All about puffins

When I was doing research for my Puffin Pack, I found out all sorts of surprising things about puffins. For example, they are sometimes known as “Clowns of the Sea,” something I hadn’t realised when I wrote Lewis Clowns Around. As it turns out, Lewis the puffin had the right idea when he decided to join the circus!

I was also amazed to learn that there is an island off the southwest coast of England (12 miles from the coast of Devon in the Bristol Channel, to be exact) where puffins have an important history. The island is called Lundy, and this name probably comes from the old Norse word “lundi” which means puffin. Although it is small with high cliffs and rough weather, there have been people living on the island for hundreds of years. These have included Vikings, medieval monks, knights, pirates and convicts!

In the 1920s a man named Martin Coles Harman bought the island and declared himself king of Lundy. He decided to make his own coins and stamps, and instead of pennies he called them puffins. Here is a picture of a two-puffin stamp:

Martin Coles Harman decided he should have his face on the one puffin coin as well, since he was the king! He looks pretty serious, doesn’t he?

Making his own coins got Martin Coles Harman into some trouble, and he was fined £5 by the House of Lords in 1931. He had to pay up and stop making the coins, but the stamps are still printed today!

Lundy must have once had lots of puffins living on its cliffs, but now there are hardly any. This may be because people have been fishing all the sand eels, leaving very little for the puffins to eat. It may also be because baby puffins and eggs were easy prey for brown rats that used to be common on the island.

Today Lundy Island is looked after by the Landmark Trust, and fewer than 30 people actually live there. It is possible to visit the island and stay in holiday cottages there, and the Landmark Trust is working to conserve the wildlife and natural habitat of Lundy.

But Lundy isn’t the only island that has puffins on its stamps. This one comes from the Faroe Islands, which lie in the North Atlantic Ocean, half-way between Norway and Iceland and directly north of Scotland. This is definitely puffin territory, and in fact the Faroese (people of the Faroe Islands) like to eat them!

I think puffins are far too cute to eat, and since they’re only the size of a pigeon they wouldn’t make much of a meal. Luckily for them, puffins live in burrows dug into very steep cliffs, and they spend lots of time out on the open ocean, so it’s quite hard to catch them. Their biggest enemy is the Great Black-Backed Gull, which can swoop down and catch a puffin in mid-air!

Puffins mate for life, and build a nice soft nest in their cliff-top burrow using grass, seaweed and feathers. When mum lays an egg, both parents help look after it until it hatches, and then they bring the chick little fish to eat. It takes about 45 days for the chick to grow strong enough to fly off and find fish for itself.

Photo by David Tipling Getty

Puffins eat herring, sprat and sand eels, and you can sometimes see them with a huge mouthful of fish all jammed in together. They hold them in with special ridges inside their beaks. I think the record is sixty little fish in one puffin’s mouth!

In Iceland puffins are becoming more scarce because of a shortage of sand eels (also called sand lances). The National Geographic have made a short video about the problem on YouTube which you can watch here.

A while back I went to the Scottish Seabird Centre in North Berwick, where I read my story Lewis Clowns Around. The centre has lots of information about seabirds living on Scotland’s coasts, and puffins are really popular! (I especially like the shop where you can find puffin toys, calendars, postcards, keyrings… even my book!)

If you’re crazy about all things puffin, you can check out the only online shop devoted entirely to these cute little birds. Naturally enough, it’s called the Puffin Shop.

Introducing the Puffin Pack!

As you probably know, I have made some book bags for three of my picture books, which include lots of fun activities for kids like quizzes, word searches and unusual projects (Build Your Own Snail Hotel, for example). Now that I have a new book, Lewis Clowns Around, I decided it was high time I put together some fun stuff for Lewis too!

Lewis Clowns Around is a story about a misfit puffin who longs to be something else. He hates fish and is frightened of heights, so he decides to follow his dreams and become a circus clown. He works really hard, learning how to juggle and do flips and cartwheels, and then he gets his very own clown costume: stripy socks, enormous shoes, a pointy green hat and some red pompons down his front. His first performance is a big success, until the final trick when something goes wrong and he has to find the courage to save the day. In the end, Lewis the clown is a big hero!

