We are delighted to welcome talented and versatile author-illustrator Yasmeen Ismail to the blog to introduce the books she and her fellow judges chose to shortlist for this year’s Klaus Flugge Prize, and explains why the award, which highlights debut illustrators, is so important.

I am always excited to be judging anything for a variety of reasons. First up, there’s the fact that I get to have an opinion. Then there’s the excitement of knowing the winners before anyone else does; the look on the winners’ faces when they find out they’ve won; the awards ceremony; the catering… Oh my! 

The whole ritual around awards is so much fun, and it’s wonderful to be a part of it, especially one as prestigious as the Klaus Flugge Prize, because this award champions debut illustrators. There is something particularly rewarding when you are celebrating a new talent.

As a judge I looked for several things in the illustrations. I wanted to see how the illustrator handled the subject matter, how the pictures flowed and whether the images added anything to the story or lifted the story to a different level. I was, of course, also looking for illustrations that were aesthetically pleasing. I was looking for something new and fresh in the illustration style. For me it is not enough to just draw the pictures to match the story, I want to see the pictures working with the story, looking beautiful and interesting, but providing a depth of feeling, and being imaginative, playful, and relatable. 

I am always cheered when I receive books in the post and when I received this longlist it was great to see such a variety from these new illustrators. Some books were tackling very tough subject matter, others were more playful. It was heartening to see so many different styles in all the debut books. This certainly did make it trickier to judge, but there were some stand out winners whose illustrations filled all my criteria and made my heart skip to boot.

When we did sit around the table to judge together, I think we all had some favourites in mind. There were five of us on the judging panel  - last year’s winner Kate Winter, my fellow illustrator Bruce Ingman, early years expert Rachna Joshi and chair, Julia Eccleshare, and we were all, thankfully, pretty much in agreement. 

Mikey Please’s book, The Café at the Edge of the Woods, is so funny. The illustrations of the ogre and Glumfoot made me laugh out loud. There was a real atmosphere to the style of the illustrations, but most of all it was the humour in the pictures that won me over. The whole thing feels very new and original.

Emma Farraron’s illustrations for Charlie Castles’ My Hair is as Long as a River are so fresh. A real treat to see her loose style used with such imagination. I really enjoyed her endpapers too, the use of colour is lovely. There’s real imagination and fun in this book.

Finally, Rhian Stone’s illustrations for Frances Tosdevin’s book, Grandad’s Star, are so moving and well executed. Not only are the illustrations incredibly beautiful and well thought out, but they are also full of emotion. 

It’s so important to support new illustrators. Illustrating is a pretty solitary endeavour, and it’s difficult to look objectively at the work you are doing when you are doing it. Once a book is out there it’s sort of gone, and unless you walk outside of your home or studio and demand an opinion (which has its own perils), there’s no real way of knowing if your work holds any value in the outside world. Awards provide that validation. Validation that your work has been seen, looked at, considered, and enjoyed. Not only that, they celebrate different books. Books that children may not have heard about, in a world where only a handful of authors and illustrators are promoted. Awards like the Klaus Flugge Prize give space to showcase something new, fresh, exciting, and different. Books that we may not have noticed, but which deserve to be in the spotlight.

Irish-born, Bristol-based Yasmeen Ismail is an award-winning author, illustrator and animator. After co-founding a successful animation production company, Yasmeen changed her focus to writing and illustrating picture books. Her first picture book ‘Time for Bed, Fred’ with Bloomsbury Publishing, won the V&A Best Illustrated Book Award and The New York Times Best Illustrated Book award. It was shortlisted for the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize, longlisted for the CILIP Kate Greenaway Medal, and nominated for the National Cartoonists Society “Silver Reuben” Award. Following the success of her debut picture book she has been nominated for her other works many times since and has been selected by the Society of Illustrators to have her work shown in the Original Art Exhibition in New York six years in a row. Her most recent book is Meena’s Saturday (Puffin), written by Kusum Mepani.

The books shortlisted for this year’s Klaus Flugge Prize are:

My Hair is as Long as a River illustrated by Emma Farrarons, written by Charlie Castle (Macmillan)

The Café at the Edge of the Woods by Mikey Please (HarperCollins Children’s Books)

Grandad’s Star illustrated by Rhian Stone, written by Frances Tosdevin (Rocket Bird Books)

The winner will be announced on 11 September 2025. klausfluggeprize.co.uk


Image below shows Yasmeen Ismail, taken by Jake Green.

Big thanks to Yasmeen Ismail for such a terrific blog and to Andrea Reece and the Klaus Flugge Prize for the opportunity.

We are delighted to welcome author and illustrator Padmacandra to the blog to talk about her new work and new picture book Don’t Be Silly!  A perfect book for reading aloud.  Downloadable resources are available here


Were you always interested in art?

