Illuxcon's Annual Gathering, in Reading Pennsylvania

We're off to Illuxcon tomorrow and looking forward to seeing many friends there. Here are some details from John Harris's painting 'The Long Way Home' and Jim Burns' 'Jane Delawney had her Dreams'.

Silk Roads

Peter Frankopan gave a very enlightening talk at the Cheltenham Festival this week. Many of you will have already read his book 'Silk Roads' and now there's a superb children's edition illustrated by Neil Packer. It's a book every child should read. The publishers have made a short animated film using Neil Packer's illustrations.

Grahame Baker Smith

Also published last week, 'Wisp' by Australian award-winning writer, Zana Fraillon, an uplifting refugee story illustrated by Grahame Baker Smith.

In other news

Some of Jim Kay's and Olivia Lomenech Gill's illustrations for the Harry Potter books are now on show at the New York Historical Society as part of the exhibition "A History of Magic". We just didn't know when Jim first produced that phoenix that he'd be flying all over the world. Flying onto carrier bags, notebooks and bus passes. Where to next?

Here's Jim's Dumbledore and Olivia's Hippogriff. Not many people are clever enough to fit an eagle's head, claws and wings onto the back half of a horse.