So this time instead of a book bag, I have decided to put all the Lewis goodies into a sturdy, A4 plastic box that can stand on a shelf. I call it the Puffin Pack. The first thing you find inside the box is a signed copy of Lewis Clowns Around. Next there’s a letter from Lewis in a shiny blue envelope. (If you look closely, you can see Lewis on the stamp, too!) Lewis is travelling with the circus, so he has borrowed some circus writing paper from the Ringmaster, Phineas Fox. As you can see here, the Puffin Pack also includes some Lewis bookmarks and a Picture Kelpies postcard.

The Puffin Pack has lots of information about seabirds and their habitat, including a detailed list of Fabulous Puffin Facts and four illustrated fact sheets for colouring. There is also a Quiz based on the book, and some great Activities for kids to do at home or in the classroom. The colouring sheets and activity pages are designed to be copied for everyone in the class. Draw your own Crazy Circus Characters, find all the words in the Seabird Word Search, write a letter back to Lewis, design a circus poster and learn some circus tricks in the playground!

Last but not least is an A4 size poster of Lewis you can put up on the wall. And all this costs only £20 plus postage!

This is the poster of Lewis the clown.

The Puffin Pack is ideal for primary teachers and after school clubs. For more information or to order your Puffin Pack, contact me here.

Delicious cheesy corn muffins

Something reminded me recently of a recipe I used to have for gorgeously golden cheesy muffins. I haven’t made them for years, but yesterday I was determined to track down a similar recipe and try again!

Thanks to Google I quickly found a new one, and I can tell you now that these are just as delicious as the ones I used to make. They are extra golden because they have cornmeal in them. I love cornbread and these muffins are like cornbread with cheese. Mmmmm!

I started by gathering up all the things I would need, including two mixing bowls, a grater, two muffin tins, paper muffin cups, measuring spoons, flour, butter, baking powder and an egg. Oh, and cheese! Before you start it’s a good idea to wash your hands, too.

Here is a list of the ingredients:

3/4 cup plain flour

1/2 cup fine cornmeal

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1 tablespoon sugar

1 cup shredded Cheddar cheese

1 egg

3/4 cup milk

2 tablespoons melted butter

The first thing to do is put all the DRY ingredients into a big mixing bowl. (It looks like I was working in a very dark kitchen, doesn’t it?) I could see fine, really! Once these are all mixed together you grate the cheese into a measuring cup and add that to the dry ingredients.

The milk, melted butter and egg must all be beaten together in a smaller mixing bowl, then poured into the dry ingredients and stirred just until the whole mixture is moistened (no beating until your arm is sore or anything like that).

Fill the muffin cups about two-thirds full with the mixture, which looks rather like scrambled eggs at this point. The recipe says it makes twelve muffins, but I found it made only ten. Perhaps my muffin tins were bigger than normal, or I was filling them too much.

Bake the muffins at 180 degrees Celsius (350 degrees Fahrenheit, Gas Mark 4) for about 20 minutes. Keep an eye on them to make sure they don’t get too toasty on top! Mine turned out very well, and straight out of the oven they tasted fabulous! I found they were hard to get out of the paper cups when they were warm (a lot of muffin stuck to the paper) but once they had cooled that problem disappeared. To avoid this whole issue, just rub butter or oil in the muffin tins and forget the paper cups altogether.

These muffins use Cheddar cheese, but the ones I used to make had Gouda instead. You can experiment with different cheeses if you have a particular favourite. It should work fine if you keep to the same measurements.

Good luck and happy baking!

