My sister-in-law, Allison is a wonderful cook and cake maker. This time, she made a tiger cake for the launch of The Race for the Chinese Zodiac. It had a lovely tiger face surrounded by marzipan grass and stripey insides of chocolate, but you’ll have to wait until we cut the cake to see that photo.

It was a lovely launch held at Book Bonding in Niddrie. The owners, Natasha and Mark made a beautiful display of the books and their new bookshop is even better than before.

Sally Rippin and I have been friends for a long time and I’ve been wanting her to illustrate a book of mine for ages. Up til now I hadn’t written a picture book so I was thrilled when she said she would do it. Her illustrations are gorgeous, the colours amazing. Together with Regine Arbos, the designer, Sally has given the book a very special and vibrant look. They remind me of ancient cave paintings -  the illustrations, not Sally and Reg I mean. They are fantastic!

My good friend and picture book creator, Corinne Fenton launched the book for us. She was a little late getting to the launch and swears that she will never use a GPS navigating system again. It’s back to a Melways for her. After calming herself down with a glass of water, she stood up and gave her speech.

Next it was my turn to read the story.

Reading my work out aloud I find is always a bit nerve wracking especially when I’m reading a picture book to a bunch of adults, so it was lovely to have the littlies in the audience.

Then I introduced Sally and she talked about the illustrating process.

Then Dom, Sally’s son, cut the ribbon to officially launch The Race for the Chinese Zodiac

And now, at last, it’s cake time!

And it was gone in seconds!

And then there was beautiful face painting.

And here are some of the lovely guests who make a book launch possible!