Our new book: 'Inside a Beehive'

After all the hard work from Holly, and our translators Audrey and Laura, this book went to the printers (yes brilliant for full colour, here in the UK ) last week. We are expecting the copies in the next couple of days. Well done everyone .......... and can't wait!

PS Have you been keeping an eye on our special offers each month? Watch out for the special offer in May 2010 for this book.

Alex and Friends for the Interactive Whiteboard: Promethean Accreditation

Our English version of Alex and Friends, for the Interactive Whiteboard, has achieved 'Powered' accreditation from Promethean Planet.

To find out more about this exciting tool for literacy in the classroom, visit our website. Enjoy, it's fun - the best way to learn!

Alex and Friends for the Whiteboard

The 'Alex and Friends' story, pictures, text, spoken story in English, with some activities too, will be available early February 2010 for the Whiteboard. You'll be able to order direct from our website. Our February special offer will be available alongside orders for the Whiteboard.

Coming soon .........

Starting in January on our 'Alex and Friends' website there will be a FREE downloadable activity for children plus a special offer on our goodies each month for the whole of 2010.

Merry Christmas!

The Christmas picture is from one of our Christmas cards which you can buy from our website. Good quality, reasonably priced, A5 cards, with envelopes, and the Christmas greeting in English, French, Italian, Spanish, German and Russian. Plus a 'Spot the Difference' picture on the back.

The National Honey Show

Thanks partly to an upsurgence in interest in beekeeping, The National Honey Show was a great success, with good attendance both from experienced beekeepers, and newcomers.

The standard of entries of honey, wax, mead, cakes, art and crafts was sky high; the trade exhibition hall was buzzing; and the London & Surrey Beekeepers' display with its observation hive in the Green Room was constantly packed with interested visitors.

One of our exhibitors hosted a visit from the High Commissioner from Mauritius; we also had Sky Channel 813 filming and interviewing people (including my Dad) and The Food Programme came along to make a programme about honey, which will be broadcast on Radio 4 on Sunday 8 November at 12.30, repeated at 4pm Monday, or you can listen again on the BBC iplayer. Don't miss it, or you'll have to wait another whole year for the next National Honey Show.

Zazzle

Zazzle, Vistaprint and Lulu are such a major help to small outfits, enabling small quantities of promotional items to be ordered at a sensible cost.

Having just discovered Zazzle, we can now offer the Dragon/Wolf mug for sale without the outlay and storage for a minimum order of 1,000. To say nothing of the invoicing and postage. Check it out, and design your own coffee mugs, T shirts and mouse mats!

Dragon Mug at Zazzle

Frankfurt Book Fair

It seems almost unbelievable that we've been home a week. The bookfair was certainly an experience. Several football stadium sized halls filled with stands of publishers from all over the world.

The 'veterans', returning each year have back to back meetings each scheduled for half an hour throughout the day to discuss deals to sell their books in new territories, new languages and new formats throughout the world.

We had several meetings and look forward to following up .. and of course, being in the middle of the meeting season, there is the National Honey Show to look forward to this coming week......... From the Kids Section on the NHS website, you can download a free bee picture for children to colour, and spot the difference.

Inside a Beehive

The new book is well underway. You can look through the brood box of a real beehive from the comfort of your armchair, with no risk of being stung. Amazing.

New book: 'Alex and Friends' text in English and in French

We have now published the text of the 'Alex and Friends' story in both English and French. Yay! It is a little pocket book which will fit into the DVD case alongside the CDs. All made possible by Lulu.

Spiral Staircases

Holly and I have had such fun with the challenge of illustrating spiral staircases that it seemed a good idea to share this with you. Last weekend I had an opportunity to take some photos, though space was rather constrained, of medieval stone, spiral staircases. These are an excellent economical use of space, and a very interesting exercise for architects and illustrators in getting the perspective right.

Illustrations here are the stone spiral staircase, a sneak preview from our new book 'Secrets of Wolvern Castle' and in a post below, Alex's Tree Staircase.


In my spare time (!) I'll have a go at building blocks to make a spiral staircase in Google Sketchup (without help from which the Castle Dining Room would be totally squiffy). More spiral staircase pics can be seen in a special Photo Gallery.

Polish Polish Polish!

