whatever - walker books

This was my first picture book. Published by Walker Books in Great Britain, Candlewick Press in the United States, Seuil Jeunesse in France, and in Japan by Sailor Publishing.

Here are the English, French and Japanese covers :

Back:

The French cover:

The Japanese cover:

I sent it to Walker Books as a fully finished mock up. By the time it was published it had got quite a bit shorter. Here are the spreads that did not make it - plus some of those that did.

Here are the old endpapers. Funny little shapes - later used for background snails.

Here - below - are the actual endpapers. The leaves signify nothing, but the colours are variations and tints from those used on the cover.

As I said, we had too many pages. This was one of my favourites :

The medals were fun, and he had a trophy too!

Curliest moustache:

Silliest sausage:

This spread was replaced by the butterflies, but we kept the tall spread for the giraffe:

This spread - the world's grandest piano - was one I never liked, I must have drawn dozens of the things, so I was glad to drop it.

maddest hatter:

The space ship was on white, but Designer Audrey Keri-Nagy at Walkers suggested putting in on the blue - more interesting:

the pages that survived: