Secret Spy Mission… An interview with the Author

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Summary:
DOODLE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE! 
Welcome to Doodle…where you draw the story. Help finish characters, build up the town and design a GIANT ICE CREAM POWERED robot to fight off…the SUPER villains that you doodle! Doodles get into LOTS of trouble. Watch out, it is up to you to doodle them out of it!

Information about the Book
Title: Create Your Own Spy Mission
Author: Andrew and Chris Judge
Release Date: 7th April 2016
Genre: Create Your Own Doodle – MG
Publisher: Scholastic Press
Format: Paperback
Goodreads Link: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29753260-create-your-own-spy-mission
Amazon Link: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1407163272
Book Website: http://www.doodle.town/
Author Information
Chris Judge is an award winning picture book author/illustrator (THE LONELY BEAST, TIN) and co-author, with comedian David O’Doherty, of DANGER IS EVERYWHERE. Chris’s work continues to feature in advertising, newspapers, magazines and exhibitions in the UK and Ireland.

Website: http://www.chrisjudge.com/
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/chrisjudge

Andrew Judge has written and illustrated countless short stories and comics with his brother Chris, including regular features for arts and culture magazines Mongrel and Totally Dublin. Andrew lives and works as an architect in Ireland.

Website: http://www.andrewjudge.net/
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/afjudge

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At ‘All things kiddiewink’, we were very excited to be asked to take part in the blog tour and were really interested in finding out how the Author come up with the idea and inspiration for the ‘Create your own spy mission’. We were lucky enough  to have the authors answering our question.

We asked… ” What inspired you to create a book involving the reader?”

A: Well, we’re brothers for starters, so we’ve always been doing stuff together.

C: Andrew is the eldest in the family, so our other brother Simon and I would copy what he was doing, and that’s basically how I learned to draw.
A: Our dad is a great cartoonist and our mum is an artist to, so there was always something to draw with at home.
C: Andrew used to buy 2000AD …
A: I still do!
C: … and we’d all sit around the kitchen table in the evenings in the eighties copying Judge Dredd and Rogue Trooper by these amazing artists. Also the Asterix books. I loved copying stuff from them.
A: Then we grew up and got proper jobs, but we kept on making comics together in our spare time. We had a series in a free-sheet called Totally Dublin in our hometown for about a year and a half, which was set in a depressing, futuristic city.
C: We also did another one about a team of goofy aliens stuck on Earth for another magazine, which we eventually collected into a comic.
A: So when Scholastic, our publisher, asked Chris to come up with some ideas for a story book that kids could also draw in, Chris asked me to help out over a weekend. And that’s were the idea for Create Your Own Alien Adventure came to life.
C: We wanted to make something that kid’s could mess around with, draw on, fold, rip, and basically play with.
A: I just wanted to impress my seven year old son!
C: Scholastic asked us to come up with more ideas for a second book, so we gave our editor, David Maybury, a long list of other books we’d like to make, and he suggested “Spies.”
A: Which was the answer we wanted to hear, because we love spy movies and spy books. The KnowHow Book of Spycraft by Falcon Travis was one of my favourite books as a kid.
C: We’ve a hundred other ideas for the Create Your Own series. We can’t wait to get them into readers hands.
A: Yeah, the feedback from our readers about Alien Adventure has been brilliant. I can’t wait to hear what they think about Spy Mission!

Find out more at http://www.doodle.town

What did All things kiddiewink think about the book?

My daughter hasn’t read it all yet (we only received it yesterday) but for a girl that is not keen on reading, she seems pretty hooked, and has been seen walking around the house reading it- unheard of for her! She is not a big fiction fan, but this creates a more ‘real’ element and the fact she gets to do things throughout the book, really excites her. She came to ask me if she could rip out the pages, as it it told her to, she couldn’t believe she would actually be allowed. I think the spying theme is awesome, as my two bigger kiddiewinks are big into everything ‘spy’ at the moment!

Here is my eldest kiddiewink’s first vlog; she is quite shy so this is a big achievement for her!IMG_3268