Never Bite a Tiger on the Nose

This spring, thousands of children across Scotland will receive this beautiful book in their Bookbug pack, provided free by the Scottish Book Trust. Author Lynne Rickards and illustrator Eilidh Muldoon are delighted that it is finally in print, after months of hard work!

Never Bite a Tiger on the Nose is the final product of Lynne’s collaboration with the Methil Makars. One Early Years Writer-in-Residence, a group of fun and creative mums and some strong support from Home-Start Levenmouth produced this silly, rhyming story full of crazy kids and wild animals. We hope you’re going to like it!

And if you know how, you can also read it in Gaelic!

Runaway potatoes and silly chickens

Our Methil Makar workshops have finished now but the group still meets on a Tuesday, so Lynne decided to give us some more story ideas to work with. She has written two new healthy eating stories and we got together recently to read them and do some illustrations.

The first story is a simple rhyming one about a runaway potato. It starts with the traditional rhyme, “One potato, two potato, three potato four.” First we see four potatoes growing underground, and then they are dug up by a farmer, thrown into a bucket and taken to the kitchen, where the farmer’s wife scrubs them and starts chopping!

Two potatoes are chopped up for chips, and one is set aside for mashing. The fourth little potato can see what’s coming, so he jumps off the table and rolls out the door! The two drawings above were done by Vicky, and she has captured the horror of that nasty farmer’s wife!

Stacy has done a drawing of Mr and Mrs Potato being dug up by the farmer. I wonder if Mrs Potato is one of those amazing purple ones that we saw at the Buckhaven Community Growing Space?

The potato gets chased all around the garden, and while he’s running he suggests lots of nice vegetables the farmer’s wife can put into her soup instead of him. Pauline’s drawing above shows the runaway potato in the middle with lots of tasty vegetables all around him. He is saying, “Yes! I am not going in the soup!”

The other story is about a chicken who is not too clever. She tries to hatch an orange, make a banana into a hammock and use an apple to go bowling, among other silly things. Children take turns explaining to her what these fruits are really for, and she learns about delicious fruit and vegetables that are good for eating!

Pauline did a great drawing of the broccoli Christmas tree that the chicken has decorated. And Paula did one of the chicken relaxing in her banana hammock. You can see she is reading a book!

It was fun working with some new stories on our healthy eating theme. As it turns out, there are lots of different ways to write a picture book about fruit and vegetables!

Alison Murray ABC

For our final workshop, author and illustrator Alison Murray came to show us how she got into the children’s book business. She started out as a textile designer and printmaker, and you can see that influence in her bold and simple illustrations. Her most famous book is Apple Pie ABC, which is all about a little dog who can’t resist the delicious pie on the kitchen table.

Alison brought some early proofs to show us the first stages of producing this book. Each page has a letter of the alphabet in bold type, with the little dog Georgie trying his best to get a taste of that pie. We were able to see how the first sketches were changed and the layout adapted to arrive at the final published version.

The sequel to Apple Pie ABC is called One Two, That’s My Shoe! In this story the same little dog grabs the girl’s shoe and she has to chase him all over the house and the garden to get it back. The illustrations are cartoony and fun, and Alison explained how she starts with pencil sketches and then scans them into her computer to adjust them and add blocks of colour and texture.

Alison is the first Writer-in-Residence to produce a book in collaboration with the Scottish Book Trust and a Home-Start group, just like we are doing. She worked with a group in Renfrewshire and their book was called Little Mouse. It was distributed to every toddler in Scotland through the Early Years Bookbug scheme. We are looking forward to seeing our book, Never Bite a Tiger on the Nose, in the Bookbug packs next year!

The last book Alison shared with us was Hickory Dickory Dog. This one features a big, shaggy, yellow dog called Rufus who belongs to a boy called Zac. Rufus wakes Zac up in the morning and then follows him to school, where he causes lots of trouble and gets very messy. Like Alison’s other books, this one uses a well-known nursery rhyme as a starting point and then adds lots of humour and surprises to turn it into something very special.

It was great to round up our writing workshops with Alison’s talk, and we learned a lot about illustration using computers. Having heard about how the editor and author work together last week, it was interesting to see what the illustrator does and how a picture book evolves from the first sketches to the finished book. Thanks very much to Alison Murray for joining us, and to the Scottish Book Trust and Home-Start/ABE for making this project possible!

Paula McCulloch

When we first started we were asked to meet two authors to decide who we would enjoy working with the most. We chose Lynne Rickards as we felt that she would be easier to work with and she had the same ideas for the book as the group. I have enjoyed working on the book with Lynne for the 17 weeks that the workshop has been running. The workshop was very informative and I feel I have gained a lot of writing skills.

For most of the weeks we were learning how to write stories and also how authors begin a book and how we break down a story and how books are developed.

My favorite weeks were when we had the art week which included us all going to a fruit and veg shop and deciding which food we would be buying. When we had finished our shopping we returned to the centre and designed our picture on a plate. The other week I really enjoyed was the outing to the community garden called “The Growing Space” in Buckhaven. It was very fun as we got to bring our children to experience the garden with us.

I liked the visit from Emma Layfield the editor from Hodder Children’s Books. She was very insightful about how books are developed and what her job entails and how the illustrator is chosen.

With many thanks to all involved: Lynne Rickards-Author, Kay McLeary-Homestart Co-ordinator, Mary Gibbon-ABE Tutor, Eileen Cant-Young People’s Librarian and the Early Years Team at Scottish Book Trust.

DemiShields

How The Methil Makars Began!!

In February of this year, Kay, our Home Start coordinator, approached our group to see if we would be interested in being involved in writing a children’s book in partnership with a published children’s author.

To start with we had to choose between two candidates who had to demonstrate how they would work with us and what we would produce together. After a democratic vote we chose Lynne Rickards who has published a number of very popular children’s books.

We also worked with Mary Gibbon, our ABE tutor, Kay our Home Start coordinator, The Scottish Book Trust and Eileen Cant, Young People’s Librarian.