I grew up in Scotland.  In those days it was a little bit strict, it was just an ordinary primary school.  I don’t remember school making a big deal out of art.  It was the same at secondary school but at home my imagination was always important.  I always had a sense of other worlds that you could enter.  I loved how often you get that in books.  I used to go with my younger brother on t explorations to try to find these different worlds.  I remember once thinking if I stand on my bed and turn round three times knocking on the wall, maybe a door will open.  There was a sense of a benign force which was the imagination behind things.  It wasn’t just imagination as made up.  There was some sort of reality to it.  I’ve always enjoyed doodling and making art and wanted to enter different worlds through drawing.

Did any books or illustrators that made an impact on you?

I was very lucky to have quite a lot of books.  There were four of us in the family. My mum was quite interested in children’s books.  She used to read to us which was lovely.  We had a fantastic library up in Broughty Ferry next to Dundee where I grew up. 

I remember going to visit my grandmother, she had all these old books and we were all fascinated with this one called Josie, Click and Bun by Enid Blyton.  Every year we went for two weeks in the summer holidays to the Cotswolds where my grandparents lived.  My granny was Hungarian and there was something of a mystery about her.  We would all rush and look at this book.  It was covered in children’s scribbles because our cousins had also been to visit. 

I also remember other books like the Ladybird Books and was always drawn to the more fictional rather than factual ones. I remember the Sleeping Beauty one which my friend and I used to enact.  Janet and Anne Grahame Johnstone did amazing fairy tale pictures with these with wavy hair and shoes that curl around. I remember poring over the pictures and really absorbing them. 

I was very interested in George Macdonald who wrote The Princess and Curdie and At the Back of the North Wind.  There was definitely an influence from Victorian illustrators and writers.  It ties in with this sense of different worlds.  Narnia was really important too.  We were members of the Puffin Club for a while and that was wonderful.  I remember winning a poetry prize which was so encouraging and made a mark on me.  Ursula Le Guin and Brian Wildsmith and Raymond Briggs I enjoyed.  We had this book of nursery rhymes called Fee Fi Fo Fum.  There was a plum pudding in it which was just so pudding.  Me and my brother were fascinated by it  As a child you are just absorbing these things and somehow they have an influence.  Certain books come at certain times in your life.

Please can you tell us about your route to becoming an illustrator?

It’s strange because sometimes it feels like a sidestep and yet it is a complete continuity with the driving force of imagination as a more real reality.  Whenever I would be making notes for a talk, I noticed I was always doodling.  I didn’t take an art degree, I nearly did, but as I was a fairly introverted young person and wanted something that would bring me out of myself so I went into social work. It felt like I could respond to some of the suffering in the world.

I became a Buddhist when I was in my twenties.  I was always making doodles and in meditation I was taken by a benign sense of something that lay behind things.  I reached a stage where I had enough confidence through my meditation that I thought I could try this and go with it.  I went on a Summer School with Cambridge School of Art.  It was really affirming.  They said bring 500 words and then we’ll play with that.  Very quickly I wrote the text that became the story Don’t be Silly. 

I met Ness Wood who is a designer, I ended up in her little group and she said she thought children would really love this.  I felt very encouraged and went on to do the MA.  The MA focused on observational skills.  People have this idea of imagination being ungrounded, but it comes from the body and the senses.  In the same way we were observing and drawing from life and from noticing.  It’s a gateway to imagination, a grounded embodied space is what allows real imagination to come through.  We spent a whole module going round with our sketchbook.  At the end of the course, Rose Robbins who is an illustrator mentioned my work to Sarah Pakenham of Scallywag Press.  Sarah contacted me and we had a chat.  At the end of the MA I signed a two book deal with Scallywag Press, the first was The Tale of the Whale and the second is Don’t be Silly.

You were shortlisted for the Klaus Flugge Prize with The Tale of the Whale, what did that mean to you?

There are so many books published that it’s difficult when people are choosing books to know what is out there.  It’s difficult too for illustrators to feel encouraged.  Coming to illustration at a later stage in life it meant a lot to get the recognition.  It helps you to feel you can carry on.  Making picture books doesn’t make a lot of money for illustrators, they have to have lots of side-hustles to make it work.  Virtually all of the people I know who are fellow Alumni of the MA, have a secret imposter syndrome.  I find when I’ve come out with a book I’m a bit doubtful about it.  You have to say how much you love it and on one level that’s true, but you also have doubts and feel a bit unsure.  Being shortlisted really helped me recognise that it is a good book for children.

With Don’t Be Silly you both wrote and illustrated the story, what were the differences and did you have a preference?

