children's illustration

Cheerio! Just what we need: a pop of color to brighten the week and bring a smile to your face. 🙂

Emma Jayne Allsup’s art is definitely happy-making stuff, so sit back and enjoy her eye candy!

*Illustrator and Surface Pattern Designer Emma Jayne Allsup*

Based in Cheshire, England, Emma Jayne is a freelance illustrator and surface pattern designer who’s been passionate about art since childhood. She’s from a creative family: her father and grandfather loved DIY, and her mother loved fashion and interiors. She spent every Thursday and most weekends sewing and knitting with her grandmother. She knitted her first jumper at age 8.

Emma Jayne likes incorporating elements within her work of nature, animals, people, and everyday objects, both as stand-alone drawings and in patterns. Her style is fun, whimsical, colorful and painterly, and she usually works traditionally with gouache, watercolor and ink, developing and finishing her designs on the computer. She likes to create textures, as well as paint animals and other shapes as silhouettes. She enjoys experimenting with different media and new techniques.

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Right now I am dreaming of the perfect Indian meal: To start, aloo tikki and samosas with a side of black pepper poppadums to wake up the taste buds, followed by chicken tikka masala or chicken korma with a steamy platter of vegetable biryani. Must also have some warm onion kulcha and garlic naan, and for dessert, gulab jamun. Mmmmm!

Savory and oh-so-aromatic – Indian cuisine is all about the spices, many of which begin with the letter ‘c’: cumin, coriander, cloves, cinnamon, cardamom. Let’s not forget mustard seeds, red chili, garum masala, and turmeric. An added bonus is that many of these also have valuable medicinal benefits.

Though I’ve never cooked Indian food at home, the young girl in this new picture book, Anni Dreams of Biryani by Namita Moolani Mehra and Chaaya Prabhat (Two Lions, 2022), has inspired me to give it a try. I’m impressed by her passion for cooking and determination to make the best version of one of her favorite dishes.

*Vegetable Biryani via Piping Pot Curry.*

When the story opens, we learn Anni lives with her mother and grandmother across the street from the Biryani Café in Little India. From her kitchen window, she has a bird’s eye view of the comings and goings of the bustling neighborhood. She listens to the “constant chatter of busy bikers, curious tourists, and weary workers” – all of whom are there to eat café owner Mr. Arif’s (Uncle’s) famous biryani.

It was, after all, the best biryani in the world.

Fluffy and fragrant. Spicy and succulent. Absolutely addictive.

Anni loves it so much she could eat the savory rice dish every single day. But Grandma deems it should be a once-a-week treat, so they only have it on Fridays.

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