Lovely letters

A few weeks ago a friend of mine went to visit the Just Imagine Story Centre in Chelmsford, Essex. It is a fantastic bookshop which runs lots of author and illustrator events, craft workshops and even story-themed parties for children! My friend sent me a photo of the Alphabet Wall where my letter G stands proudly with letters painted by lots of amazing illustrators. I have written about my G before (with the little troll popping up) but I thought you might like to see some of the other letters too. Perhaps you can recognise the painting styles of some of your favourite illustrators?

It may be a bit hard for you to see the detail in this picture. I can see that the letter X is painted by Anthony Browne (it’s Willy in a funny pose). The letter S is done by Sue Eves and you can read more about her letter on her blog here. The letter Z is by Axel Scheffler (who illustrates many of Julia Donaldson’s stories).

My friend took another photo to let me see my G more clearly, so here is a closer look at just a few of the letters:

I have discovered that the owl flying through the letter O is the work of Emily Gravett. Can you guess some of the others? The letter F seems to be covered in bats, and the H has a cat playing guitar and a knife and fork chasing a sausage! I love the pirate P with its moonlit galleon and scull-and-crossbones flag. Do you know who those artists might be? I think there is a guide to all the artists at the Just Imagine Story Centre, so I really must get there some day and see for myself!

Letters of the alphabet have long been a source of artistic inspiration. In medieval times, about 700 years ago, monks would spend hours carefully writing out books (there were no printers back then!) Some of them were very talented because they produced beautiful illustrations like the ones you can see here:

This is a letter P decorated with flowers and real gold!

This page from a choir book shows St Stephen inside a letter H. Those funny squares are musical notes!

In Victorian times, about 150 years ago, children’s ABC books were full of detailed drawings. (You can tell they are Victorian children by the way they are dressed). Not only were these books meant to teach children about the alphabet, but they also had strong messages about how children should behave. Here is an example (I chose the letter L because my name is Lynne). It describes Lads and Lasses who Learn their Letters and Lessons! (I think the Lazy ones and Laughing ones probably got in trouble…)

I have written before about the beautiful letters drawn by Jakub Konvica. His pencil drawings are so realistic you almost expect the little bird perched on a branch to move! This letter A is part of a whole alphabet Jakub has drawn. You can see more of his letters here. His letters spell out a whole poem about the month of May.

If you would like to illustrate your own letter, I have found a website called Colouring Printables where you can choose any letter you like and print it out. You could print all the letters of your name, then fill them with drawings or magazine clippings of things you like. When they’re all finished you can cut the letters out and put them on your bedroom door, or on the fridge.

Time to get creative!

Fun for the holidays

A special Christmas greeting from my daughter Anna!

Holiday time is upon us! No doubt you will be busy with friends and family, playing with new toys and enjoying a few more hours of sleep in the morning. (That’s my favourite bit, even more than all the wonderful food at holiday time – it’s the extra sleep I enjoy!)

If you ever get tired of toys and are looking for a challenge over the holidays, you might like to try a fun word search or drawing project. If so, I have just the thing! For each of my big picture books I have a collection of activities for kids to do on their own. It helps to have read the books, but you can probably have lots of fun with these even if you haven’t.

The first book is Pink! This is the story of a little penguin called Patrick who turns pink overnight and doesn’t know what to do! He swims all the way to Africa to try and live with pink flamingos, but that doesn’t work very well. In the end he discovers that penguins belong at the south pole. Even pink penguins!

If you click on the Pink Word Search or the Pink Pictures page, you can then print them out and have fun finding words from the story or drawing your own colourful birds.

See if you can find some words from the story.

Here is a fun drawing project for you to try.

The next book is called Jacob O’Reilly Wants a Pet. It tells the story of a boy who would love a pet – any pet – but his parents are not so sure it’s a good idea. They suggest that he might try looking after other people’s pets first, just to see if he is cut out for pet ownership. He soon has a whole menagerie to look after, and it’s a lot of hard work! At the end of the story all the animals go home and Jacob finds a pet that is perfect for him.

Can you find the animal words in this jumble?

You can colour these pets and then draw your own!

