfolio of artwork - you can even print examples of illustrator's 'virtual' portfolios off their websites) Discuss the publisher's role and the process for creating a book (ie. Choosing stories, commissioning artwork, designing where different bits go, sending it to a printers, binding it, distributing it to bookshops).

Divide into groups of approx. 5 - each group will play the role of a different publisher (choose a real publisher's name for each). Each group reads 5 of the stories (but none that any of them have written). They then discuss the stories and decide which would be the most exciting incident in each for an illustration. Each group then looks at 5 illustrations - these are the 'portfolios' (none of theirs) The group now discusses which illustrator would be most suitable for which story, and pairs them up.

The illustrator's skill / the difficulty involved in illustrating particular stories.
What they know the illustrator likes to draw (from the picture they have and also what they know about the person).
How much they think the illustrators would enjoy individual stories.

To 'commission' an illustrator, each person in the group then takes one story and paperclips it to the relevant illustration, along with a brief description of the bit of the story they want illustrated. This is then given to the illustrator.

The 'illustrators' do illustrations of the stories they have been given.
NB you might want to discuss the fact that real illustrators cannot choose
what they draw or whose story they get!

Create books from the stories and illustrations. Perhaps the original 'portfolio' illustrations could make good front covers.
Look at existing books - what else is there besides just the story section?
The writer and the illustrator could write jacket blurb about themselves!

If you devise any particularly successful projects based on any of my books, I would love to hear from you, particularly if I can then post them here so that everyone can benefit!