Happy New Year!  This is my first blog this year. I left my house in the middle of December and came back last week.

I was in Prague before Christmas promoting “Husa Liza” (Czech edition of “Silly Suzy Goose”). The book was recently published in the Czech Republic, by “Portal”.

I did an interview for Czech telly. The filming took more than an hour. When it was finally shown on the TV, during the main Czech TV news it was about a minute long and there was no mentioning of  my Czech publisher “Portal”.  They showed “Butterfly, Butterfly”, instead. Quite funny I thought.

Christmas Prague was pretty and I managed to see friends and went to one of my favourite cafes too. The cafe is Montmartre in Retezova Ulice.

 

When I came back to England for Christmas, it was raining and everything was flooded.  No wonder I had a dream about a flood. In my dream I was looking at my neighbour’s garden. From my window I can see an apple tree. I could see something sitting in the branches…it was a seal.

 

Here is a drawing of the seal sitting in the tree.

We were in Holand over New Year. We went to Breda and spent New Year with friends Mathilde, Christophe and lovely little boy Achille. Mathilde is an award winning dutch writer and  rather good painter. We had a great time with them.

 

Later on in an Amsterdam book shop I saw a Dutch version of “Jonathan and Martha” next to Mathilde’s book “Beste Bregje Boentjes” ( in English the book is call “Dear Daisy Dunnington”).

It was nice to see my books in Dutch. I even made it to a gallery. I was pleased to see the Dutch edition of “A New House for Mouse” in the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. Picasso’s work was hanging just a few metres from my book! “A New House for Mouse” was in good company. Zdenek Miler’s “Krtek” (Mole) was next to it! It made my day.

This is one of my favourite pieces of art from the Stedelijk Museum.

It is done by Jean Tinguely. I love it.

Oh yes, one more piece of art. Lysander Burleigh, who lives in Germany sent us a picture of Suzy Goose and the Christmas Star. Lysander is 8 years old and is a great artist. I love the picture. Here it is.