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There is nothing like seeing lots of copies of your book stacked up and ready to go! |
My friend Steve is a very prolific picture book maker and he gave me the best advice when planning the book launch for Umbrella: He said,"It is a party!"
Now I do have experience throwing parties as we tend to have a few big ones during the year celebrating birthdays and Pumpkin Days and some such, so I knew that we needed most of all to bring people together. I am lucky to live in Cambridge where lots of book launches take place and I really wanted people to have more than one reason to come, and for those for whom this was a first to feel at ease and relaxed.
I wanted there to be something already belonging to those in the room so I started to think about how I could make the book launch more inclusive, to make it about people taking the trouble to come, and perhaps even bringing together people who could not be there.
Now I do have experience throwing parties as we tend to have a few big ones during the year celebrating birthdays and Pumpkin Days and some such, so I knew that we needed most of all to bring people together. I am lucky to live in Cambridge where lots of book launches take place and I really wanted people to have more than one reason to come, and for those for whom this was a first to feel at ease and relaxed.
I wanted there to be something already belonging to those in the room so I started to think about how I could make the book launch more inclusive, to make it about people taking the trouble to come, and perhaps even bringing together people who could not be there.
This is how #wishesTogether came to be. I now have turned this into a workshop, but started life as way to bring together the wishes of people I love and this gradually expanded to the participation of a whole school and members of the public.
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| I wanted to send nice pink disks for my friends illustrators to participate. And of course they had to be the same pink as the original artwork "wishing pink". |
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| And wishes did come from all over! |
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Lots and lots and lots of wishes! |
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| Wishes from people of all ages. |
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So I started sewing all of those wishes together, getting them ready for Heffers... |
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It was so much fun to transform Heffers into a massive collection of hopes and wishes. |
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Above the hanging table I hung the wishes from my colleagues, and has several progress dummies of Umbrella to show. |
And then finally it was time. I was delighted to sign my first book to Zoe, who is a bookseller in the market square and a fellow ceramic artist!
Lots of people came, I was overwhelmed and I felt truly grateful for the outpouring of affection I felt in the room.
I got to see faces from all periods of my 20 years living in Cambridge, and felt incredibly supported by my family and friends all of whom contributed to this being an unforgettable evening.
Sarah Pakenham, my publisher gave a wonderful speech where she read some of the latest reviews from all sorts of publications in the UK. It was great to talk about the process of making the book and the total faith that Janice Thomson my editor gave it and the freedom that Sarah Finan, the designer, allowed it. Our small but perfectly formed team made making Umbrella a truly magical experience, and I hope you get to read this much love in it, because it has been there from the first day.
I missed Janice, and Oli and Steve and other friends who couldn't make it, but it still was one of the happiest nights in my life.
And of course it took me almost a year to post this on the blog. It was July 17th 2019!
If you found a magical umbrella that granted what you wished or what you needed,
what would you wish for?
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