Bad Hair Day!

And more summer updates

Hello and apologies for being quiet on here. I have been spending my small pockets of down time over the summer with my family and have had some really fun, if not a little soggy-windy-rainy, weekends. I plan to do another deep dive into my process and share some more behind the scenes stuff very soon, but for now here’s just a few snippets of news and some ‘yay’s!

Bad Hair Day

Back in March I attended the Bologna Children’s Book Fair. I wasn’t very organised getting meetings, but I did bring business cards and postcards to stick on the illustrator’s wall, so that felt pretty organised for me. There are also post boxes and mini walls around the fair for particular publishers, and I stuck a business card on the Quarto wall.

The Quarto Wall at Bologna Book Fair

I don’t remember specifically choosing any particular design, all my cards had different illustrations on them but of course I had chosen my favourites so I was happy for any card to go on the wall. If you’d like to see more of my Bologna review and what I took with me, you can read about it here.

But, as luck would have it, the card I stuck to the wall turned out to be a little character that the creative team at Quarto felt would be PERFECT for a book they were hoping to commission an illustrator for.

This guy!

By Tuesday lunch time I had met all the team that were at the fair and we had made a plan to brief the job beginning of April, with a deadline for all artwork to be complete by the beginning of June! Cover reveal was due to happen in August (yay that’s now!) and publication is in October. The reason for the extremely tight deadline is because the book is based on a viral TikTok song that was written a long time ago by an awesome teacher based in New Zealand called John Phillips.

@johnphillipsnzEveryone’s asking where the song came from, so I thought I better show my face on here… and we wanted to get in on the TikTok fun! #fyp #badhairday #dancetok #viral

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Apologies if you now have this song stuck in your head for the rest of the day! So we were all keen to get this book out as quick as we could so people that enjoyed learning the dance for the tiktok trend could also enjoy reading the book.

The story is so fun, the kid having a seriously bad hair day has a chicken sidekick that dances with him, I mean, I can’t think of anything that’s more fun to draw than a dancing chicken! Fun fact: the side kick started out as a guinea pig so I actually got to draw a dancing guinea pig first!

I’m looking forward to going deeper into the process of making the book and designing the characters, but for now, enjoy the video cover reveal put together by the Quarto team that we have been sharing over our socials this weekend.

@jen_jamiesonHey Fuzznut! This book was a real joy to work on, the team at @quartokids / @wordsandpictures_books were so brilliant and superstar designer @sarah_chapman.suire was just an absolute dream. So excited to see this book in real life. If this reel hits 59387942387498723847893254 views then okay, sure I'll post a video of me doing the dance...! Repost from @quartokids: The viral TikTok song #BadHairDay with over 2 billion listens is now a hilarious kids book about the world’s worst bad hair day EVER! Have you ever woken up with hair that looks like the back end of a chicken?🐓 Well, let our hilarious chicken sidekick lead you through the WORST bad hair day, from hair that turns GREEN, to dreaded SCHOOL PHOTOS! Authored by the Bad Hair Day song creator and primary school teacher, John Phillips @johnphillipsnz and humorously brought to life with Jennifer Jamieson’s @jen_jamieson quirky illustrations, this is an endlessly entertaining and silly picture book to be enjoyed by children and adults alike!📚📖 Sing, dance and read along, Bad Hair Day publishes in October and is available to order NOW! @plum_agency #badhairday #badhairdaysong #kidsbooks #kidsbookstagram #kidslit #badhairdaydance #badhairdaytiktok #tiktokdance #picturebooks #bookstagram #kidsbookstagram #kidlitart #kidlit #picturebook #illustrator #kidsbookillustrator

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Feel free to preorder your copy of the book, it really was so much fun to create and I really hope that shines through in the illustrations and the energy of the book.

Preorder here.

Digby and Marvel

For the past year I have been working on a Reading Planet series for Hodder Education, and the first two books published on Friday! They are all written by Jane Elson, who has created a really wonderful world in which her characters live. This series follows two neurodiverse children who set about solving mysteries that take place within their village, using their powers of alternative thinking. The stories are so charming and the characters they meet are all so full of rich backstory. It was such a lovely project to work on. They are available to buy in the UK so feel free to order your copies using the links below:

Buy book 1 here

Buy book 2 here

The Great Annual Kid Lit Picnic

I was so happy I was able to attend the KidLitPicnic in Regent’s Park, London this weekend. So many familiar faces as well as new people to meet and chat to. Children’s publishing really is so lovely, friendly and welcoming. I urge anyone that feels unsure about real life events to just do it! There are always people that don’t know many others and everyone is always extremely welcoming and open.

Search social media using #kidlitpicnic for more pictures and videos from the day. Thanks again to Steven Lenton for organising, and managing to turn up despite a horrible freak stair falling accident.

I have a much needed holiday coming up in a week or so but you can expect to hear from me with more behind the scenes news in the second half of September. Enjoy the last few weeks of the season and as always feel free to comment with any questions or if you want to reach out to me I’m mainly here or on Instagram.