A giant bat, a reading rabbit and a big, beautiful banner

Story Street #21

Welcome to Story Street – a monthly newsletter from children’s author and illustrator Jane Porter. Read on for ramblings about my life as a picture book maker, community artist, comic diarist, under-confident fiddle player and very, very amateur luthier.

This month I’ve flown a giant bat, cuddled a tiny rabbit - and made a comic that I hope will make you love ‘the taxman’ just a little bit. Read on for more, as well as for details on how to enrol in my online comics class. But first: a lovely, heart-lifting community banner-making project…

It’s been a real pleasure to work with Wandsworth Welcomes Refugees over the last few weeks to make a banner – a beautiful piece of textile art combining creative contributions from over 50 local groups who have pledged to help welcome asylum seekers and refugees, as well as from many individuals with lived experience who have arrived in the borough from all over the world.

When we first started talking about this project a few months ago, I came up with a design with the intention of celebrating all the different voices - without the result becoming visually overwhelming. The backing is a three metre long patchwork of fabrics from many nations, beautifully stitched together by another volunteer, and it makes a perfect setting for the dozens of ‘pebbles’ exploring the idea of ‘home’ in appliqué, embroidery, patchwork, crochet and knitting.

Words of welcome in many languages, houses, food, doors and doormats, flowers, snails and stag beetles, and even Tooting Lido made an appearance. I made a choir!

Running through the middle is a piece of blue silk I’ve been saving for 30 years. It’s finally come into its own, representing the river Wandle weaving through the borough, flowing with the names of all the places and organisations offering sanctuary to those who need it. Painting the names on with fabric paint was a much bigger job than I anticipated, but I’m pleased with how it looks.

The banner was launched at Battersea Arts Centre at an event for Refugee Week, and it will now go on tour in Wandsworth – which has been recognised as a Borough of Sanctuary. It was a very uplifting evening. It’s been a lovely project, and I met so many interesting people as a result.

A magic book and a reading rabbit

Since last September I’ve been a regular visitor at a local primary school, Albemarle, and I’ve had so much fun telling stories, joining the comics club, and getting everyone making story maps. Last term I launched a story competition, and I made the winning stories into a book then had copies printed by youloveprint.

I was thrilled when my author friend Zanib Mian agreed to write a forward to the book AND visited the school for an assembly – her Planet Omar and Meet the Maliks books have many, many superfans at the school. Thankyou Zanib!

I was so pleased with the resulting ‘Magic Book’ – the print quality is excellent (it’s my mistake that the title isn’t quite centered – oops, will do better next time).  It was a joy to present copies of the book to all the winning young authors in assembly, and THEN cut the ribbon to open the new school library to an absolute crescendo of cheering.

There’s so much love for books and reading at the school. I wrote a story for the book too – about Oreo, the school rabbit, trying to solve the great missing bean mystery – and I finally got to meet him in person (though I forgot to bring any beans). The children like to read to him (in fact some children ONLY read if Oreo is on their lap) so he is an absolute asset to literacy. All schools should have a reading rabbit.

Ancient Egypt and other journeys

The British Library project I mentioned in my last newsletter is now live - you can find lots of wonderful resources for school here (or summer projects with children):

And here’s the video of the book I made, all about my cat travelling back in time to Ancient Egypt, enjoying a banquet - and then making a hasty retreat when he finds out about mummified cats.

Reinventing ‘The Taxman’

Back in 2020 I was thrilled when The Boy Who Loved Everyone by me and Maisie Paradise Shearring (Walker Books) won the Little Rebels Award for radical children’s literature. At the Zoom awards ceremony, I unexpectedly had to give a little speech and blurted out that my dream was to write a picture book about tax, to change the narrative away from the widely held presumption that tax should be reduced at all costs. That picture book doesn’t exist – yet – but I’ve taken the first step by making a zine about it for my comics class. (Each term we have a postal, international zine swap which is a lot of fun, and the theme was ‘Things I wish I’d said’).

Here's my tax zine in full – I’d love you to share it as widely as you wish, because I passionately believe in what it says…

I’ve made a downloadable version here in case you’d like to print a few and hand them out to any tax quibblers you know - you’ll find it here (scroll to the bottom after you click the link).

Enrolment for comics is now open

My online comics class is one of the highlights of my week, I love teaching it and always learn so much from my students. The zines this term have been magnificent.

