Alison Brown is an author and illustrator, well known for her collaborations with writers including Debi Gliori and Tony Mitton, and creator of her own Amazing picture book series. 

Alison first learned to draw copying cartoon strips from comics and her father’s newspapers. She honed her skills studying Fine Art at Liverpool John Moores University and Goldsmiths College, and worked as a designer, before becoming a full-time author and illustrator.

Alison has an engaging and appealing illustrative style that gives her gorgeous picture books her distinctive ahhhhh factor. You can learn how to draw her cute characters in a series of drawalongs, hosted by Alison which show step by step how to draw the baby penguin and the sweetest daddy and baby polar bear  from Amazing Baby, and the cuddly bunny star of Alison's latest picture book If You're Hoppy and You Know It.

LoveReading4Kids is delighted to welcome Alison Brown as our Guest Editor. Alison brings her top five reading recommendations to share, a Book of the Month for March, and begins with a letter to her readers:

Hello!

I’m Alison and I have been making picture books for about thirteen years. Before that I had lots of jobs, including illustrating for retail, so you might have seen one of my Santa’s elves in the supermarket aisle when you were doing your shopping! I have written and illustrated eight picture books so far and illustrated around twenty more for other authors. These books have been published as far afield as China, Japan, Australia and South Africa, and at the last count they have been translated into more than twenty - five different languages. They’re much more well travelled than I am!

It’s an honour for me to be guest editor of LoveReading4Kids this month. This is a fantastic place to find recommendations to explore a new subject, hear about new books in a genre you love, or just find a fun read!

I also think it’s brilliant that LoveReading4Kids helps schools to buy more books. School libraries and book corners are so important: a safe place to learn how to gather information for yourself ; the chance to discover that things are more diverse, more challenging and more colourful than you ever imagined; or just a quiet haven to escape into. Every child and young person should have access to a special place like this.

Q. Alison, your latest creation, If You're Hoppy and You Know It, is the most gorgeous celebration of spring. Tell us what you think makes a perfect picture book.

A. Every brilliant picture book has something quite unique that makes it special, so I’m not sure I can answer that! But the best picture books are worlds where simple words unfurl into something bigger – maybe funny and nonsensical, or moving and thought - provoking. I think they’re a deceptively simple medium for conveying big thoughts.

Join Alison in this brilliant drawalong as she shows you how to draw the cute little Easter bunny in her new book, If You're Hoppy and You Know It.

Q. We love the Amazing series which each stars a family member - Amazing Mum, Amazing Brother and most recently Amazing Baby - through the cutest and most wonderfully expressive animal characters. Do you have plans for further additions to the Amazing family?

A. I’d like to celebrate grandparents and their important role in families. The grandparent - grandchild relationship is a very special and - dare I say - sacred one, where both parties are pretty much perfect in each other’s eyes!

Representing older characters in all their diverse forms is a very interesting challenge, although no - one will ever do it better than the wonderful Babette Cole in her book Drop Dead!

Beyond the family, I’d love to do a celebration of teachers who, to me, are superheroes. I have lots of teacher-types in mind (my dad is a former science one, complete with socks and sandals) but all suggestions are welcome! 

Q. You have beautifully illustrated a number of picture books that have been written by other authors including Debi Gliori, Smriti Halls and Tony Mitton. How do you manage this sort of collaboration and what are the challenges?

A. People are often surprised to hear how little direct author/illustrator contact takes place!

By the time I get a text, the author has already spent a long time developing it along with their editor. The finished version usually comes to me with few, if any, art direction notes, and this means I can be almost completely free in how I interpret it. After my first set of sketches, there’s a collaboration between the art director, designer, editor and me, then the result is shared with the author. Fortunately, so far, I’ve had only positive responses! I’ve never been in the shoes of the author, entrusting my text to an illustrator and I’ve often wondered how that would feel.

In the case of the Little Owl books, Debi wrote the characters of Mummy Owl and Baby Owl so vividly that, apart from making them owl - like, it was clear straight away to me what their expressions and body language would be, and my job was just to get that right. Luckily, Debi was very happy with my owls and, although we have never directly worked together, I strongly feel that we share an imaginary owl-world!

