This is where you'll find loads of fun, froggy crafts and exciting activities. 

Maybe you're looking for

  Resources for schools & home schooling  

or

  Videos of Paul reading the book  

Videos on How to Make & How to Draw

  Make and eat your own edible bugs (really!)  

  Or even edible frogspawn!  

  Video trailer for the book  

Read a sample chapter

  Make a forever-folding booklet  

Scroll down this page for lots more free stuff. Then when you've done exploring also check out the tab links at the top of this page too. Have fun!

  LATEST NEWS  

•For World Book Day

Why not curl up with a copy of Babysitting Trouble and challenge yourself to Bug Belly i-Spy!? Can you find 30 images that are scattered throughout the book. Some are easy some are really tricky. How many can you find?

Two new free downloads now available.

Bug Belly i-Spy #1           Bug Belly i-Spy #2

•The BIG news is that the second book in the series will be published later this year. BUG BELLY FROGGY RESCUE has all your favourite characters, plus a few different baddies! It's an exciting and dangerous rescue mission. More details coming soon.

  TURKISH PUBLICATION  

Say Merhabe (hello in Turkish) to Koca Göbek. Bug Belly has been published in Turkey and it is quite appropriate. The original idea for Bug Belly came to me in a game I played with my nephew in Bodrum, Turkey. Here's the cover and an inside spread. Doesn't it look great in Turkish!?

All images strictly copyright © Paul Morton

12 Bug Belly videos now available

Video #12- Learn how to draw the BADDIES!

A short video with step by step instructions for changing the expressions of your characters. Make them sad, happy, surprised, angry and finally ... WICKED! With a bonus section on adding textures to your baddies.

Video #11- Make a magical never-ending, forever folding Bug Belly Booklet

An amazingly simple piece of paper folding magic.

First of all watch the video above to learn how to make it.

Then download the printed instructions.

Finally choose one of the FREE BUG BELLY ARTWORK TEMPLATES.

So far there are 2 to choose from.

booklet#1-Bug Belly's kit bag

Kitbag artwork front       Kitbag artwork back

booklet#2 is new. Frog/spawn life cycle

Frogspawn artwork front       Frogspawn artwork back 

printed instructions

Video #10- Make Bug Belly's top ten favourite bug snacks - and then EAT THEM!

Watch the video and then download the recipes in FROGGY GOODIES.

Video #9- Paul explores his own pond to find some real taddies and froglets

Video #7- Great tips for getting good ideas for your stories. Then try Paul's Summer Reading Story Writing Challenge.

Video #1- Paul reading from Bug Belly Babysitting Trouble part 1

Video #2- Paul drawing Splodge and making a frog wobbler

Video #3- Paul reading from Bug Belly Babysitting Trouble part 2

Video #4- Paul reading from Bug Belly Babysitting Trouble part 3

Video #5- Drawing Splash, painting water and making a Splash wobbler

Video #6- Paul reading from Bug Belly Babysitting Trouble part 4

Video #8- How to draw Bug Belly

MAKE BUG BELLY'S FAVOURITE BUG SNACKS 

AND THEN EAT THEM!!

If you've read right to the very last page of Bug Belly Babysitting Trouble you will know that Bug Belly has some particular favourite bug snacks. Lava Pops and Worm Whirls are just two for example.

How would you like to make some of Bug Belly's favourite bug snacks?.. and then EAT THEM?? You can if you follow these delumptious edible bug recipes. The first three are available for downloading now, Worm Whirls, Chrysalis Candies and brand new FLY FUDGE! and all the rest to follow later.

WORM WHIRLS RECIPE

CHRYSALIS CANDY PART 1

CHRYSALIS CANDY PART 2

FLY FUDGE PART 1

FLY FUDGE PART 2

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THE MAKING OF A BUG BELLY ILLUSTRATION

For Babysitting Trouble I produced well over 1000 drawings. From the rough early thumbnail sketches, numerous progressive sketches to the final artwork (on each of the 96 pages). These following images show how a typical illustration was created, from sketchbook to final printed page.

Any story that I'm working on starts in my sketchbook, well actually, appears in my mind first of all, and then I put it down into my sketchbook. I see my sketchbook as my 'extra memory', like Dumbledore's pensive. Repositories for storing lots of extra ideas and images.

When the text is completed it's chopped into page spreads by my editor and book designer. They are looking for pace and page turning drama. I already know by now roughly what image I'm planning for each spread. So I can refine the sketch over and over until I feel I've captured the spirit of the story incident and the liveliness and accuracy of the characters. I'm not looking to mirror what is said in the text, but to add to and expand upon the words.

These sketches get pasted into a mocked up full 'finished' dummy book and are submitted to get approval from editorial and publisher.

 Then it's time to buckle down to the artwork. I love working in these rich black Polychromos pencils. The only downside is that if I make a mark I'm not happy with it can't easily be erased. So I redraw the scene over again. That, or digitally erase those bits after scanning the image into Photoshop.

 And it's in Photoshop, or ProCreate, that I digitally paint in the extra textures over my pencil work. I've created custom brushes that enhance the natural pencil marks. 

 These early reader books are printed in black with one extra colour. This is also added digitally and then pre-print separated before handing over to my book designer for getting print ready.

EVERYONE'S FRIEND!! THE COCKROACH
Here's a bug that most people are familiar with. Whether running around shops and restaurants or scuttling into the bedroom. The Cockroach is truly a fascination little critter, and has been so for 320 million years! It's obviously doing something right.

BUG #6 THE COCKROACH

PREVIOUSLY
BUG #1 TRILOBITE BEETLE

BUG #2 THE STICK INSECT

BUG #3 QUEEN TERMITE

BUG #4 THE MOLE CRICKET

BUG #5 THE DUNG BEETLE

THE DUNG BEETLE is a fascinating bug.
Take time to go and research each of these fascinating bugs and you'll discover, for instance, that one Dung beetle can bury 250 times it's own weight in dung - IN ONE NIGHT!

BUG #5 THE DUNG BEETLE

PREVIOUSLY
BUG #1 TRILOBITE BEETLE

BUG #2 THE STICK INSECT

BUG #3 QUEEN TERMITE

BUG #4 THE MOLE CRICKET

BUG #4 THE MOLE CRICKET
This month I've had a special request from Eddie in Barnsley. He introduced me to the MOLE CRICKET. So please let me present to YOU to this impressive beast of a bug! Thanks Eddie.

BUG #4 THE MOLE CRICKET

PREVIOUSLY
BUG #1 TRILOBITE BEETLE

BUG #2 THE STICK INSECT

BUG #3 QUEEN TERMITE





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Take a look at the rather strange looking Queen Termite she's this month's Bug of the Month. Like an ant in a sleeping bag!

BUG #3 QUEEN TERMITE

BUG #1 TRILOBITE BEETLE

BUG #2 THE STICK INSECT





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HAPPY WORLD BOOK DAY

To celebrate WBD Bug Belly is giving away this free
downloadable book mark.

It features Splish, Splash and Splodge in a balancing act and is perfect for colouring in.

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Already into month number two and so here we have the second amazing bug in Bug Belly's insectopedia.

BUG #2 THE STICK INSECT

BUG #1 TRILOBITE BEETLE

!• ITS FROGSPAWN TIME  •!

Well, very nearly depending on new storms and other freak weather conditions.

In South Yorkshire pond activity can begin anywhere towards the end of February and quite often frogspawn has been laid on the same day - 14th March.

Here are a couple of photographs taken last year when I was helped by my young friend Atlas. We caught thousands of "shiny black blobs. Jiggling and giggling like a sea of happy jelly beans coming to the boil." 
Just like it says in my Bug Belly book!

 

Here's the first in an exciting series of amazing bugs, collect the set.

THE TRILOBITE BEETLE