The Secret Lives of Picture Books

Log in, get your bearings, settle down for a fun evening.

Meet your hosts: authors EM LYNAS and CANDY GOURLAY who have been SCBWI buddies since they met on a picture book list serve. Both have twisty tales to tell of their journeys to publication. Where did they go wrong? What did they do right?

Meet Candy's agent, JESSICA HARE of The Agency, and Em's agent, AMBER CARAVEO of Skylark. How do picture books make it to their lists? How do they work with authors and illustrators? What do they have to do to sell a picture book to a publisher? Write your questions in the chatbox and our agents will do their best to answer them.

Meet Candy's editor and publisher, JANETTA OTTER BARRY of Otter Barry Books, and Em's editor, LOU BOLONGARO of Nosy Crow. What are publishing houses looking for in picture book manuscripts? What would persuade them to offer a contract? How does an editor edit a picture book? Questions in the chatbox!

Meet the art directors! NIA ROBERTS of Nosy Crow and JUDITH ESCREET of Otter Barry Books. How do you match a text with an illustrator? What are the key things you are focusing on when directing the illustrator? How do you diplomatically bring together the disparate visions of the editor, the author and the illustrator? Feel free to ask questions in the Chatbox!

Meet our fabulous illustrators! There will be a short video from the Philippines with JAMIE BAUZA, illustrator of Little Rhino Lost, talking about her practice. MATT HUNT will be with us, live, to talk about his fabulous illustrations for Em Lynas's hilarious series of picture books: The Cat and the Rat and the Hat, The Goat and the Stoat and the Boat, and The Bear and the Hare and the Fair.

MATT HUNT, CANDY GOURLAY and EM LYNAS will answer questions and respond to comments in the chatbox, before bidding everyone a fond farewell.

Candy Gourlay was born in the Philippines, grew up under a dictatorship and met her husband during a revolution. She became an author of books for children and young adults after nine years of rejection. Her books have been nominated for many prizes including the Carnegie, the Guardian Prize, the Costa and the Nero Book Award. She has won the National Children’s Book Award of the Philippines twice and the Crystal Kite Prize for Europe twice. Her first novel Tall Story was selected as one of the ‘100 Best Books of the Last 100 Years’. Candy loves making comics which she posts on her substack, The House of Procrastination.

Em Lynas is a children’s author with a love of silly poetry, magic, dragons and folklore. Em has been a shelf stacker, a shoe shop assistant, a primary school teacher, a mum, an educational publisher and now, an author of funny books. She lives by the seaside on the North East coast of England with her husband, Geoff, and although she did have pets when her children lived at home; hamsters, guinea pigs, a rabbit and a jar of stick insects, she is currently petless.

Amber Caravéo has spent her entire career in children’s publishing. She is the co-founder of Skylark Literary – www.skylark-literary.com – a specialist literary agency that seeks and supports the very best in Children’s and YA fiction and non-fiction. Prior to founding Skylark, Amber spent many happy years working for major publishing houses such as Hachette and Random House. Before that, she worked for Working Partners, where she developed the million-copy-selling series, Rainbow Magic. She knows the children’s publishing industry inside and out and brings this experience to all her work, building happy and collaborative relationships between authors and publishers. Follow her on Bluesky: @ambercaraveo.bsky.social

Jessica Hare runs the Children’s Books department at The Agency. Jessica took over from Hilary Delamere in 2023, having started at the company in 2017. Following this promotion, she was selected as one of the The Bookseller’s Rising Stars for 2023, a list which celebrates the book industry’s up-and-comers and future leaders. Jessica represents established and emerging children’s books’ authors and illustrators across every age range and genre. She specialises in handling her clients’ publishing deals and works with colleagues to manage their screen and stage rights as well.

Lou Bolongaro is a true picture book enthusiast. She’s worked in children’s publishing for over twenty years and, after cutting her teeth on novelty books, soon realised that picture books and poetry are what really quicken her heart. She started out at Macmillan Children’s Books, before becoming Editorial Director at Puffin in 2004 and then settled in the nest at Nosy Crow in late 2012. She always says that a picture book should make you “feel something” and only ever wants to create books that children clutch at bedtime with a demand to be read at least five times.

From 1988, she worked as Editorial Director at Frances Lincoln Children’s Books, a ground-breaking publisher in terms of diversity and inclusion, particularly in bringing stories from many different cultures to a UK audience. From 2009-2015, Janetta had her own imprint at Frances Lincoln. Otter Barry Books is now an independent publishing house which focuses on culturally diverse and inclusive books.

Jude is a veteran designer and art director who has worked in children's publishing for many years

Nia has worked in Children’s Publishing for over twenty years. During this time she has been Deputy Art Director at Orchard Books and Art Director at Simon and Schuster, and Harper Collins. Nia has worked with a huge and varied array of illustrators, including Benji Davies, Sara Ogilvie and Kate Hindley. One of her finest moments was being introduced by one of her favourite artists as the ‘Kubrick of Children’s Books.’

She graduated from Ateneo de Manila University in the Philippines, with a degree in BFA Information Design, and received a Loyola Schools Awards for the Arts in Visual Art (Illustration). In 2018, she attended the Summer Illustration Residency at the School of Visual Arts in New York. She was a recipient of the Adobe Creative Residency Community Fund in February 2021. She is a member and former president of Ang Ilustrador ng Kabataan (Ang INK), a Philippine association of artists committed to the creation and promotion of illustrations for children. When she's not drawing, you can find her in the garden or chatting with her two cats, Kiki and Popo.

Matt Hunt is a freelance illustrator living and working in Redditch, UK. He holds a BA (Hons) in Fine Art from the Birmingham School of Art and works in the world of commercial and narrative illustration. He is passionate about storytelling and loves to draw pretty much anything. Clients include: Nosy Crow, Frances Lincoln, Walker, Penguin, Boxer Books and Ladybird. He's represented by The Bright Illustration Agency.