Last Friday morning I was in Sheffield, attending the Sheffield Picture Book Award ceremony held at the Crucible Theatre. The theatre was packed with children from 302 schools!

There were a number of books nominated in different categories. ‘The Greedy Goat’ was one of them.

The whole event was so overwhelming. It was amazing to see so many excited children, meeting up with fellow writers, artists and meeting  librarians and the organisers of the event. The atmosphere was great.Here are all the nominated writers and illustrators together.

I don’t know why, but I assumed, that if my book had won, I would know it in advance, so I just sat comfortably in my chair enjoying the show and waiting for the winners to be called out.

How surprised I was when the winner of the Toddler books category was announced. It was ‘The Greedy Goat’!   

 

The whole event was very well organised and it was nice to meet so many children and people who love and are dedicated to picture books.

The award itself is rather special, since it is decided by the votes of children.  ’Nibbles the Book Monster’ was announced as the overall winner! Congratulations!

After the ceremony, there was still enough time for the authors and illustrators to visit some of the local schools. I did lots of drawings and reading. We had fun and it was a nice day in Sheffield.

Thank you to everybody involved in organising such a great event!

One more announcement;  ’A First Book of Animals’ was recently published in America. The book has a different cover and also a different title. It’s called ‘Song of the Wild’.

We have already got a couple of nice reviews. One in New York Times and another in Kirkus Review. How exciting!