Read It Daddy!: The ReadItDaddy Interview: We talk to Charlotte Co...

I was very fortunate to be asked by Read It Daddy, to do a little interview about the new book!
If you follow the link you can find out what i like to draw the most, and who my favourite disney princess is ;)

Read It Daddy!: The ReadItDaddy Interview: We talk to Charlotte Co...: Charlotte and Coral hard at work producing wonderful books for children! We've had so much fun reading and re-reading Coral Rumble a...


Charlotte.

The Adventures of the Owl and the Pussycat

It's finally here. 

2 Boxes of books for competitions and giveaways and reviews, landed on my doorstep this week.

I am so over the moon, they look so gorgeous, thank you so much to the team at Parragon Books who have done such a beautiful job taking the book on from Meadowside Books, who we sadly waved goodbye to last year.

It's also really REALLY special because it grew out of a chat around my mum's kitchen table (Coral Rumble) where she took some jumbled up ideas that i had, wrote them into an awesome rhyming story, and here we are now. 

It's so special to see our names together on the spine.

SO! To celebrate I am giving away copies on all my social media channels.

On Twitter : (click for link)

Help me get to 1000 followers by the week of the 21st October (launch week) and I will randomly choose 3 followers to win a signed copy (by me and my Mum!) of the book!

On Facebook : (Click for link)

Ok! FB competition no.2! I'd love to see the best, most imaginative sea creature you (or your kids!) can draw. Coloured drawings score more points! This competition will close next Sunday (midnight) so you have a whole week to work on your masterpieces and upload them! (Upload the pics to me in a private message and I will publish them on the page!) Go and create!

On the Blog : 

Throughout the book, the little boy is often accompanied by a very naughty seagull! Like the 'wanted' poster below, i'd like to see your own WANTED! poster. 

It can be anyone, or anything. A pet, a person, even a cheeky sock that keeps disappearing (we all have one of those socks...) and email your entries to charlotte@charlottecookeillustration.com by the 21st October, for another way to win a book.

The beauty is, you can enter ALL of the competitions, so you have a triple chance of winning!

So what are you waiting for? Get your creative on!

C x

It's almost here...

Book Alert no.1

FOR pre-order, CLICK HERE!

Just wanted to say...

for liking my blog, twitter, fb page, work in general. You're all swell! Happy Weekend! Cx

Let's go round again!

First things first - I'm growing ANOTHER BABY! Yay me!

Me and Mr. Cooke Illustration are very excited. A little brother or sister for our little girl, arriving in May!

SECONDLY! I have just agreed to do another 6 stories for nickjr, starting in December (the work, not airing). This is really great but very daunting at the same time. It's a lot of work, but last time it made me very quick at working, so after this lot i'll be lightening speed!

 Thirdly, the series of books i have been working on for Bramble Kids - called 'Dice Mice' is coming to an end! There have been ten books in the series and each featuring, well, more mice as we've gone along! I worked on the first book before my daughter was born (over a year ago) and resumed in July. Now we have made it to the end and i have never dreamt so much about mice in my life! Here's the whole gang below...

Now, I am full steaming ahead with a book with Parragon, from author Margaret Wise Brown - such a gorgeous book about the seasons. AND of course, the owl and the pussycat book with my mummy. I am a few spreads in and it's all VERY exciting. Going to be a good book i think. Hope you guys will think so too.

So there's a bit of an update! Stay tuned for more sneak peeks and info :)


C x

Sneaky sneaky...

So i'm sorry (again) for being so quiet but i really can't do too many updates because all i'm working on is secret until published!

However, it's been over a month since i posted last so here is a sneak of a bit of one of the spreads from 'The Adventures of the Owl and the Pussy cat' - which will be published by Meadowside/DC Thompson next year :)

Bit of a process post...

Busyyyyyyyyy...

Working on so many projects at the moment it's a bit crazy. 

A lovely story with Parragon, possibly a how to draw book with them too, a series of 10 books about Mice who teach you how to count, and of course, my baby, the 'Adventures' book, written by my mum, published by Meadowside (2013) 

(This is an old draft of the title page - it's much more exciting now!)

Development

So here is a little bit of development work from my project with Meadowside.
Since doing these characters, they've changed, so i'm posting them here!

Lunchtime...

So we went off to 'To a Tea' for lunch where there were a LOT of teas to choose from. However, Sarah and I played it reasonably safe and went for a Lady Grey. Also, thanks to Mr Mark Chambers, I now know that 'monkey picked tea' is "@markAchambers: @charlottecooke It's tea that monkeys pick,they're trained to and can pick tea in inaccessible areas like cliff faces etc..Oolong is one! :)"

Wowzer!

They also had plenty of splendid cake! Of which I chose an orange polenta type loaf. It was tough to resist the brownie...

We then popped into the temporary Meadowside offices to have a go in the James Bond lift. It was actually in a James Bond film. Awesome.

Then we walked past St Paul's so obviously I had to take a photo.

So it's back to Victoria for me to catch a train back to my baby, and process all the awesome stuff we chatted about for our book! So SO excited about it. :)

Me and me Ma!

Trip to London

So today I am travelling into London to meet with my lovely publisher, Meadowside. So far it's going well although I had to move seats due to some dodgy guys staring. It always makes me feel like I've got something on my face... But anyway! So exciting because the 'Adventures of the owl and the pussycat' is in swing with an August deadline. Eek! I think it will poss be published summer 2013.

I am off to chat about the art first with my lovely art director Sarah, then we're meeting up with the editor and my mummy (the author if you're new to my blog/this book journey!) for a lovely spot of luncheon. Very nice.

I sometimes struggle with my job, scary deadlines and stress makes it quite hard, but then you get to waltz off to the big smoke and have lunch with your publisher, and it's not so bad!

Here's a little sketching I did on the train. Trains are bumpy.