Meet the Artist – James McNeill Whistler by Dide Tengiz; review by Lynda Waterhouse

 

It is heartening to read that that children’s enjoyment of reading and their daily reading habits have risen for the first time in five years. Good news but let’s not forget that in 2025 it reached a record twenty year low. The report also showed that the disadvantage gap was widening.

Check out the National Literacy Trust’s report on children and young people’s reading in 2026 here.

https://literacytrust.org.uk/research-services/research-reports/children-and-young-peoples-reading-in-2026/

In the report, nearly half the children (48.7%) said that reading helps them explore their interests. This got me thinking. How are the other 51.3% supported to explore their interests? Online, shared conversations with fellow enthusiasts, collecting e.g.  football stickers or building up a fossil collection? When I’m working with school groups at The Wallace Collection, I often ask them what they collect and, after a moment’s hesitation, I’m given a long list. So far, however, no-one has spoken about building a book collection or collecting comics.

Perhaps it is the right sort of book that is required to explore interests. Yesterday I went to Tate Britain to see the James McNeill Whistler exhibition and I bought Dide Tengiz’s art activity book about the artist.

 Meet the Artist is a series of activity picture books that introduces children to the lives and works of artists. The accompanying activities are designed to encourage children to use art to explore themes, express their own ideas, and develop a lifelong love of art.

It is a good size book, approx. 24cm x 28cm, with the feel of an artist’s sketch book. Some of the activities include an invitation to go on a walk and sketch a street scene, listen to your favourite song and draw how it makes you feel, design patterns or write a poem, or identify places where you felt happy or sad.

Dide’s illustrations capture Whistler’s art whilst maintaining her own unique and beautiful style. Dide says, ‘I love storytelling and creating a sense of place and feeling in my work using colour and observational drawing.’

Check out Dide’s website: https://www.didetengiz.com/

I hope her unpublished silent graphic novel, Slow Things, gets snapped up by a publisher soon. This wordless novel would make a perfect, enjoyable ‘read’. Now that is another theme for a blogpost!

Tate Publishing

ISBN 978-1-917055-12-3

Members' News June

Welcome to the June round-up of Scattered Authors news. The weather has already swung from scorching to torrential and the school summer holidays are looming. We have a lovely batch of informative and fun books for young readers this month - clearly the month of non-fiction. Do take a look at them and help celebrate.

BODIE AND THE GHOST SHOWDOWN, Ffion Jones. Illustrated by Kara McHale

Ffion Jones is well-known for writing books supporting kids' mental health. Her latest book from Jessica Kingsley Publishers will be published on June 18th. 

Bodie has a secret fear: being sick. She is haunted by a ghost who whispers warnings and worries, convincing her to avoid buses, sleepovers, and even her favourite basketball games. She misses out on all this fun to keep her "safe" from the scariest thing she can imagine - throwing up!

At first, Bodie listens. The more she obeys, the stronger the ghost becomes. But with the support of her best friend Mina, Bodie learns to challenge his tricks, find her courage, and take back control of her life.

Bodie and the Ghost Showdown is a heartwarming story that gives children 7+ the tools to understand and overcome emetophobia. Blending humour and hope, with relatable characters, it's an empowering read for any child facing anxiety. The book also includes a guide for parents, carers, and professionals offering step-by-step suggestions for supporting kids with emetophobia. With practical tips and discussion prompts, it equips adults to assist children in applying the lessons of the story to real life.

Buy here

Ffion has set up a youth mental health and wellbeing story-based coaching Community Interest Company called Mind Chapters. It has just released its first two titles, THE GREAT GLIMMER HUNT: A STORY ABOUT NOTICING GLIMMERS and RABBIT AND THE WHISPERING WIND: A STORY ABOUT THOUGHTS AND WORRIES. Do take a look!

LOOK WHAT I FOUND AT THE PARK, Moria Butterfield, illustrated by Jesus Verona

Discover a world of wonder on a walk in the park with this beautiful picture book. Set off on a trip to the park to find natural treasure, from a big green leaf to sweet smelling rose petals, then learn more about the found object with irresistibly illustrated and informative nature notes.

Packed full of fascinating facts alongside a gentle rhyming narrative and encouraging children to get outside and explore their surroundings, this is a nature treasure hunt for the whole family!

Fun fact from Moira - the artist broke his hand so the book is a year late.

Buy here

THE ANIMAL DETECTIVES by Moira Butterfield, illustrated by Merle Goll

Another book from Moira this month.

What's the truth behind those strange mysteries we come across when we're out and about in nature? A pile of feathers... a broken egg... a hole in a shell... Time to investigate.

This engaging educational reference book encourages young readers to think like a detective in order to discover the secrets of the animal kingdom. Featuring crime-scene photos, suspect line-ups, witness interviews, evidence collections, surveillance footage and much more.

Buy here

YOUR WILD AND WONDERFUL BRAIN, Alice Harman, Illustrated by Buse Kaçer

Learn to harness, celebrate and love your wonderfully wild ADHD brain! This is the book that its author, Alice Harman, WISHES she’d had, growing up with ADHD. It helps children and young people explore their ADHD brains’ unique strengths and struggles, and learn to work with them rather than fight against them – in a fun, totally non-judgemental, ADHD-friendly way! 

