Spike Gerrell’s charming illustrations for Max Archer, Kid Detective: The Case of the Recurring Stomachaches is the second in the series, published this month by Magination Press. Spike’s sensitive use of humour to explain difficult health topics, helps children understand and overcome their anxieties.

This month sees the publication of a new picture book by award-winning team, Jeanne Willis and Adam Stower. The zoo animals all cram aboard the bus for an adventure ride with hilarious consequences.

Published by Puffin

Kristyna Litten’s stylish illustrations of the Hong Kong and Macau skyline are beautifully presented in a slipcase as part of a series of City Skylines, recently published by Walker Books. Kristyna has also illustrated the Rome guide which will be published in October.

Jo Nesbø’s hilariously funny Doctor Proctor’s Fart Powder series continues with the recent publication of  Time-Travel Bath Bomb and The End of the World, Maybe (Simon and Schuster). The very talented Chris Garbutt’s crazy illustrations are perfect for the covers and should have them flying out of all good book stores in no time at all.

This month’s image for Arena’s 2012 Desktop Calendar is by Adam Stower from his picture book, Silly Doggy! published by Templar.

Occasionally, we like delving into our illustrators’ less than ordinary pastimes, when they’re not hard at work at their drawing boards. Imagine our surprise when we found out that Spike Gerrell has gone on a quest to become a beekeeper! He’s been bee-vering away and keeping a blog of his discoveries as he plans to change from Bee Ignoramus into Beemeister Extraordinaire. I’ll stop ‘droning’ on and leave you with a little taster.

Land of Spike's Land of Bees

Adam Stower is interviewed alongside author Francesca Simon on the Big Book Babble with a live studio audience. Red House and Scholastic present the Big Book Babble to encourage children to enjoy reading. Each programme features popular children’s authors, illustrators and poets in a Q&A session hosted by comedian James Campbell in front of a live and online audience of children. Francesca Simon reads from her recent book, The Sleeping Army, illustrated by Adam Stower. Adam is drawing live in the studio and also discussing his own picture book, Silly Doggy! (Templar).

Enjoy the show!

Steve May has been working with our friends at Discover Children’s Story Centre on their brand new exhibition SUPERHEROES. They couldn’t have chosen a more perfect candidate as Steve is an actual superhero and when he’s not drawing illustrations for us he disappears into a phone box, sports a rather fine cape and saves the universe from meanies.

The brief was to create the underground Alphabet City plagued by an evil villain ‘Y’ who has stolen all the vowels, the five superhero characters A,E,I,O and U are there to save the city and each has their own superpowers. First of all the characters were created and each of their personalities was explained in a comic strip

Superpowers range from X-Ray Vision to Time Travel, Super Strength to Mind Reading, led by I, with the powers of Invisibilty and Invincibilty. The city they inhabit was purely from Steve’s imagination. A has invented a supercar, made real by the talents of Paul Callahan in the exhibition space where Steve created an animation to visualise the chase through the city streets in persuit of evil Villain Y. When children enter the city they are led into a control room where I asks for their help, Steve created this little introduction animation with the sound talents of Sam Hooper…

Do come along to see the exhibition and meet the superheroes.

With thanks to Eleanor Butler, Paul Callaghan and Sally Goldsworthy at Discover

New recruit, Euan Cook, gives us a modern interpretation of four fairy tales in his latest piece for Arena’s promotional postcard.

Urban Tales

This month’s image for Arena’s 2012 Desktop Calendar is by Spike Gerrell. ‘The Easter Bunny’ was a magazine illustration for Sainsbury.