Our Tower

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Creamer, Ella (12 July 2023). "Royal Society of Literature aims to broaden representation as it announces 62 new fellows". The Guardian. Congratulations on your fantastic work collaboratingwith JosephCoelho on Our Tower, it's simply stunning! The characters in Our Tower are completely believable, is character design something you are interested in? The story follows three children who leave their grey dismal tower in search of the marvellous green tree they can see from their windows. As they move through the wood gradually more colour seeps into the images and when they find their tree and discover an entrance to a magical underground world the palette changes entirely to magical purples and blues and the lovely lyrical text becomes joyously rhyming too. In addition to exploring emotional landscapes, Coelho is inspired bymagic, the ancient world and often draws on his own experiences transforming them into somethinguniversal that can be shared. Throughout his career he has highlighted the power of poetry and reading,championing and campaigning for local libraries and spotlights new voices and diversity throughout his work.

Do you use sketching as a form of relaxation? Do you have any sketch books which we could have a peek inside?Joseph Coelho named children's laureate and vows to reinvent poetry's image". BBC News. 2022-07-04. Archived from the original on 2022-07-04 . Retrieved 2022-07-04.

Do you have any formative memories of books or illustrations which first inspired youto become an illustrator? Honnor, Jessica (2015-07-16). "Performance poet Joseph Coelho wins children's poetry award". the Guardian. Archived from the original on 2022-07-04 . Retrieved 2022-07-04.

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It is with great pleasure that we present to you a delightful and insightful Q & A with Arena illustrator and designer Richard Johnson andreveal his new picture book collaboration with Children'sLaureate Joseph Coelho. Quarto, the publisher, were fantastic to work with and really let me have fun with the project! We’re currently organising an exhibition of the work, which will be held at The Discover Children’s Story Centre in London, later this year. I’ve always enjoyed coming up with characters and imaginary creatures, so the tree-man from ‘Our Tower’ was a gift!

Waterstones Children’s Laureate Joseph Coelho is an award-winning performance poet, playwright andchildren's author based in Kent. His debut poetry collection Werewolf Club Rules (Frances Lincoln, 2014) wasthe winner of the CLPE CLiPPA Poetry Award 2015. His work has poetry and performance at its heart, drawingon over 20 years' experience running dynamic creative literacy sessions in schools. He aims to inspire youngpeople through stories and characters they can recognise and explores themes including fear, courage,diversity, gratitude, empathy and loss. Richard put a huge amount of effort into researching the imagery mentioned in the poem and recreating it in the illustrations, we asked him about his researchprocess and how it works differently on different projects. We are thrilled to be working in partnership with the team at Discoverin Stratford London, who are the perfect venue for the launch of this book. They are hosting an amazing interactive event with Richard and Joseph as well as showcasing of some of his incredible illustrations from the book in the Discover Café. You can find out more about this special event HERE . Joseph Coelho FRSL is a British poet and children's book author who was elected Children's Laureate in 2022. In 2023, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. [1] Personal life and education [ edit ]Coelho is a children's author and poet who is committed to making the reading and writing of poetry accessible to all. As part of these efforts, in 2018 he created resources for Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2 students on understanding poetry. [12] The resources included a series of videos explaining the different formats of poetry, how to perform poetry and how to interpret poetry. [12] From award-winning children’s poet Joseph Coelho comes this enchanting story of three kids looking for adventure in their building. Dex, Robert (2022-07-04). "New Children's Laureate Joseph Coelho wants to make a country of poets". Evening Standard. Archived from the original on 2022-07-04 . Retrieved 2022-07-04. Poetry Joe: The world is getting smaller, art is more necessary than ever". Words & Pictures. Archived from the original on 2022-07-06 . Retrieved 2022-07-04. a b c d e "Joseph Coelho chosen as Britain's new children's laureate". the Guardian. 2022-07-04. Archived from the original on 2022-07-04 . Retrieved 2022-07-04.