Celebrating Children's Books

This amazing butterfly-lady on stilts was at the gate to the Darwin Centre at London's National History Museum - its newest specimen - to welcome children's authors, illustrators and editors to a Summer Celebration hosted by Penguin-Random-House publishers, which includes Ladybird Books.

It was good to meet a number of fellow children's authors and poets, some for the first time, and other old friends, in this fabulous environment. (The poets who were there each have a poem in an anthology coming out in September, complemented by video versions of us performing our poems, hence our being invited.)

But this artiste impressed me most: she mingled for three hours, performing, posing, entertaining and looking beautiful - and reminding us that this is the 50-year anniversary of Eric Carle's ever-popular children's picture book The Very Hungry Caterpillar.