All Aboard with Joanna!

'All Aboard With Joanna!' begins by inviting young readers into the fantastical world of creating books by showing a black and white sketch of the artist's work table as she faces the blank page. The reader can then follow the interaction between the fictional character, the little pig Joanna, and the artist. A train and its numerous passengers become the setting for this beautifully illustrated narrative. As the story unfolds, Joanna has many requests to make to her creator: from her clothing (that she would prefer to be stripey), to catching up with another train to see who could possibly be inside it. By the end of this delightful story where the author even teases Joanna - drawing a big bad wolf and a huge monster! - Joanna is finally content when she gets the right companion to spend the rest of the trip with. AUTHOR: Born in Basel in 1969, Kathrin Scharer has studied as an art teacher at the Hochschule fur Gestaltung in Basel, Switzerland. She teaches at a school for children with speech impairments, in addition to working as a freelance illustrator. She has published over a dozen picture books to great acclaim and her works have been translated into several languages. She has also teamed up with Lorenz Pauli to produce joint works. In 2012 she was shortlisted for the Hans Christian Andersen Award. SELLING POINTS: ?This wonderful story is at once entertaining and funny ?Encourages children to think about the process of creating art and fiction ?Kathrin Scharer's beautiful artwork has been exhibited at the Bologna Book Fair and at the Biennial of Illustration Bratislava ILLUSTRATIONS: 34 colour