"Honestly, we just really love what you do!" - A ReadItDaddy love letter to children's book and comic authors and illustrators

"Honestly we really just wanna let you know we love your work!"

It's been a while since I wrote anything editorial-ish for the blog so I thought I'd get back on the horse with a post about stalking. Er what? No actually scrub that, stalking is a little bit too strong a word - So let's call it superfandom.

We are children's book and comic superfans I guess. You know when you transit from that stage of knowing all the classic children's books that you should have on your shelves but don't want to just leave it at that, you want to know who the next generation of beloved national treasures are going to be when it comes to writing and illustrating for children.

We're very fortunate enough at ReadItDaddy to get invited to events. Events where we will meet authors and illustrators. Authors and illustrators who we've written lots and lots of nice things about.

That's OK, but naturally as a bit of a shy bloke (and Charlotte, unfortunately, has inherited my shyness to a certain extent, poor mite!) it's extremely hard not to turn into some sort of gibbering wreck at author / illustrator events. Meeting Jonny Duddle recently was awesome but I can't help thinking I scared the poor bloke half to death by being a little bit too enthusiastic about his awesome work.

Eep there I go again, slipping into superfandom. Charlotte is slightly more subtle than me but I get the feeling if she ever met Luke Pearson or Holly Webb or Shaun Tan or countless other much loved authors and illustrators in real life, she might be a little giddy too.

Really though we just love what you do, nothing more nothing less and sometimes if we get a bit scarily enthusiastic, apologies but what you do is vital, important, imaginative, artistic and we don't really know how else to tell you. We don't keep little effigies of you by our bedside, or photoshop grinning pictures of us next to your press shots, but we really do love what you do so forgive us if we seem a bit frighteningly enthusiastic at times :)