With the first Tony Spears Book being published today, I thought I’d write a blog post giving a bit more background to the story… I’ve been working on this new series for about 3 years now but I guess it’s actually the culmination of my life long interest in space exploration, and science fiction, and the games I used to […]

  A short trailer I made for my forthcoming book ‘The Invincible Tony Spears.’ (It’s actually meant to loop which is why it’s so short…!) ‘The Invincible Tony Spears’ will be published in July by Hodder Children’s Books.  

Each spring, the children’s publishing world converges on the historic Italian city of Bologna for a huge trade fair. It’s been running for over 50 years now and is unique because it is the only book fair exclusively for children’s books. I’ll be visiting the show again this year soaking up the atmosphere and meeting my […]

Just arrived in the post- a Japanese edition of ‘Mammoth Academy in Trouble!’

Preparing for an Easter getaway? Look out for the poetry points at Heathrow Airport! There are four pillars in terminals 2-5 each with specially written travel poems recited by their authors Michael Rosen, Danny Wallace, Laura Dockrill and MG Leonard. As you might have guessed I did the illustrations which feature cameos of some of the […]

    Stanley’s Stick is ‘an excellent bedtime read’ in Lauren Laverne’s house at the moment! John Hegley pops up in conversation whilst Lauren and Tim Key discuss Russian Literature… Sound clip here… Or you can listen to the whole programme (which also features guests Caitlin Moran and Dave Okumu) here… (The clip is 43.20 […]

  Practicing drawing Emily Brown and Stanley for a school visit next week…   IMG_7975 from Neal Layton on Vimeo.

  …all four Emily Brown books, have been re-printed with shiny new covers!    

Mammoth Academy in Japanese! (Thanks to Andy Sharp at Hodder for the photo)

Last weekend I was invited to paint a mural at the Discover centre as part of The Big Draw, the world’s biggest drawing festival. This year’s theme was ‘every drawing tells story’ so I drew an enormous ‘Batholomew Bear’, surrounded by lots of bees and flowers, to help highlight the current plight of bees. We didn’t have long, only 2 and […]