From award-winning poet JonArno Lawson and illustrator Sydney Smith,
comes a beautifully illustrated wordless picture book – an ode to the
importance of small things, small people and small gestures. A little girl collects wild flowers
while her distracted father pays her – and their surroundings – little
attention. Each flower the little girl gathers becomes a gift for a
person or animal, and whether the gift is noticed or ignored, both giver
and recipient are transformed by their encounter. An ode to the
importance of small things, small people and small gestures, Footpath Flowersis a quiet but powerful testament to the joy that children can find in ordinary things and the mutual value of giving.
Hoot Owl, written by Sean Taylor and illustrated by Jean Jullien, is
one of our favourite new picture books this year. On Wednesday 29th
April we had a party to celebrate the book at Byron Burger.
We all love burgers
here at Walker HQ – who doesn’t?! – but this wasn’t the only reason we chose to
have the launch party here. Before the book was made, our lovely Picture Books
Publisher, Dee, had read Sean Taylor’s hilarious story about an owl who adopts
many disguises in the hope of catching his dinner, but she hadn’t yet found an
illustrator to bring the story to life. It was during a visit to Byron Burger
that Dee came across one of Byron’s postcards, illustrated by Jean Jullien, and
thought that Jean’s art style was the perfect match for Sean’s story. She then
went about tracking down Jean to ask him to illustrate Hoot Owl, and the rest, they say, is history!
Here are some photos
of Dee, Sean and Jean all together at the party:
Jean has also
designed some fabulous Hoot Owl children’s menus and colouring sheets for Byron
Burger, which some of our guests had a lot of fun with at the party. You can
see these in Byron Burger restaurants until June:
One of the biggest
highlights of the night was Sean Taylor treating us to a hilarious live reading
of Hoot Owl: Master of Disguise.
There’s nothing like hearing a story read by its own author!
Later in the evening,
Sean and Jean sat down to sign lots of guests’ copies of the book. In a fun
feat of teamwork, Sean signed each book with a lovely, personalised Hoot Owl-inspired message, and then Jean
drew a speech bubble around the message and a personalised owl for each reader.
We particularly love the owl he drew for Joe, complete with characteristic
glasses!
All in all, it was a
fabulous night celebrating a brilliant new book – with really scrumptious
burgers!
