It’s been another busy year with many events around the country, particularly with the publication of a special edition of Dear Greenpeace, to celebrate it’s 25th year. There have been more new festivals to attend this year, starting with a new one for me, the Henley Book Festival last September, and then Birmingham, Totnes Children’s Book Festival, WOW at Worthing, Cardiff Book Festival and culminating in another event at the Hay on Wye Literary Festival in May. I am also looking forward to attending Cheltenham Literary Festival and the ‘Off the Shelf’ book festival in Sheffield later this autumn. It is always a great pleasure to get out of my studio and meet children and parents at these events.

As always , my school visits have kept me busy. I would like to post here a sincere thank you to all the teachers and children who have welcomed me in to their school halls. There are too many for me to list here, but a special mention to Widey Court, St Andrews, Plympton St Maurice, and St Mary’s in Plymouth, South Marsdon in Swindon, Denbury School, Prince’s Mead in Winchester, Callington and Burraton schools in Cornwall and Marlborough Primary School. Finally, thank you to the lively teenagers at Exe Academy in Exeter. These are just a few of the many wonderful schools I have enjoyed visiting this year. Thank you to all.

Simon’s latest book is out in January 2017.  Frog and Beaver is the story of how Beaver moves onto Frog’s river, builds a dam and changes everything!  The ducks have nowhere to swim, the water voles homes dry up and Frog can’t seem to make Beaver understand what he’s done.

Can Frog ever make friends with someone so difficult and so different from himself?

Simon has had a very busy year of school visits and festivals which has resulted in a longer than usual gap in publication between his books.  However, Frog and Beaver is worth the wait.  Beautifully illustrated riverside scenes in Simon’s lively, characterful line and watercolour have a distinct feel of the wide open landscapes and big country of North America.  As always Simon’s characters are wonderfully observed and highlight personalities we all recognise.  Perfect for sharing with children of all ages.

Thank you to all the schools, festivals, universities, art colleges and especially children I have visited this academic year. It has been a huge pleasure to see the enthusiastic response to my new book ‘REX’. As always, it’s been a busy year but I would particularly like to mention Broadfields Primary School in Edgware, London, for a terrific day, and also the Bournville Children’s Book Festival, I wish them further great success for next year.

I also had a wonderful time with all the staff and children at Topsham Primary School. I very much enjoyed meeting and talking to the inspiring PGSE trainee teachers at Plymouth University. My first trip to the Chipping Norton Book Festival was met with a warm welcome, I do hope to visit again. Visits to Oxford and Stratford book festivals were also delightful. My visit to Mount Tamar School, a specialist residential school, left me full of admiration, thank you to all the staff and children there too.

There are too many visits to list here, but perhaps I should mention Harrowbarrow, Copplestone, Victoria Road, Mary Dean schools and even more schools from Cornwall to Birmingham to Brighton, who have all made it a very rewarding year.

It’s always a pleasure (and relief) to leave the studio with a new book and get to see it work with children in schools. Thank you to each and everyone of you I have met on my travels. I hope you still enjoy your reading, writing and drawing.

Simon’s brand new book, REX, is published in hardback, in April with Walker books.  It could be described as a book about adoption and step- parenting with T-rexes. The story begins with a terrifying tyrannosaurus rex who is befriended by a newly hatched tiny dinosaur who believes he might be his dad. It doesn’t appear to be a good match at first, but events conspire to make sense of this unusual pairing. REX is available from all bookshops and online.

Nurse Clementine is now available in paperback from all bookshops and online. Hooray!
(See the Wall Street Journal review below)

Simon has been working on the new paperback version of Nurse Clementine, which is due out early next year. When he saw the hardback cover from his Japanese publishers, he liked it so much, he decided to use the same design for the U.K. paperback edition.

Nurse Clementine will be available in the early spring 2014.

A little girl who enjoys playing nurse comes to her brother’s aid. Meghan Cox Gurdon reviews Simon James’s “Nurse Clementine” 

Like all the best picture books, Simon James’s “Nurse Clementine” (Candlewick, 40 pages, $15.99) packs a remarkable amount of nuance, humor and emotional truth into a relatively small number of pages—though children ages 3-7 who ask to hear it read aloud repeatedly may notice only what an endearing book it is.

Our protagonist is a young girl whose parents give her a nurse’s outfit and a first-aid kit for her birthday. “It’s just what I wanted,” Nurse Clementine says, gravely donning her new attire. She doesn’t have long to wait before her first emergency: When her father bangs his toe, Nurse Clementine jumps into action. In Mr. James’s sweet, unaffected illustrations we see her kneeling before her bemused parent, binding his injury with yards of gauze. He must keep the bandage on for a week. “A week?” her father moans. “A week,” she says firmly.

By good fortune, Nurse Clementine’s mother also needs treatment, as does the family dog. Vexingly, however, Nurse Clementine’s dream patient, her little brother, Tommy, refuses medical care. A caped superhero, he leaps from the furniture and zooms through the air, crashing every time. But when the nurse rushes to his aid, he shrugs her off. Poor Nurse Clementine! The frustrated caregiver tries practicing on herself, and even on a drainpipe, but that’s no fun. It is only after Tommy really needs his sister’s help, in a genuine emergency, that he and Nurse Clementine reach a happy accommodation. Swaddled like a mummy, Tommy must keep his bandages on for a week. “All week?” he says. “Great!”