Carly Gledhill is an illustrator and author of books including Pencil’s Best Story Ever, Bat Can’t Sleep and Balloon’s Big Adventure. She also illustrates the Dot & You board book series, written by Camilla Reid. In 2024 Carly’s work was a winner at the Bologna Children’s Book Fair illustrators’ exhibition.

She’s based in Manchester, which is where she co-wrote Pencil’s Best Story Ever, with her pal, Pencil!

Today she talks to Pencil about their new book…

Hello Carly, today I’m going to ask you four questions about our book, I already know the answers but this is for the readers, are you ready?

Hello Pencil! I certainly am!

Could you tell the readers a little bit about how we met?

Well, we of course met at a writers’ group here in Manchester, and hit it off instantly. You were telling me about your idea to write your ‘best story ever’ and I was struggling with writer’s block. After three meetings we decided to join forces and see what we could come up with between us and the rest is history!

That’s right! How did we start making the book?

I had the idea that you, Pencil, should be the star of the story! Wouldn’t it be funny if you were writing the story yourself and casting your friends Jelly and Peanut to ‘act’ in it. You loved this idea. Together we thought about what would happen if Peanut and Jelly didn’t like the way the story was going and how they would react, which could be really funny. We put our characters through a lot in the story – in fact Jelly almost gets eaten at one point!

I then decided that you would become quite aggravated that your story wasn’t going to plan, but that you’d eventually come round to the idea that perhaps your ideas weren’t in everyone’s best interest and that the story could still be really good with a slightly more collaborative format.

I really liked this idea, and I got to pick the extremely exciting ending. I won’t give it away but you’ll need an umbrella when you get to that page! The artwork is really colourful, you’ve made me look very handsome in it, how did you create the illustrations?

I drew all the characters first, so I knew how everyone would look. I then sketched out all the pages roughly so I knew what was happening where and to make sure that the story was exciting as it could be: the page turns are very important for added drama! The next step, my favourite bit, is colouring it all in. I use Photoshop and draw straight into it using a Wacom tablet. I mix these drawings with hand made textures that I have scanned in, to make a sort of digital collage.

My last question Carly is, have you got any more book ideas in the works?

I do! I have a new book coming out with Post Wave next year, called Pass the Parcel. It’s an adventure about a parcel who starts at the Post Office and then travels across land, sea and air to get to his destination, or does he….

OOH! That sounds exciting, do you need any help writing that one?

Carly?

CARLY!!!

The signal must have dropped out there reader, but thank you for reading our interview and I hope you enjoy Pencil’s Best Story Ever!