It seemed everyone, teachers and librarians, at the 'Library and Information Show' last week wanted material in Polish. Do e-mail us and let us know how many copies of the 'Alex and Friends' audiobook @ £15.99 you would order. When we get to a total of 300 orders we'll be able to do it for you! Look forward to hearing from you............

Activities added ...at last!

Holly and I, and the team of translators, have been working on these activities for the last couple of years and at last the first few have found their way to the website. They are black and white pictures to colour and discuss, with some text in several languages, available as downloadable .pdfs. Amazing how long it takes to put these together. The pic on the right is a coloured in version of one of these black and white pictures to colour, this one is also available as a poster.

I hope lots and lots of children will have fun with these!

Alex and Friends Calendar

Just published on Lulu. It seemed an obvious way to gaze at Holly's wonderful illustrations all year.
Enjoy!

London Book Fair

After almost catching up with myself, and working out how to grab the photos from my new phone, I can now relate what a brilliant time I had at the LBF. The seminars are always worth the effort of finding where they are hidden. Notable this year were several seminars on childrens books including 'What Teens Really Want ' - so ask them: a bright idea by Penguin which you can check out at Spinebreakers. A very popular seminar was Digital Publishing: "Where is the Money". Concerns being raised for the future of publishing where everyone expects information for free.... and the Society of Young Publishers Canon Tales, fascinating snapshots from a wide variety of publishing people. It's also interesting to talk to so many different people at prearranged meetings, at their exhibition stands, and while queueing for coffee.

The Grammar and Punctuation Headache

So the English version of the story is now finalised and ready to be pasted into the booklet. Just gave it a final whiz through 'Word's' spelling and grammar checker. 'Inanimate' objects should be animals, vegetables and minerals 'that' do things. Giving the wolf and the elves names and/or personalities mean transgressing this and so they have become creatures 'who' do things. Naughty. Door post, window sill, honeybees, backpacks, bed time, daytime and night time - 'Word' wants to contract everything. I've chosen the Oxford English Dictionary version over the Word version. Sorry - editorial decision.

I know my adverbs aren't all in the right places, but have chosen common use over correct English. I've done proof reading in my time: I still think perfection is always just out of reach, and it's all a total headache.

English Recording Session

Today we finally got the English version of the book recorded onto the computer. Tania Rodrigues has a wonderful voice, a pleasure to listen to. She gave an amazingly accurate reading with very few interruptions. Well done both to Peter Rinne and Tania. Can't wait to get the CD pressed now, though I still have the booklet to coax into shape. Have to use Coreldraw, which is clumsy at page make up. Can't get high enough resolution .pdf outputs using Pagemaker and my computer is too clogged to run InDesign.

It's only April, English and French were our New Year's resolutions. We're getting there, but I think this recording was worth waiting for. Many thanks Peter and Tania!

Another Website 'How to' success!

The shop programme used for the Alex website (Actinic Catalog)was a major culture shock, even though I had been writing and updating my own websites for years. It took me months to get my head around the concept, and more months to get anywhere near a presentable website for 'Alex and Friends'. That was last year.

Now I have discovered how to use the Actinic 'library' to insert layouts from Dreamweaver as in the photogallery, and paragraphs containing more than one hyperlink. Such a major step forward I had to shout from the rooftops... Yay!

GESS 2009 Report

More photos of the exhibition here.

A report on the background information, and the work by the GESS organisers, BESA, the PA and the UKTI that went in to making the exhibition a success is posted at:

http://www.alex-and-friends.co.uk/NotesfromGESS2009.doc

GESS (Gulf Educational Supplies Show) Dubai

Our contact at The Publishers Association (PA) suggested that this would be a good venue for us. It attracted a UKTI grant (to encourage export). We jumped.

The PA organised a joint stand under the auspices of BESA who incidentally had the coffee machine on the stand next door to us.

The organisers went to a lot of effort. The Sheik was scheduled to open the exhibition on the first morning. We were asked to arrive early (security). As is traditional, two children were there to present flowers to the Minister of Education at the opening of the exhibition, and Sarah (from GESS) came looking for a gift for a girl aged 10 and a boy aged 7 to be presented to them on a cushion. Our book and one from Mantra Lingua were rushed to do the honours.