Q. Which of your picture books are you most proud of creating, and why?

A. Every time a book comes out, the first thing I do is notice all the things I would have done differently! But after that phase, I look back and feel proud of all of them (with the Amazing Family and the Little Owl books, I can hardly believe I’ve made two whole series!) but it’s difficult to choose just one.

However, I’ll single out Everything Possible because it came about in an unusual way, when I heard a song, written by Fred Small, and wondered if its message could be conveyed to children through a picture book.

“You can be anybody you want to be, you can love whoever you will, You can travel any country where your heart leads, and know I will love you still.”

I imagined children hearing that those words, read (or sung) by someone they love, then carrying that message with them as they go off into the world. It’s a message that’s needed now more than ever. Unusually for me, Everything Possible featured humans and, in the illustrations I included lots of people, places and objects that meant something to me.

Q. Did you have a favourite picture book as a child?

A. I absolutely loved Richard Scarry’s books, especially Busy, Busy Town, and What Do People Do All Day?  I’m sure they planted the seed of my anthropomorphism obsession! They were funny and comforting although sometimes their mid-western USA setting verged on the exotic.

I’m always drawn to a mouse protagonist and to miniaturised things (see my recommendations!) so when moving on to illustrated chapter books, I loved the Ralph books by Beverly Cleary, where a mouse takes off on a tiny motorbike!

Q. What's in your current to-be-read pile?

A. I’m looking forward to reading The History of Information by Chris Haughton. The design looks brilliant, and I am really interested in finding out how his exceptional picture books skills are turned to wards distilling complex facts. Also, these days we all need to learn how to question how, and from whom, information comes to us!

As Guest Editor, Alison has recommended the five books that she feels stand out in the world of children's literature.

The Sea-thing Child by Russell Hoban, illustrated by Patrick Benson.
This is a beautiful, poetic story of a mysterious, small creature cast up onto a faraway beach by a stormy sea, and its journey towards acceptance by the other creatures it finds there.

Fungus the Bogeyman by Raymond Briggs
I love everything by Raymond Briggs, and Ethel and Ernest came very close, but I chose Fungus. It’s a celebration of everything damp, grim and slimy, and features some of the stinkiest, grumpiest characters in children’s books. This story was two years in the making, and it shows! The ‘plop-up’ edition is brilliant fun, but the original comic strip version is packed with all the best disgusting details and footnotes!

Traction Man is Here by Mini Grey
The traction man books are action-packed adventures featuring a weird, hilarious cast of household-object protagonists. Mini Grey’s worlds are unique, surreal and always completely bonkers.

Simp by John Burningham
Every book by John Burningham is a masterpiece. I love them all, but Cannonball Simp is my favourite of all his characters - a small, unlovely, unloved dog who finds companionship and purpose with a fellow outsider.

The Rescuers by Margery Sharp
Miss Bianca and Bernard later starred in a wonderful Disney film, but the original story is smarter, wittier and more gripping, with the most unforgettable mouse characters. If ever there is a story that I would love to illustrate one day, this is it!

And as her Book of the Month, Alison has chosen No One is Home written by Mikolaj Pa and illustrated by Gosia Herba.

I’m very excited about the new book No One Is Home from the creators of No.5 Bubblegum Street. In No. 5 Bubblegum Street, we roam all round an apartment building where the residents are a quirky community of animal characters whose many creative talents range from rapping and to sculpting. The writing is fresh and freewheeling and the illustrations are both cool and funny, with SO many things to spot and spark conversation. In the latest story No One Is Home, the action broadens out into a big, busy city, where friends Kimbo and Leo set off from opposite directions to try and meet one another. The city provides an even richer seam of hilarious and bizarre scenarios, characters and places to encounter, and I think children – and adults - will love it!

You can find a selection of Alison's books below - read our expert reviews, download an extract and add it to your basket, knowing that with every purchase on LoveReading4Kids a school close to your heart benefits.

Read more about Alison Brown's art in the Illustrators Spotlight

You might also be interested in our collection of 40 Favourite New Picture Books for Picture Book Month

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