"Thankyou so much for such a wonderful class - your kindness and enthusiasm is a balm to the creative soul!" Ingrid, Switzerland

"So enjoying getting back to my comic challenges thanks to you - always inspired by all you share", Bridget, France

If you’d like to join next term, enrolment is now open. Classes are for ten weeks on a Wednesday, 11am-1pm and 7pm-9pm UK time, starting 18th September. Places filled up fast last term, so don’t delay if you are keen! If there is enough demand I might add an extra session from 2.30-4.30pm. You can find all the details by clicking the link below:

Smelly Peggy and a Little Lion Girl

Two illustrator friends had new books out in June, and they are both gems (the illustrators and the books!)

Helen Stephens’ new story, Smelly Peggy (Walker Books), is all about her dog (I have met Peggy and can confirm that she’s very charming – although I can’t comment on any aromas as my sense of smell has never been the same since my first bout of Covid!). Here’s Helen with the book:

And here’s a collage activity I did with my weekly nursery class, who were in STITCHES of laughter and wanted to hear the story again and again – the best of all reviews! If you’re in a nursery or school, you can make your own Peggy with simple blocks of coloured paper, some strands of wool for a lovely furry texture, and random collage scraps to represent the smell. When I showed the picture to the group and asked them to guess what the colours meant, one boy said “is it because the dog is happy?”. I think she really is!

The second book is Little Lion Girl, written by Olivia Hope and illustrated by Fiona Woodcock, published by Bloomsbury. Here’s Fiona and Olivia at the launch party:

Fiona’s illustrations are always STUNNING and this is no exception - here’s a little taster of two of my favourite spreads:

If you are curious about how Fiona makes this beautiful artwork, you can watch me chatting to Fiona about her illustration process here:

Both books would make lovely gifts, so if you have any young children in your life with birthdays coming up, here are some handy links for you:

Also both

Helen Stephens

and

Fiona Woodcock

have brilliant Substack newsletters - do check them out!

About that giant bat…

“Shall we flap?” is not an invitation you get every day - but on Saturday 22nd June I was asked to help fly a giant bat as part of the Restore Nature Now march from Speakers’ Corner to Westminster.

This is Biggles - a giant bat puppet made by my friend Claire McCormack for the Bat Conservation Trust to raise awareness of diminishing biodiversity and its future consequences. He flies with a troupe of ‘sock midges’, and even has a string to pull to open and close his mouth as if he’s eating them. You can see more of Biggles on his Instagram account here.

The day had a serious purpose - but it was also a joyous celebration of creativity, and I loved spotting the inventive banners, puppets and props, from crochet coral to papier maché bees, and three enormous avocets whose wings flapped with utmost grace.

Thickness and thin-ness

Violin-making is full of delightful specialist vocabulary, and this month I’ve moved on to ‘thicknessing’ my ribs. The ribs are the sides of a violin, and they are only 1mm thick and have to be very carefully prepared with a plane and my new favourite tool, a cabinet scraper. ‘Thin-nessing’ would be a more accurate word, but either way it’s a soothing – if very slow – process. Here’s a rib in progress:

Next term I’ll have to learn how to steam and bend them.

On the very last day of June, I squeezed in a visit to the Enzo Mari exhibition at the Design Museum. I had a hunch I’d enjoy seeing the work of this Italian designer, whose work ranged from furniture to children’s games - but I came out of it BUZZING with excitement and inspiration.

Towards the end, there were three cabinets of objects Enzo Mari had found over the years, each one installed as a paperweight on top of the notebook of a great thinker.

I came home and made my own tribute! The stone with red eyes I found on a mountainside, and the crackled pot came out of the river Wandle… and the left hand page of notes is from Mari himself.

The exhibition is on until Sept 8th - do go if you get a chance. I could hardly wait to get home to start making notes for my own project - in this lovely comp book sent to me by one of my comics students in Boston after I mused out loud about how to find comics genius Lynda Barry’s favourite notebooks. Thankyou Sarah!

Thankyou for reading Storry Street. I’ll write to you again on August 1st when I hope to have a quilt update. If you enjoyed this episode, do share it with friends. And if my tax comic resonated with you, do share that too - let’s make it go viral!

And finally, if you’d like to buy any of my picture books, here they are: