Paul sells all manner of fun items in his zazzle store but I know two girls who’d love this T-shirt:

And I wouldn’t mind drinking out of this mug:

You can find Paul’s website here.
You can find Paul on tumblr here.
You can find Paul on Posterous here.
Paul is on Twitter here.
And don’t forget, Paul’s shop is here.

Robert Sabuda is a preeminent children’s pop-up book creator, a paper engineer extraodrinaire. He has created pop up versions of many children’s classics, including Peter Pan, The Wizard of Oz, Beauty and the Beast and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

Robert Sabuda’s webpage has a dedicated subsection packed with pop-up designs you can print and create yourself, including animals, celebrations and a whole series of Star Wars designs! For each pop-up design there’s a template to download and print, followed by detailed photo tutorials taking you through the process step by step.

Screenshot from Robert Sabuda's website (click to be taken there)

Robert Sabuda has collaborated on a dinosaur pop up book, but there are no free dino templates on his website. If dinos are your thing, then head over to Paul Stickland’s website. Paul Stickland has written a series of fantastic dinosaur books for the youngest of listeners, Ten Terrible Dinosaurs being one of our personal favourites. He’s also interested in paper engineering.

There are many dino colouring-in sheets to download on Paul Stickland’s site (right clicking to view image brings up full size image which can then be printed).

Elizabeth O. Dulemba has illustrated over 10 books, and one of the nicest things about her website is that every Tuesday she publishes free colouring pages for anyone and everyone to enjoy. She’s created a veritable treasure trove of colouring-in sheets, arranged by topic to include school and holidays (such as Christmas and Easter). My very favourite section, however, is that filled with book and reading related images.

Thanks to Janelle at Brimiful Curiosities for alerting me to Elizabeth O. Dulemba’s colouring pages and to Susan Stephenson, The Book Chook, for reminding me about Paul Stickland’s downloads.

Photo: *L*u*z*A*

Then I started thinking about the free resources that are available; many illustrators have activity sheets on their websites and if you have a printer (or can use the printer at the library) you can make these up in to your own activity books.

Over the course of the next six weeks I’ll be pointing you to a wide variety of free activity sheets created by children’s book illustrators (in between “regular” posts). I hope some of them appeal to you and your kids and that they give you all a few minutes happy drawing / scribbling / creating together!

Jane Ray has illustrated over 30 books including The Lost Happy Endings (which we reviewed here) and Can you catch a Mermaid (which guestposter Cathy from Nurturestore included in her selection of books here), as well as many fairy tales.

On Jane Ray’s website you can find…

Caryl Hart‘s first picture book, Don’t Dip Your Chips in Your Drink Kate! won Highly Commended Picture Book and Community Libraries Favourite Book at the Sheffield Children’s Book Award in 2010, and the Children’s Bookseller Magazine has described her as “a rising picture book star”.

On Caryl’s website there are lots of activity sheets including…

Alex Milway has written and illustrated the Mousehunter trilogy and the Mythical 9th Division series of books. In his “spare” time he runs the Crystal Palace Children’s Book Festival!

If yetis are your thing you’re in for a treat with…

Many of these activity sheets are fun whether or not you have read the books that inspired them so why not take a look, and along the way you might find a new author/illustrator to enjoy!

Thanks to Damyanti Patel for alerting me to Caryl Hart’s activity sheets.