Week 6 - Alex T Smith

It's week 6 and the book has been in Coventry and staying with the ace Alex T Smith for a week. Alex has been tweeting and posting up pics of his progress and they look amazing. He's also the first to try a slightly different format to the previous illustrators which was very interesting to see (see pics below).

So a little info on the artist... Alex was born in 1985 and has drawn and written stories since he could hold a pencil. He graduated with a 1st Class Hons degree in Illustration in 2006 and having won second place in the Macmillan Prize for Children's Picture Book Illustration in his final year, Alex begin working on his first commission as he put his degree show up!

Since then Alex has gone on to work for a wide variety of clients not just in the publishing industry. As well as writing and illustrating his own picture books, many of which have won prizes and have been read on TV during the Bedtime Hour on the CBeebies channel.

Alex is also the creator of the CLAUDE fiction series for early readers. The first title, CLAUDE in the City was selected for the Richard and Judy Children's Book Club 2011 and was shortlisted for the Waterstones Children's Book Prize in 2012. The first three books in the series are now published in fourteen languages across the world and a further three books will be hitting the shelves from October 2012.

You can follow Alex on twitter, keep up to date with his work on his blog and see his portfolio here.

Week 7 see's Sam Usher receive the book back down in London again. Stay tuned for what he does next week.