I was so excited to be asked to join Children’s Books North’s Autumn Highlights blog tour – celebrating new books from CBN members with a tour of Northern and Scottish book blogs.
Children’s Books North aims to connect children’s book professionals living in the North West, North East, Yorkshire and Scotland. The network seeks to promote our members’ work, new books and events. Additionally, CBN is keen to bring focus on the importance of regional diversity in children’s books and the industry.
You can find Children’s Books North here on twitter or check out their website here.
The Hospital Dog © Julia Donaldson and Sara Ogilvie 2020 — Macmillan Children’s Books
For my stop on the tour, I was thrilled to be asked to share Sara Ogilvie’s work with you, having loved her illustrations in Andy Shepherd’s The Boy Who Grew Dragons books and, of course, in the book which precedes this one – Detective Dog.
Her most recent book then is a new collaboration with Donaldson – The Hospital Dog – which we were really lucky to be sent a copy of, and which Peapod has absolutely loved! You can read our review of it here.
Here’s Sara to tell you a bit more about the book and how she works…
Tell us about your new book
It’s The Hospital Dog, written by Julia Donaldson, about a friendly Dalmatian called Dot and her owner Rose, who visit sick children on the Wallaby Ward at their local hospital. While it is a standalone book it’s a companion to The Detective Dog which came out in 2016.
Julia wrote this text a few years ago, inspired by meeting a real-life hospital therapy dog and her owner. It took some time to find the space to fully work on the text in amongst other projects. I ended up doing a lot of the final illustrations during lockdown over March, April and May to meet the deadline in early summer.
The Hospital Dog © Julia Donaldson and Sara Ogilvie 2020 — Macmillan Children’s Books
Share your favourite spread/passage from the book
I think it would be the spread with Dot and Rose having a dip in the sea. Rose is definitely a woman who owns one of those old-school pink flowery swimming caps with the loose rubber petals on it.
There’s also the view into the number 78 bus window, with the standing teenagers peering at a phone. I like to bring a bit of recognisable reality into this kind of scene!
The flow of the text is also very satisfying on this spread:
After their breakfast of porridge and tea, Rose and her dog always swim in the sea.Then they hop onto bus number seventy eight, And the bus drops them off at the hospital gate.
If only real-life travel was that effortless!
What/who/where inspired this book?
Julia had first-hand experience doing a ward round with a real hospital dog, Nala and her owner Sandy, inspiring her text. What inspired me about the text, from an illustration angle, was the range of emotion to contend with through the characters – bored, crying, cross, shy, nervous. It was a good challenge to have and I was inspired by the children in the book, ultimately with the help of Dot, being brave.
When I was nearing the end of the final spreads, I got an email from Macmillan to say Julia had received a fan letter with a request from a little girl. In her letter she had asked, ‘In your hospital dog book please could there be a girl with a bald head because I have alopecia and I look beautiful’.
Coincidentally I had already sketched a little girl with a bald head in the early roughs for the Wallaby Ward spread layout. Her letter was very timely as it was the last spread I worked on, so I made sure she was more prominently at the front, with a little string of ducks.
The Hospital Dog © Julia Donaldson and Sara Ogilvie 2020 — Macmillan Children’s Books
Nominate one children’s book by a northern or Scottish creative to read this winter.
Last year I was a mentor on the Picture Hooks mentorship programme 2019. I was lucky to have illustrator Anna Gordillo as my mentee. She is from Terassa in Northern Spain…Northern but Spain! (Check out her lovely work!)
But the overall winner of Picture Hooks illustrator of the year was Helen Kellock from Glasgow (mentored by Maisie Shearring), whose work has a lively warm glow of inks, and lovely movement in the compositions. Her book, The Star in the Forest, published by Thames and Hudson, is one to watch out for.
Where do you like to draw – is there anywhere you go to for inspiration or that you know you’ll spot something interesting to draw?
When I’m not sitting in the middle of a sprawl of paper on the floor in my studio, I think the best thing is just stepping out of your front door. Then it is just all around you for the taking really. You always see characters that you could never imagine in your head – how people stand, odd clothing combo’s, aloof cats in windows, bored teenagers on street corners, etc.
I have lots of little quick drawings on the back of envelopes and receipts (if I can’t find my sketchbook in my bag fast enough), lots of little scraggy bits that I stow away in folders. Like most folk I often grab things with my phone camera when out and about, but it isn’t the same. Drawing makes me focus, take the time and see better.
Some of the people in the hospital gate illustration are drawn from little sketches made in a hospital waiting room in Newcastle.
Thank you so much to Sara for taking the time to answer our questions, and to Children’s Books North for having me take part in the tour. I’ve loved being part of it
Don’t forget to read our review of The Hospital Dog here, and check out the other stops on the tour below!