The third book is called I Do Not Eat the Colour Green. Its main character is a little girl called Marlene who is a very fussy eater. She refuses to try anything green, including green jellybeans, even though her brother is quite happy eating broccoli, beans and all sorts of healthy green things. One day she is visiting a very important person and is presented with a bunch of grapes! What will she do?

See how many fruits and vegetables you can find.

Can you answer these questions about Marlene McKean?

I hope you have fun with these activities. Do share your pictures with me if you can – I would love to see them! Maybe over the holidays I will work on some new word searches and drawing activities for my new book, Lewis Clowns Around. Let me know what kind of puzzles and games you would like to see here.

Being an artist

When I was young, I thought I wanted to be an artist when I grew up. I used to love drawing and painting, and spent long hours illustrating my own story books. Here is a page from one I wrote when I was about twelve. It was called Princesses and Pirates, and was about two girls who played imaginary games:

After high school I went to an art college to study illustration. In the first year we all had to do a “Foundation” course, where we learned the basics about drawing, 2-D design, 3-D design and colour. One of my assignments was to create a poster illustrating my timetable, so I can show you exactly what I studied in my first year:

As you can see, I was very interested in Art History. I loved (and still love) looking at art, and I think you can learn so much from artists through the ages. One of the subjects you can see at the top of my timetable is Art of the Native Peoples. The raven rattle I chose to illustrate that subject was made by the Haida tribe of western Canada. I loved the bold outlines and strong colours used by that particular tribe. You can learn more about Haida art at the Canadian Museum of Civilization website here.

In 3-D design we used a special material called “foam-core” board to make three-dimensional structures and sculptures. If you look closely you can see I cut out a 3 and a D from foam-core and stuck them on my poster.

Another important subject at art college was Colour. I thought I knew about the primary colours but I was completely wrong! It took me quite a while to accept that primary red was actually magenta (a deep pink colour) and primary blue was more like turquoise. It was only when I started mixing colours that I realised how much yellow there is in fire-engine red.

These are what I thought were primary colours.

The colours in the circles are true primary colours.

In Colour class we had to fill an enormous scrap book with strips of painted paper to show the many hues between each primary colour. It took ages painting from pure yellow through to red, then red to blue, then blue to yellow again, but it was a great way to understand exactly how every colour is made. We also had to paint a grey scale, going from white to black with every shade in between.

After art college I spent about six months working as a children’s book illustrator. I have one book published with my illustrations which was all about Christmas around the world. Here is one of my black-and-white illustrations from the book:

It was a very valuable experience, but I soon realised I was much happier writing the words than drawing the pictures. When I grew up I became a writer, and I love imagining how my stories will look without having to do it myself! I still draw and paint for my own pleasure, and sometimes I do drawings for friends.

I have recently discovered drawing with coloured pencils on coloured paper (which is not so hard as using paint!) I used to love watercolours but now I’m a bit nervous that I’ll ruin a nice drawing, so pencils are my way of cheating a bit.

Here is a peacock I gave some friends as a wedding present:

And this is a portrait I did for a friend of her grandmother (from a photograph taken in the 1920s):

My friend's Granny looked very pretty in the 1920s.

This is the photo I used for her portrait.

The last picture I want to show you is one that hangs on a wall in my office. This is a funny picture of my great-grandmother Hepzibah Moran (far right) and her three sisters in Canada, and like the portrait above I used a photo taken in the 1920s. I think this one must have been taken at Easter time because the ladies are still all bundled up against the cold, but they are wearing corsages on their coats! They are also standing on a beach, which is quite mysterious…

Looking at art

On a recent visit to London, my daughter and I found ourselves wandering in the Tate Britain art gallery. It was full of wonderful and surprising things, and now and then one of us would cry, “Oh, I studied that in art class!”

One of the paintings that really caught our attention was “La Mitrailleuse” (The Machine Gun) by Christopher Richard Wynne Nevinson. It was painted in 1915 and shows soldiers in the trenches during World War I. The painter himself worked as an ambulance driver, and he found dealing with all the wounded soldiers very distressing. This painting is done in a Futurist style, with everything reduced to flat surfaces and straight lines.

