Birds Eye View by Frann Preston-Gannon

We are delighted to share a guest post from Frann Preston-Gannon on the making of her newest children’s book, Birds Eye View.

Making Bird’s Eye View

Next year I mark a decade as a published children’s author and I have worked on over 25 books in that time. I enjoy making lots of different types of books for children. I have done some work in non-fiction and illustrated poetry. Making funny picture books for kids is an absolute joy but I have also always been interested in making thought-provoking stories for children. I knew that for this new picture book I wanted to make the kind of story that sparked discussion between adults and children about humans and our treatment of the planet and the animals we share it with.

All picture books start with a very rough mapping out of how the story will work in thumbnail form. This allows you to get a sense of how things will progress before committing to full colour illustrations. Quite often things may still change later on but for the most part, this book stayed close to the original rough sketches.

The first drawings for the character for Little Bird was a non-species specific blue bird but I quickly found that was going to be a problem with her standing out throughout the book against the detailed backgrounds. Changing her to a white bird really helped with this. I also liked the connection with the symbol of the dove for peace.

It was a real pleasure developing the illustrations for this new book and I can’t wait to see it out in the wild in bookshops from 2^nd August.

Birds Eye View is available is published by Templar Books and is available now from book retailers.