The Story of Stars has been longlisted for the 2014 INFORMATION BOOK AWARD!

The Information Book Award is an annual event, in its fourth year and is a major development for information books, designed to support school libraries and to reinforce the importance of non-fiction whilst highlighting the high standard of resources available.

The Story of Stars is published by Hachette, and is the third book in my ‘Story of…‘ POP-UP series.

‘Meet Your Mighty Microbes’ is a article I’ve just illustrated for Ask magazine. It’s written by Nicola Davies, who also wrote ‘Poo: A Natural History of the Unmentionable’, and all the other animal books I illustrated for Walker Books, so as you can imagine it’s super informative AND super funny!

Ask magazine is published monthly in the US and the article will be in the forthcoming April issue…

Saturday 8th February is National Libraries Day!

To help support our local library I’ll be running an Illustration Workshop. There’ll be pens and paper to draw with and I’ll also be doing few drawings and reading a few books…

It’s Free but places are limited and need to be booked on 023 9268 8999.

There was much excitment in the Layton household today with the arrival of the first copies of ‘This is me, DRESSING UP!‘ and ‘This is me, EATING!‘

‘This is me, DRESSING UP!’ and ‘This is me, EATING!’ are due to be published in March by Walker Books as part of their ‘Baby Walker’ series. Other artists in the series include Nick Sharratt and Petr Horacek so I felt very chuffed to be amongst such prestigious company.

The books were also made with the help of our youngest daughter who is now 2. Happily she really enjoyed them when I read them to her at bedtime tonight!

Children’s theatre company Tall Stories are creating a stage production of ‘Emily Brown and the Thing!’

The show will tour later in the year, click the link here more details…

‘Emily Brown and the Thing’ is written by Cressida Cowell, illustrated by Neal Layton, and published by Orchard Children’s Books.

‘Rover’ by Michael Rosen, illustrated by Neal layton, has been published in a new paperback format by Bloomsbury Childrens’ Books.

A reprint of the sequel ‘Howler’ is due to follow soon, with a third book in the series currently being artworked by Neal!

The Book People are selling a special collection of the first three Emily Brown books this Christmas, with all three books for only £4.99!

Throughout October I was illustrator of the month in the wonderful Storytellers Inc. bookshop in Lytham St Anne’s.

If you want to find out more about this lovely bookshop, or read an interview they did with me, click here!

Northern Chamber Orchestra in conduction with the Buxton Festival have made a wonderful musical version of Stanley’s Stick which they have been performing to preschool and reception classes.

Their next performance will be on October 28th at the opera house in Buxton. Book now to avoid disappointment!

You can also see lots more photos from their performance in Settle here…

The Story of Stars is published today! Click HERE to see some more inside pics coutesy of my agent Arena…