Old-lady-baby strikes again

Bologna Book Fair

Katie Chappell

and I did a quick trip to the Bologna Book Fair this week.

We loved bumping into our illustrator pals and this got us thinking, how can we meet more of our Good Ship sailors next year? We are getting very excited hatching Good Shippy plans for Bologna 2026. Watch this space.

Some of the highlights including meeting Jarvis and Charlotte Durrance

Books by Élisa Géhin, Elīna Braslina, Davide Calí, Anne Crahay, Guilia Pastorino, Grazia Gotti and Giovanni Colaneri

Con Las Latras by Yale Frankel

My tote bag was heavy, so I limited myself to one purchase from the bookshop. I chose this one: Con Las Letras by Yale Frankel (sorry, the photos are a bit rubbish). Look at those delicious line drawings!

Old-lady-baby strikes again

Whenever I draw myself at Art Club I always come out looking like an old-lady-baby. Part evil child, part old lady. It has become a thing. ‘Old-lady-baby strikes again!’ Anyway, old-lady-baby has been caught on camera, there she is. Katie says she has been awarded school monitor status and doesn’t know what to do with her new found powers 😂

(That is our agent, the wonderful Jessica Hare in the middle)

---

In other news, back at home we have started putting books on our new bookshelves. I thought this job would take a morning, but no! It turns out that arranging books on shelves is difficult. It sends me into a spin and I spend ages deciding what goes where. So two weeks on and we still have books in boxes.

I pimped up my dolls house to work as a lamp. I painted the inside white, gave it some curtains and filled it with fairy lights. I love it so much!

Oh and I am very excited/ smug because I uploaded a vintage telly screensaver to make our boring black screen look nice.

Shelves, Molly Fairhurst print, family portrait, Mother’s Day card portrait by Pie

Did you visit the Bologna Book Fair? We sprinkled badges and stickers everywhere, did you find one?

How do you arrange your bookshelves? By subject/ author/ height/ colour/ random?

Love Helenx

P.S. There’s a new Good Ship podcast OUT TODAY !

This week we’re answering TWO of your excellent questions:

1. “How can I stop overthinking my story and just... FINISH IT???”

2. “Which is better, RGB or CMYK?”