Notts Children’s Literature Picnic 2024
When I first started working as a children’s author twenty five years ago, I only knew of one other person in my home county of Nottinghamshire who also worked in children’s books. As the years went by I became aware of a growing number of other authors and illustrators who lived in the county, but we rarely met each other.
In 2019 I discovered that illustrator Erika Meza was living in Nottingham at that time, so I dropped her a line to say “Hi!” and that I hoped our paths would cross some time. Erika suggested that, rather than leave it to chance, we should meet up for a coffee. By then, I knew of several other children’s authors and illustrators living in Notts, so I suggested that we also invite them and – instead of going to a cafe – meet up for picnic in Wollaton Park in Nottingham. We made it clear that partners and children were also welcome to come along.
Seven children’s authors and illustrators and a few partners and children came to the picnic and it went so well that we decided to make it an annual event. Unfortunately the Covid pandemic prevented us from having the next picnic until 2022, but we’ve held one every year since.
This year’s picnic invite, with art by Anna Terreros-Martin
This year we extended the invitation to anyone “working with children’s literature”, but everyone that came was either a children’s author or illustrator. And it was the first year we actually thought to take a group photo (shown at the top of this post) – albeit after Gareth Peter had gone.
It’s become a picnic tradition that we play Kubb, a Scandinavian game that involves throwing bits of wood at other bits of wood. I’m ashamed to say that my team lost every game I played in this year. I suspect this may be because author Darren Simpson, who was on the opposing team in every game, had been eating performance enhancing crisps.
The picnics have been held at Highfields Park in Nottingham since 2022. The park has a great children’s playground (where kids bored by parents droning on about the publishing industry can go to escape) and a boating lake that some of the authors and illustrators took to last year.
The park is also next to the Djanogly Gallery and this year a few of us popped in to explore the MONSTER FUN exhibition featuring huge inflatable monsters by Bruce Asbestos.
Unfortunatly, try as they might, Rebecca, Darren, James and Anna could not find the Mega Bunny.
Anna and Emma Latham were not happy with this monster.
And James Brown had a narrow escape from this one.
Illustrator Rebecca Harry lives in Cardiff, but was spending the weekend in Nottingham so that she could come to the picnic. Rebecca is the illustrator of the Ruby the Duckling picture books, which are written by me. The first book, now called Ruby Flew Too! was originally published as Once Upon a Time, Upon a Nest. While we were at the park I showed Rebecca the spot on the lake where the sight of a solitary egg in a swan’s nest had inspired the story – although I decided that the story would be about a late-hatching duckling rather than a cygnet.
Rebecca at the spot where the sight of a solitary egg in a swan’s nest inspired me to write Ruby Flew Too! If you look closely, you will see a some cygnets where the nest used to be.
Despite a far from ideal weather forecast, we had another very enjoyable picnic this year and I’m already looking forward to the next.