The reason this painting made us stop and stare was because we have two books at home by D.B. Johnson and the style reminded us very much of his illustrations. You can see what I mean here:

Look how D.B. Johnson uses the same straight lines to divide up the picture and create flat planes that seem to be seen from different angles. We love D.B. Johnson’s books (you can see Henry Hikes to Fitchburg in an earlier post) so I thought I would do some more research into this style of painting.

I found this lovely landscape by Auguste Herbin, which was painted in 1913, the year before World War I began. It can be found in the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. This painting chops up the scene into sections to create an impression of flat surfaces like shafts of sunlight. It’s a good example to compare with Henry Builds a Cabin because the artist uses very similar colours.

Here is another example by Johannes Itten, a Swiss artist who was painting around the same time. His “Group of Houses in Spring” was painted in 1916, and you can learn all about the artist and his work on the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza website.

All of these wartime artists were painting at a time when the world was changing very rapidly. Europe was caught up in a terrible war, and big machines that could work faster and longer than people could were taking over many jobs. Photography, which came into common use around 1900, meant that artists were no longer needed to create realistic pictures of things. They had to think imaginatively to make their paintings different from what a camera could do.

Artists at this time wanted to express their feelings about the changing world in a way that would grab people’s attention. Instead of painting in a realistic way, they tried to show movement, speed, and the way everything had become mechanical and robotic. Different artists influenced each other, so Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque started the Cubist style, and a group of Italian artists developed something similar which they called Futurism.

When I was younger I wanted to be an artist myself, so I have spent many happy hours looking at other people’s paintings. Visiting an art gallery is the best way to start, and like D.B. Johnson, maybe you will be inspired by something amazing!

Picture book toys

When I visit schools and book festivals, the children often ask me where I get my story ideas. I usually say my own children inspire me, and sometimes it’s a special toy that will spark an idea.

One of my earliest books, Jack’s Bed, was inspired by my son when he was about four. He often used to wake up in the night and come clambering into our bed for warmth and comfort. We decided a nice cuddly hot water bottle might help him to feel safe in his own bed so he could sleep through the night. So we bought him this leopard with shiny amber eyes and wiry black whiskers. It was a big success, and that is what Jack’s Bed is all about.

Sometimes the soft toy comes after the book. If I want to have a special toy to use in schools and nurseries when I’m reading my books, I will buy something that looks like one of my characters.

In the case of Patrick the pink penguin, I made him a tiny blue backpack and sewed pink fuzz on his head. Then I decided he needed some friends, so I got two black-and-white penguins (Arthur and Lulu) and made little backpacks for them too! You can see Lulu is the one with a yellow bow in her hair and a flowery backpack.

Here is a picture that Margaret Chamberlain did of the three friends. Can you see which one is Lulu? Children love it when I bring Patrick and his two best friends to read Pink!

My newest book has some more black-and-white birds called puffins. Lewis Clowns Around is a story about a puffin who wants more than anything to be a circus clown. He gets his wish of course, but his circus life doesn’t always go smoothly.

I couldn’t resist these two little puffins who look just like Lewis and his brother Harris. They sit on my desk and help to give me more story ideas!

Hallowe’en fun

Hallowe’en will soon be upon us and there are lots of exciting and spooky things happening in dark and shadowy castles across the land.

If you live in Scotland, you can go on a Ghost Tour at Crathes Castle, have a Hallowe’en Tea Party with Griselda the Witch at Haddo House, enjoy a Hallowe’en Horror Walk at Brodick Castle or look at an exhibition called A Candle in the Dark (all about witchcraft) at the Royal Burgh of Culross.

Visit the National Trust for Scotland website here to see a list of all the Hallowe’en events they have on offer.

