Folk is very beautiful book – no thanks to me, but thanks to David Mann at Bloomsbury, who designed the cover, and to Iz Simonds, who created all the illustrations inside. Iz Simonds, as well as being immensely talented, happens to be my aunt. It was a privilege and a joy to work with someone I knew well and who cared very much about the finished book.

Inside Folk, each chapter title is an illustration in itself, and section breaks for each chapter are illustrated symbols, created by Iz. She also took my beginner’s-biro attempt at a map of Neverness and turned it into something wonderful.

Below are some images from Iz’s sketch book, when she was taking ideas from the stories in Folk and making them concrete. You can see elements of these sketches in the finished illustrations.