Dave Pigeon’s first official outing was to celebrate World Book Day at Garden Suburb Infants School where he met the brilliant Year One pupils of Lilac Class.
In our story building workshop these young authors took Dave on a journey, where he dodged ninjas on the way to the hospital before he was chased out by the doctors and escaped on board a time machine!
Today, advanced copies of Dave Pigeon: How to Deal with Bad Cats and Keep (most of) Your Feathers landed on our doorstep and they are looking fantastic.
The moment I have been looking forward to the most and dreading was the husband reading Dave to the son. As I watched from behind the sofa, it looked like Dave was getting the thumbs up from my two loves and now I’m beyond excited to hear what you all think of Dave too. Roll on April 7th!
With World Book Day on the horizon, here are some of my top tips and school secrets I shared with online bookshop Wordery for all those budding young authors out there.
This year to celebrate International Book Giving Day we sent books up to Burnley Road Academy in Yorkshire, who sadly lost their wonderful library stock to the Christmas floods last year. Of all the Valentines Day’s surprises I’ve had over the years this lovely email from Headteacher Claire Cope is right up there with leaving me that happy, warm feeling inside.
However you celebrate this year, I hope your day is full of lots of books and lots of giving.
You can read my first post for the Girls Heart Books blog. I’m celebrating one of the best horror series in children’s fiction: GOOSEBUMPS!
I’m absolutely thrilled to reveal the cover of ‘Dave Pigeon: How to Deal with Bad Cats and Keep (most of) Your Feathers‘, illustrated by the brilliant Sheena Dempsey.
Dave Pigeon hits the shelves in the UK on 7th April 2016!
Find out more here.
Sheena and I are chuffed to bits to be taking Dave Pigeon to the Mountains To Sea Book Festival in Dún Laoghaire, Co. Dublin this March. It’s an incredible line up of brilliant writers and illustrators this year and I can’t wait!
We will be running an afternoon ‘Dave Pigeon: Art and Story Fun‘ session on Sunday 13th March and would love to see lots of budding young storytellers. Perfect for those aged 6+. You’ll even get an exclusive look at Dave Pigeon ahead of the official publication date in April.
Full booking details can be found here.
Hope to see you there!
Just a quick note to tell you all that Sheena Dempsey’s fabulous artwork for Dave Pigeon is now with the incredible design team at Faber and from what I’ve seen so far, it is looking FANTASTIC!
And to top it off, it has been incredibly exciting to see Dave in The Bookseller’s Children’s Preview for April.
Suddenly, this is all feeling so real and I can’t believe that a little story about a pigeon called Dave, that I wrote back in 2014 for my then three-year-old son, is actually about to be published… (and in 65 days time)!
This is it! 2016! We have finally made it to the Year of Dave Pigeon. I have exciting news to kick of January: I have joined the Girls Heart Books family and will be blogging over there with the rest of the fabulous team. My first post will be up in February so watch this space (and that space)…
See you all in the New Year for what promises to be an exciting year full of adventure, laughs and many, many pigeons
Merry Christmas from Swapna, James, Phoenix and Gary the Hamster