Twelve different ADHD traits are each represented by a wild animal – from an all-seeing chameleon and a forgetful squirrel to a charmingly chatty parrot and a busy, busy bee. The book is full of practical tips, charming illustrations (from the brilliant Buse Kaçar), fun facts about brain science and animals, mini games and puzzles, creative activities and more. This is a must-have book for anyone interested in understanding more about our wonderful, wild and one-of-a-kind brains! Available as a paperback, ebook and audiobook, all out on 4 June 2026.

Buy here

ANIMATION RIGHTS FOR AMY WILD

Diana Kimpton's AMY WILD - ANIMAL TALKER series has been optioned for animation. The series is about a little girl who can talk to animals and who works with her animal friends to put wrong things right. The books have sold more than 350,000 copies in Japan where the series is called Animal Detective Mia.

This sample video is in Japanese and is based on the Japanese illustrations. It's being used to launch book 15 in the series but Diana also hopes it will catch the attention of the companies who can help turn the taster into a fully-funded project. Please share the link, it'd be fantastic if lots of people can see it. And look out for the English version coming in July.

That's all for this month. If you have any new books or good news you'd like to share in July, please send the details to Claire Fayers.

Double Exposure by Paul May

I've been using a film camera a lot lately. Although it's handy having a phone in your pocket that you can use to make instant photos when someone dents your car or you need to read the small print on a medicine bottle or a gallery wall, using film feels much more like making something special. These days it feels as if technology is trying to do everything for you, remembering your phone numbers and addresses, curating your Google searches and sorting your emails, and making all your photos look lovely - perfectly exposed and lit with a weird iPhone light.

With an old-fashioned film camera you actually have to do something more than just pressing a virtual button. On my camera I have to think a bit before I shoot, and I have to think a bit more because what I really like doing, especially on a trip to a new city or country, is taking double exposures.

This is not the same as putting a couple of pictures into Photoshop and layering them over each other. That's far too intentional for me. I stick the film in the camera and shoot a whole reel of backgrounds first. These might be patterns, or landscapes or fields of flowers, anything really as long as it's consistent. Then I rewind the film, hopefully without the canister swallowing the leader, and reshoot the whole film, often mainly with people, but in reality not worrying too much, simply trying to bear in mind that if the backgrounds are soft then the second layer will need to be more graphic. For me it's a perfect combination of randomness and planning, which is kind of how I used to write children's books.

A digital photo

The thing is, if you go to a much-photographed place like the Alhambra in Granada you'll probably only go once and the weather and the light might or might not be great for you, and the perfect, atmospheric pictures will already be available in books and on postcards and it seems slightly pointless to take a photo like this, although I did take it, as you see. This was twenty years ago.

But the atmosphere of that visit, and of the place, is recaptured far better for me by the double exposures I took at the same time, even though, not having done it before, I forgot that it would be a good idea to keep the camera the same way round all the time. The added oddness comes from using slide film and then processing it as if it was colour print film - an extra layer of random.

Cross-processed double exposures

When I start writing a story, I love the idea that something is coming into life that wasn't there before, and that even I don't know what it's going to be. Sure, there's a certain amount of planning involved, but I never know exactly what a character is going to say, or where they're going to end up. The end result may be terrible, or it may not, but it's always something new. And that's exactly how I feel about this kind of photography.

Looking Back at Flamingos - Joan Lennon

Back in 2011, I was thinking about how good books breed more good books. Fifteen years later, it's still true.   

These big birds and children’s authors - what do we have in common?

Is it that both groups are leggy, prone to pink and spectacularly ridiculous-looking? Speaking as a short-legged pink-hater who can only dream of looking spectacularly anything, I’d say no. Is it that people tend to look at us strangely when they meet us at parties? Perhaps, though I can’t remember the last time I encountered a flamingo at a rave. Or, indeed, the last time I went to one myself.

No, I think the thing we have in common is that we are both groups which are better as groups than in isolation. We need each other.

Take flamingos. Flamingos won’t breed unless their numbers are greater than some magic flamingo minimum. Sneaky zoo keepers have got around this by putting big mirrors by their pools so that the birds think there are at least twice as many of their colleagues long-legging it about the place than there really are. And – hey presto – bouncing baby flamingos ensue.

Writers are the same. We don’t thrive in a vacuum. We write better when we are part of a collective of creativity. The more really good children’s books there are, the more there will be. Birds and book-writers alike, we need a community in order to be really pink and glowing.

For, as the saying goes, no flamingo is an island.

Joan Lennon website

Joan Lennon Instagram

A PAUSE FOR THE START OF JUNE by Penny Dolan

 A short post today. I'm just back home after a wonderful few days away with family, celebrating a birthday.

Nothing amazingly exotic: sitting on pleasing gardens, strolling along nostalgic streets,  a quick visit to the V&A where children splashed in the sunshine - young spirits among the antiquities - and on to the delight of  an elegant Afternoon Tea and a small evening gathering afterwards. So many happy moments and dear people to see.