If you live in England, there are all sorts of other castles you can visit, thanks to English Heritage. There are Hallowe’en Tours at Pendennis Castle, Gothic Ghost Tours at Whitby Abbey, a Family Pumpkin Party at Chiswick House and lots of Ghosts and Ghouls at Goodrich Castle. Click on the English Heritage link above to see a full list of all the events with times and prices.

Maybe you’re planning a Hallowe’en party of your own. Have you decided what kind of costume you will wear this year? Last year my son wore a giant banana costume, and this year he is going to wear a big, hairy wig and beard to be… a big, hairy bearded guy.

When I was growing up in Canada, the last day in October was usually freezing, and we used to go around the neighbourhood trick-or-treating in the snow! That meant our costumes had to be warm. Forget about being a ballerina or a fairy. You were much better going as a ghost, with a big sheet over you and lots of thick clothes underneath! Or a mummy wrapped in lots and lots of bandages!

If you’ve got a Hallowe’en party to go to, I wonder if you’ll be taking some special Hallowe’en food? I found a great website (based in the US) which has some fantastic ideas for spooky snacks. It’s called Family Fun and has a whole section on Hallowe’en goodies!

Here are some examples that I thought looked gruesome and tasty:

These are called Apple Bites, with teeth made of sliced almonds!

Don’t these Carrot Fingers look real? I’m sure they’d make me jump!

These are called Night of the Living Bread (as they’re made with pita pockets).

And I love this Hairy Daddy Longlegs!

HAPPY HALLOWE’EN EVERYONE!

Jacqueline Wilson exhibition

Recently my daughter Anna was invited to the grand opening of Jacqueline Wilson’s exhibition, Daydreams and Diaries at Seven Stories in Newcastle. We took two trains and a taxi to get there, and were very impressed by the amazing Seven Stories building which is a converted Victorian mill right next to the river.

Inside there are seven levels with a lovely café, a big bookshop, a library, storytelling areas and lots of wonderful displays. This special centre for children’s books has a collection of work from many famous writers and illustrators, and they have lots of great author events all through the year.

This was a very exciting day for us because Anna’s artwork was on display in the exhibition! Naturally I had to take pictures of everything!

There was a lovely tea all set out for us, with elegant cake stands, delicious sandwiches and even sweets in glasses you could just nibble to your heart’s content! Among the drinks on offer was pink milk for the children. I used to love that when I was little, and I must say I was tempted…

The exhibition tells the whole story of Jacqueline Wilson’s life, from her childhood when she wrote her first stories in little notebooks to her huge success as a children’s author today.

This is what you see when you first enter the exhibition. It looks like every book Jacqueline has ever written is covering the floor. We love the illustrations Nick Sharratt does for Jacqueline’s books, so it was great fun to examine every one (and Anna has read them all!) She took this picture, so you can see she wore her special shoes for the occasion.

The wall devoted to Jacqueline’s fans is covered from top to bottom with letters she has received over the years. These come from children all over the world who love her books. They send her drawings, story ideas and sometimes even gifts! Two of these (soft toys her fans have made for her) are in special cases mounted on the wall.

Anna feels really lucky to have several of her hand-drawn cards to Jacqueline on the wall. One is in its own case, and below it in another case is the card Jacqueline wrote back. (If you look closely you can also see the little lemur we made for Jacqueline for her birthday.) We are delighted that Anna’s work will be on display for a whole year, and then it might go on tour!

The exhibition is excellent and really worth a visit. You can see Jacqueline’s toys and favourite books when she was little, look at paintings that she once had on her bedroom wall, learn all about her first job writing for a magazine, and look at all sorts of amazing illustrations by Nick Sharratt.

You can also imagine what it would be like to be Tracy Beaker! Here is one of the rooms in the exhibition, a recreation of Tracy Beaker’s dumping ground where you can watch Tracy on the TV.

Anna might like to be a writer and illustrator one day, and Jacqueline Wilson and Nick Sharratt are both huge inspirations for her. We’d like to say many thanks to the Seven Stories team for inviting Anna (and her mum) to such an amazing event!