Don’t be Silly is unusual because I’d written the text before I illustrated it.  It’s often an advantage to be able to write and illustrate together, but I don’t feel I’ve had that yet.  The Tale of the Whale was more straightforward because the words were there so it was a case of doing the thumbnails and having those approved and then doing the roughs and having those approved.  Ness Wood was the designer and she decided which spreads to put the words on which helped.  Karen Swann was talking with Janice Thomson the wonderful editor.  Don’t be Silly had been worked on for such a long time that I struggled to get objectivity, it had been through various iterations.  Martin Salisbury was very positive about it which I think is why Sarah was keen to sign it. 

I still feel that I’m working out how I want to be an illustrator and how I want to create images.  With both books I felt as though I was wrestling with things.  It never felt like a smooth process.  I don’t know whether it will ever get to that stage.  I really enjoyed working with the team, it’s a small team, but there’s a lot of experience there.  It’s lovely to think you can just get things done in a meeting without going through lots of departments. 

There are lots of details to explore in your illustrations were you conscious of creating something exploratory?

I did want it to be very rich.  Initially I wanted a baroque feel because of the castle.  I don’t know how much that was achieved.  I was influenced a bit by Ronald Searle with the castles, and characters with big noses.  We used to get annuals when I was young and you’d really pore over the pictures.  I wanted that feel.  The secondary characters like the cat and the mice, fulfil an important function by indicating an extra layer of what the book is saying.  There’s one of the pictures where the children are running into the characters, but the cat is looking worried because it can see the football and what might be about to happen.  The mice that are doing all the antics are communicating the playfulness of the children and an anarchic atmosphere.  In a way they just come out as a natural thing.  We did add the hens, it was partly the editor’s ideas as she is very keen on hens! 

Were there any characters you particularly enjoyed illustrating and writing about?

I drew Bo and Smudge so often, I really got a feeling for them.  I enjoyed the cat too!  I really enjoyed doing all the portraits and looking at portraits in galleries and on the internet.  There’s often a pompousness in how and what they are trying to communicate about themselves.  A lot of the art is quite pressured in some ways, but this was just fun.  There is a secret hidden in one of the paintings which echoes something that happens later on in the book!

Bo and Smudge try on some of the adult outfits, it feels a bit of a metaphor for how we try on it different guises throughout life…?

I remember being on a retreat and watching lambs jump and I wondered why the sheep weren’t and what had happened.  You rarely see an adult running o skipping along the street.  Sometimes I’ve gone jogging and feel I have to put a uniform on to show I’m not just running about, but am jogging.  The whole thing is about the importance of the spontaneity of playfulness.  The things that we put on in life, the children are putting them on in a playful way.  It’s like being able to see things through different perspectives.  It’s important to do that creatively as well.  One creative writing idea from Natalie Goldberg who writes about creative writing is to put a funny hat on or adopt a different posture to place yourself in a different point.  If we over identify with what we wear – like the judge who wears his outfit – we get stuck.  There’s something essential about me which is not about the clothes that I wear, the age that I am, what I’m saying to you at the moment.  There’s a freedom about this and a playfulness in this.

Does Buddhism influence your work?

In my best moments yet, but it also gives me perspective in my less good moments.  Most creators experience an emotion when they are starting to create.  You start by making a lot more mess and there’s a voice that comes in that says this isn’t going very well, you can’t do what you did before.  It’s not even words like that, it’s just a mood.  It’s really got nothing to do with the creative process, we have to try to let go of these ideas and let the pen and the paper get on and happen in the moment.  Being able to be creative consistently is about recognising the stories and doing it anyway.  Playfulness is such an important part of this.  Being on the MA gave a space and an opportunity to experiment.  It’s a bit like improvisation.  If we can live our lives in that way, it’s a much more resourceful way of being in the world.  We’re now living in a world that feels particularly precarious.  You might say we need to be very serious in the moment, but I think there’s a much better outcome if we can adopt a playfulness and a lightness to give perspective.  I don’t mean laughing at serious things, but being more spontaneous so as to open up possibilities.

Do we take funny books seriously enough?

I have noticed that there’s a lot of stories which have a message and for bloggers and that sort of thing it’s much easier for them to talk about that, not necessarily in a bad way, and for that to be a good thing.  It’s more difficult to talk about Don’t be Silly because there’s more of an experience through the rhyming rhythm and images.  Playfulness is important and we mustn’t lose that and be doom-scrolling and serious the whole time so that becomes the only influence on ourselves, on children and on all of us.  There’s a bigger perspective that can come through playfulness and joy!

What is next for you?

I don’t know what’s coming next.  I would love to do something about poetry and particularly about the approach you need to write a poem.  When I was at school, I was very invisible and shy and disappeared into myself.  There were moments though when things woke me up a little bit.  We had a visiting person in RE and they did a whole lesson on haiku, and something awoke within me.  I love the Chinese and Japanese poets.  They have certain words for certain aesthetics.  I’d like to bring a sense of atmosphere and magic to books, which I suppose brings us back to the idea of other worlds!

Thank you to Padmacandra for the interview and to Scallywag Press for the brilliant opportunity.