Right now,  my  head is full of all those thoughts and that's where I'm staying for now.

Tomorrow I'll pick up ordinary life again but not right now.

Have a very fine June.

Penny Dolan

It's reading, isn't it?

I was in a bookshop in England a while back, when a mother came in asking for help finding a book for her son, who was 11. He loved to read, she said, but was frequently coming from home from school with a book that his teacher wouldn't let him read. Because, the teacher said, it wasn't appropriate. 

What he liked, his mum said, was books with adventure. Horror. Monsters. But he couldn't take those to school because the teacher would stop him reading them. (I have no idea what the teacher thought was appropriate; the mother didn't say.)

I'm still trying to wrap my head around this. At a time when kids are reading less and less, when lessons set aside for reading are being scrapped and book sales are declining, we have a teacher stopping a child who wants to read, from reading.

I can't remember all the books we recommended, but I do know we put a copy of The Call by Peadar o' Guilin her hands. 

I'll bet he loved it.

Taking part in an arts festival - Sue Purkiss

 The first bank holiday weekend in May is known in these parts for being the Chaff weekend. 'Chaff' stands for 'Cheddar Arts Fringe Festival', and it began eleven years ago, when a group of artists in Cheddar decided that it had become too expensive to take part in the county-wide arts festival, and had the notion of developing a trail in Cheddar - the idea was that people would walk from house to house, and see the artists' work and chat to them about it. There were various add-ons: one was a grant for a local willow weaver, Sophie Courtier, to create a group of goats made of willow (wild goats are endemic to the gorge) which would be placed at the bottom of the gorge. They're still there, though they need attention every few years - willow doesn't last as stone or bronze does, but it's very embelmatic of the Somerset countryside. (Pause here for a very unsubtle plug for my children's book, The Willow Man).

For the first couple of years, I offered a free writing workshop as part of the festival. In 2020, there were exciting plans for the festival to be themed around the 75th anniversary of the end of the war. I decided with my writing group to produce a book, a collection of memoirs and short stories to do with the war. We called it Encounters With War. Putting this together was a really interesting process. I particularly remember the piece written by Phyllis Goddard, a hugely valued member of the group - sadly no longer with us - who was living and working in London at the time of the Bltz, and had written in a previous collection of an encounter with General de Gaulle, and of crossing the Thames one evening when the river itself seemed to be aflame.

But of course, we all know what happened in 2020. Covid came along, and the festival that year had to be cancelled.

After that, for a few years we had a table as a writing group, to publicise it and hopefully sell a few books. But this year, I decided to take part fully as one of the artists. Of course, taking part as a writer is rather different to taking part as a visual artist. If you sell a painting, you will hopefully make a reasonable amount of money in return for your work - and you can sell cards too. If I sell a book, I will make two or three pounds' profit if I'm lucky. It's just the bizarre economics of writing, and there it is.

So I knew I wasn't going to make any money - but that wasn't why I was doing it. So why was I? Well, mostly, it was about feeling part of a bigger community. For this reason, I wanted to be in a venue with other artists. (Well, and let's be honest, I also hoped to benefit from the footfall that the artists would attract.) And this worked beautifully. I was in a venue with Ellen Watson, who is a textile artist; Gemma Lane, a painter; and Nico Mann, a sculptor of beautiful abstract shapes. It was a delight to spend three days in the company of such talented, interesting, creative, and thoroughly nice people. For more information about their work, and the work of others, please take a look at the Chaff website, which has information about all the artists and examples of their work.

The venue. My books are on the table on the left, Nico's sculptures are on the table and shelves. The hangings were done by Ellen's textiles group.

We were in a busy spot at the bottom of the gorge, so we got quite a lot of tourists coming in to see what was going on, as well as people who had come specifically to take part in the trail, and there were lots of interesting conversations to be had. I'd hoped that my forthcoming book An Ordinary War might be ready in time. That wasn't to be, but I had the cover on display and was able to chat to people about it. And there were extra treats too: friends I used to teach with back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, and lots of other more recent friends whom it was lovely to catch up with. And it was specially precious to meet the remarkable Phyllis Goddard's daughter-in-law, who said how much the writing group had meant to her. I sold a small but respectable number of books too - Warrior King, which is about Alfred the Great and his daughter Aethelflaed and is mostly set on the Somerset levels not far from here, was the most popular.

But before the festival could take place, an enormous amount of work had to be put in by the committee, who were all fantastic organisers, and very patient with those of us who were at times slightly bemused by the requirements of social media communication. In partuclar, I'm thinking of potter Jo Brimble, who came up with brilliant posts on Instagram etc (and helped me to concoct some photographs of my work which weren't just book covers), and Adam Clutterbuck and Lucy James, who sorted us all out with charm and patience. 

All in all, it was an overwhelmingly positive experience. My only regret is that I wasn't able to get round and see many of the other artists' work - and there are a lot of them now: over 40 this year. Next year, perhaps!