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Today, Sheena and I headed up north to Sheffield for the Sheffield Children’s Book Awards 2017. We were chuffed to bits that Dave Pigeon had made the shortlist and caught the dawn train northwards where we bumped into Carnegie-nominated author Patrice Lawrence who was heading up to the very same event.

Sheffield did not let down. Seven hundred book-loving children (and possibly just as many librarians, authors, illustrators and publishing folk), packed The Crucible for an incredible event, celebrating so many brilliant books.

Dave Pigeon was up for the Emerging Reads category and whilst we didn’t win, we couldn’t have been more pleased for Katie Smith and Sarah Jennings who won with ‘The Pumpkin Project’.

The overall winner was the very excellent ‘Nibbles the Book Monster’ by Emma Yarlett, one of our family’s favourite read.

Thank you so much to all the brilliant librarians at Sheffield Libraries for hosting such a fantastic event. We had an incredible time meeting everyone and catching up with some of our favourite authors and illustrators.

Flumping feathers! Dave Pigeon has been nominated for the Lancashire School Library Service Fantastic Book Awards 2018. We are pleased as punch, here at Dave Pigeon HQ! The awards are judged by thousands of children from primary schools across Lancashire, ahead of the award ceremony in May.

Thank you so much Lancashire School Library Service. Wings crossed for Dave Pigeon!

Thank you so much to Ally, from Glenview Library in Hamilton, New Zealand, for reading Dave Pigeon and for this fantastic review:

Good Feathens! It’s the magnificent Dave Pigeon (Racer!) cover. Illustrated by Sheena Dempsey, I’m beyond excited to share the cover of the brand new Dave Pigeon book with you all.

Dave Pigeon (Racer!) is out next year in January. Hurrah!

Wonderful news Dave Pigeon fans! ‘Dave Pigeon: How to Deal with Bad Cats and Keep (most of) Your Feathers’ has been translated into braille and audio for the RNIB Library as part of the Summer Reading Challenge.

Both Sheena and I were chuffed to bits to be working with Discover Story Centre at Manor Park library this afternoon.

We met with lots of children in the packed library, who were all taking part in the Summer Reading Challenge and got to work creating a flock of brand new pigeons and a brand new adventure for Dave Pigeon and Skipper. The story saw the two friends lost in Madagascar, when they are captured by Dr Evil, the evilest of pigeons. They had to escape via a trap door and secret tunnel thanks to help from local friendly pigeon, Jake.

It was such a wonderful afternoon and it was so heartwarming to see a library with staff librarians who knew so many of the children who came, thanks to a shared love of books and stories.

Thank you to Michael, Claire and Jane from the Discover Story Centre and the brilliant librarians Deborah, Guiseppe and Andrew who looked after us all afternoon. We had a pigeontastic time!

As part of the Summer Reading Challenge celebrations, Barnet Libraries invited Sheena and I to run our Dave Pigeon workshop at North Finchley library. This meant an awful lot to me as libraries were my favourite places as child (and still are now, quite honestly) and this was my first event at a library in my home borough.

We created a host of brand new super villains with the young writers and illustrators who turned up, including robots and firebirds and dodgy dustbin men and slimy grimy monsters. We then created a new adventure for Dave Pigeon with ideas from everyone. We met Doktor Triangle and his evil twin at the Baddest of Baddies contest where Dave Pigeon had unwittingly signed up, having accidentally been dropped from a helicopter whilst carrying a drill. It was a brilliant collaboration and mash up of ideas.

Thank you to everyone who came along and a HUGE thank you to the staff at North Finchley Library and Ruth and Neil from Barnet Libraries who made us feel so at home in their lovely library.

Today, Team Dave Pigeon were at the literary home of the great Roald Dahl. If you have ever met me, you will know how much I loved his books as a child and what an inspiration he continues to be to me now that I’m a grown-up writing children’s books.

It was a dream come true to be in Great Missenden where Roald Dahl lived for thirty-six years. And where he wrote some of the greatest children’s books of all time in the famous Writing Hut.

Sheena and I ran three workshops were we met with over sixty budding young writers and illustrators for an illustration and story-writing powwow in the Upper Babbling Room.

They created three new villains including the infamous ‘Pyjama Piranha’, the evil ‘Stinky Big Head Pants’ and the grimy pigeon-napper ‘Gangster Man’. The children then went onto create three brand new phizz-whizzing-ly, pigeontastic tales involving Dave and Skipper escaping beneath the sand on a beach in Australia-Egypt, calling Super Pigeon on their iPigeons and a visit to Legoland. We heard about a villainous ice cream van, a supersonic baseball bat that could whack a pigeon into outer space and a penguin-eating shark.

Thank you to all who came along and got involved. And a HUGE thank you to the brilliant staff at The Roald Dahl Museum who made us feel so at home during our time at the museum.