Publishing news
Publication Day! ‘The Owl who wanted to sing’ has winged it’s way to bookshops as of 2nd October 2025.
Check out my events page for where you can find me in coming weeks for book signings.
‘Tiny Tree Books is thrilled to announce that author-illustrator Emma Graham has signed a three-book deal with the imprint, with the first book set to publish this October. Emma’s signing comes off the back of a round of open submissions, where worldwide rights were acquired from the author directly by Tiny Tree publisher James Shaw.
An illustrator for many years, Emma’s work has been featured in everything from greetings cards to seed packaging, but picture books have always been her passion. Having produced illustrations for other books, Emma turned her attention to her own stories. Her first, The Owl Who Wanted to Sing, will become her first published work as an author.
‘I’m very excited to have signed a three-book deal with Tiny Tree,” says Emma. “It is so wonderful to finish illustrating the story and see it come to life with the help of the Tiny Tree team.”
Longlisted in the 2023 Searchlight Book Awards, The Owl Who Wanted To Sing celebrates difference and being brave enough to do what makes us happy. It’s a story of determination and triumph over adversity, beautifully written and masterfully illustrated.
“The story was inspired by a local owl that hooted along with the dawn chorus,” Emma adds.”It sounded so out of place, but I thought it was rather cute, and so the story formed.”
“Emma’s stories are playful, nostalgic and fun. I’m so pleased that they have found a home with us at Tiny Tree Books,” says publisher James Shaw.
The Owl Who Wanted to Sing marks Emma Graham’s debut as an author-illustrator. The book will be published in October. Emma’s second picture book is currently slated for release in spring/summer 2026, with the third to follow.
We’re excited to share more details on The Owl Who Wanted To Sing and more books by Emma Graham soon.
About Emma Graham
Emma Graham is an illustrator and writer living near the Suffolk coast. Her whimsical illustration style is inspired by nature, folklore, and classic children’s books. Emma’s work has been recognised by the Stratford-Salariya Prize and the Searchlight Awards.
When not in her studio, she’s likely in the garden, walking in the woods, or wild swimming year-round. If she is immersed in nature or a good book or art, she’s happy.’
In late November 2024 I set myself a challenge of ‘an illustration a day’ (ish) to tell a visual story of squirrel and mouse and their tree, when it is chopped down and used as a Christmas tree. I had fun and pretty much kept up with the image a day. I used cyanotype to create most of the backgrounds, then over painted with acrylic inks.
I have been experimenting more with collage, to add to my mixed media work. I have been printing my own papers with textures on a geliplate, and this has created wonderful papers for me to collage. I feel it has created some freedom in my style and work. Here are 3 spreads from one of my own stories that I entered into the Key Colours competition in 2024, I was thrilled that the book made it to the longlist of the competition.
I have squeezed in some time for marketing too. I created a new 3d pop out mailer that I hope will catch the eye of an art director or 2, and bound to give them an earworm!
I am also currently taking some time to work on a couple of my own stories, editing the text and developing the characters and rough page ideas. I have been working on the picture book course and business course with The Good Ship Illustration and it has been so much fun, lots of idea prompts which has led to writing 4 new stories that I am working on. Here are a few sketchbook pages for a couple of the characters for one of those stories.
Tall Tale Tommy
Here is a little bit of an insight on how I work on a picture book. This is one of my own stories that I am working a few final illustrations on to send out to agents and publishers. Once I have the story edited I add notes to give me ideas on the images, I draw lots of character sheets, to fully develop each character for the story. This is then worked out to how each spread will look and I do a small very rough book dummy, (seen here but I’m not showing the full book, I don’t want to give the end away!) I try to vary the points of view, scale and whether they are full spreads or single pages, to add variety for the reader. I have then picked a couple of pages that I work up into full size roughs (sometimes scaled up if there is tiny detail.) Once I am happy with how it all works with text too I work up the final illustration.
Sometimes I get 2 strong images in my mind for one page or spread, so I end up working on them both to decide which I prefer, even then I find it hard to decide, the above 2 images are for the same section of the book, I still don’t know which I prefer.
