Book Giveaway – Owl Bat Bat Owl by Marie-Louise Fitzpatrick

Congratulations to author/illustrator Marie-Louise Fitzpatrick on her new book OWL BAT BAT OWL. She has agreed to participate in our book giveaways. All you have to do to get in the running is to leave a comment. Reblog, tweet, or talk about it on Facebook with a link and you will get additional chances to win. Just let me know the other things you did to share the good news, so I can put in the right amount of tickets in my basket for you. Check back to discover the winner.

BOOK DESCRIPTION:

Can two very different families find their space in the world together? A wonderful wordless picture book offers stylish art, humor, and charm.

A mother owl and her three little owlets live happily on their branch. That is, until the bat family moves in. The newfound neighbors (owls up top, bats hanging below) can’t help but feel a little wary of one another. But babies are curious little creatures, and that curiosity, along with a wild, stormy night, might just bring these two families together. With subtly and hilariously shifting facial expressions and gestures, Marie-Louise Fitzpatrick brings her accessible graphic style to a warm and ingenious wordless tale that is sure to bring smiles to readers of all ages.

BOOK’S JOURNEY:

Michael calls me ‘Little Owl’ because I’m a night owl, definitely not a morning lark. He often draws owls on cards to me and this particular Christmas card features a whole row of rather smug looking characters. One day I thought ‘bet they’d get a shock if another animal fetched up on their branch’, and the idea flowed from there. This was the spark for my new picturebook Owl Bat Bat Owl  and the Christmas card Michael made for me:

One day as I looked at it I thought, ‘bet it would really horrify those owls if another creature moved in on their branch,’ and the idea was born.

As soon as I began sketching my little owls and bats I realized I was riffing on a familiar theme, one I’d explored before in The Long March (1998) and also in I am I (2006), and I was directly referencing this Native American symbol I had come across when making The Long March: Here is the link to a detail description on how this book was born with sketches and illustrations. It’s very interesting and you can see Marie-Louise’s other illustrations on Illustrator Saturday. https://kathytemean.wordpress.com/2017/04/29/illustrator-saturday-marie-louise-fitzpatrick/

 

MARIE-LOUISE’S BIO:

After I found my agent in 1999, I started to focus completely on my creative work and finally began to find my own particular voice and visual style. In my picture book work I like to explore the blurred line between the imagined and the real in childhood and those little/big moments of change and discovery. More recently I have begun to write novels for children – a steep learning curve! I’m really enjoying the process and I’ve discovered I can pretty much write anywhere – airports, planes, coffee shops, waiting rooms, parks …

Being a children’s writer/illustrator allows me to indulge my love of travel as I often ‘have to’ go places to do research – Oklahoma for The Long March, London for the novel I’m working on now – and I sometimes get invited to take part in literary conferences in far-flung places like Paris, Mayo, Rhode Island, Cologne, West Sussex, Cork. I’m also a history lover and really enjoy immersing myself in research, particularly the social details of how people lived, ate, worked, survived in other times and places. I buy far too many books on the subject and spend way too long preparing!

I met my partner, Michael Emberley, in Maryland in 2007 at the Frostburg Children’s Literature conference where we were both guest speakers. Michael is part of a big children’s lit family – his dad, Ed Emberley, and sister, Rebecca Emberley, also write and illustrate picture books. The readings at our wedding in Boston in 2008 were all thoughts on love from children’s book characters including Winnie the Pooh and Adrian Mole. Right now we’re living in Greystones, Wicklow.

Marie-Louise, thank you for sharing your book, your journey, and so much of your illustrations with us. It was very interesting.

Talk tomorrow,

Kathy