Wolf Girl Publishes Today!!!

Hello!

This is the first blog post I have written in ages, so I thought I would make it about Wolf Girl which publishes today with Frances Lincoln Publishing/Quarto.

I am so excited about Wolf Girl and wanted to share a bit about how I made it and the inspiration behind Sophy and her friends, the wolf family.

Like many of my stories, Wolf Girl came to me very slowly over a long period of time and didn’t really form as a proper story until I took the few sketches I had of Sophy along to a meeting with Claire Grace, Commissioning Editor at Frances Lincoln.

Claire saw something in Sophy and we worked closely together to form the story that is now Wolf Girl.

I wanted Wolf Girl to convey the sadness of a little girl who finds it hard to fit in. My daughter Safi, who is fantastically sociable but suffers a little with anxiety, was the inspiration behind Sophy and I based Sophy’s physical characteristics on her. The book is dedicated to Safi.

The inspiration for the other characters-the wolf and her pup and the owl, were from my nephew Brendan’s encounters in the forest of Georgia, USA, where he grew up.

I love to add a touch of magic to my stories and illustrations whilst tackling tricky subjects. I mostly use rich colours in my work and pops of colour and always love a snowy landscape.

I’ll write more about my process at a later date, but here are some of my initial character studies…..