A quick SNEAK PEEK at my book so far !

One of the most exciting things when I was in London was visiting Octopus Publishing (where TickTock are based) to talk with my editor Jo about my book. Mum, dad, me and my two young brothers got the tube then walked to Shaftesbury Avenue where there is a massive office block where Octopus Publishing are based. The views from their offices were amazing, and you could see the London Eye, St Pauls, the Shard and another big building nicknamed 'the cheesegrater'.

We were in a big boardroom and Jo had arranged drinks and snacks for us all. Sam and Harry played nicely with their toys (and my baby brother Harry did a big noisy poo, which is probably the first time that had happened in a meeting there) and Jo showed me spreads of the whole book, and some new completed pages and I'm allowed to show some of them here now !

There was a proper formal agenda as well, and this was the start of it:

What I can tell you is that the book is looking really amazing. It is now ten months since Octopus first got in touch to ask if I would be interested in writing a book and eight months since we had our first meeting. In that time, Ticktock have designed a plan for the book, increased the pages from 48 to 64, asked a cartoonist to draw a cartoon version of me, selected my blog posts, designed and redesigned pages, and asked Dad to take more photographs. 

About a month ago, you could see from the plans that the book is really starting to come together. Every time new pages are designed, I blu-tak them on the wall above my desk, and I'm starting to run out of space. What I can tell you is this is going to be the most amazing children's book about bones I have ever seen ! So this post is all about how the book has developed from the very first sketches to the (almost) finished pages.

There still about another eight months to go before the book is launched ! (It's going to be the start of March 2014).  That's because every page and every fact has be checked and double-checked, then the book had to be finally sent to the printers and shipped back. But it is very close to being finished, and tonight I even wrote my dedication (a bit of a thank you to people) for the start of the book.

It's even started being listed on some booksellers websites. This is it on Munro Books in Canada, Follet Early Learning in the USA and on Amazon.com (thanks to Jana Miller for spotting that, it's not on the co.uk one though).

At the end of the meeting Jo showed me some of the amazing stuff she has found as an archeologist: 

One of the most interesting bits was part of a human toe bone she found in a field. I even got to test for myself the quick way to tell human and animal bone apart: lick it ! If it's human, it sticks to your tongue like this:

Anyway, back to the book ! Before the big meeting in Edinburgh last November, I had put together a scrapbook of ideas, by printing pictures from my blog and rearranging them into page spreads. It didn't look very professional, but it did help to show my ideas to Jo and Tim from TickTock. Here's one on the shape of bird beaks: 

There were other ideas I sketched out too, which I hadn't written blog posts for yet, like "the seven golden rules of bone collecting" and "what to take when you go bone collecting" (that page is below).

Jo had sketched out her ideas as well, and hers looked a lot more professional. This was from October 2012. Each rectangle is what the book would look like open at each page.

These were where I wrote out what I thought of her page plan. I had forgotten I had written this until I found it in an old notebook !

Then the page plan was redesigned again to join Jo's ideas and my ideas together, then work begins on each double-page spread. Designing is very complicated. It begins with my blog posts. Jo then works on the text, and chooses which pictures go with what page.

Most of them dad has taken (like my articulated fox Vulpy below), but some are from photo libraries (like the human skeleton below). Jo then sends her ideas to me, and I make changes or say fine. Then it goes to the designer, then back to me, then to Paolo from the Horniman museum (who is the book's consultant and expert fact checker) and then to the publisher for approval. It's just like writing a blog post, except a zillion times more complicated.

So here's a TINY sneak peak of the book so far, but lots of little changes are happening on the pages even as you read this !

My cats are in it too as cartoon characters. That's Eisie under the skeleton's foot. Here's my monkey skulls:

It's lucky dad took this picture in February since I've not been able to do any hill walking since I broke my leg. This was one of my ideas I really wanted to be in the book:

Some of the book is about bones I don't have, and there are eight fantastic pages on dinosaurs (or more if you think birds are dinosaurs too):

My cats even get to appear in the book !

What I'm really, really excited about is that when I was learning about bones there were no good introductory books for my age group (or even for non-scientists) and it took me a long time to learn. I think that brilliant that I have the chance to explain what I have learned to other young bone collectors. I'm am so incredibly proud of it so far. But what do you think ?

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