The Burpee Bears: From bestselling author Joe Wicks, comes this glorious picture book, packed with fitness tips, exercises and healthy recipes for kids 3+

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It’s an uplifting story about a bear family who go on a wonderful day out in the woods. It’s about getting active and having fun (and getting caught in the rain)… Speaking to panelists Ruth Langsford, Coleen Nolan, Carol McGiffin and Linda Robson, the 36-year-old exercise guru said: "Essentially it's a book about all the things that I believe in around exercise and movement and improving your mental health, and also coming together as a family - cooking together and exercising and going on an adventure. There are days when it wears me down, not so much my posts as messages from people who are struggling. I try to reply. I’m constantly giving out energy. But I can put my phone away. The first few hours I’ll miss it, but as each hour passes I feel lighter: I’m not in demand, no one can reach me… it’s a nice feeling. I had a really unhealthy diet. My mum had me at 19 and didn’t know how to cook. Junk food was all she knew. She used to go to Iceland where there were lots of buy-one-get-one-free offers. I got into cooking at university. I’m still very greedy. I love chocolate and ice-cream. I eat way more than any average person, but because I exercise five to six days a week I get away with it.

As well as publishing his own young fiction and picture books, most recently 1, 2, BOO!, Howard has collaborated with some of the greats of children's literature including Allan Ahlberg, Michael Rosen, Anne Fine, Trish Cooke, Martin Waddell and John Boyne.

This is my fourth decade of illustrating children's books. It all started in the 1990s with Martin Waddell books using watercolour, which of course you couldn't rub out," he explains. His books have also been well-received, as he often looks at workable weight-loss diet plans that are easy to manage. Ranging from vegetarian diet plans to food for children, he’s created a multitude of different plans, always sustainable and adapting to the needs of the individual. Over time this has seen him become a permanent fixture on the bookshelves of many, allowing him to become hugely popular worldwide. With a lot more to come still, he definitely isn’t finishing any time soon either, as his career carries on growing from strength-to-strength. During his two-year fellowship, Howard is committed to "promoting visual literacy as an alternative, accessible gateway for students and children of all literacy levels to engage in, building enough confidence in them to read and create their own stories".

Being an illustrator is a very solitary profession and sometimes you forget the effect of what you are doing has on people.

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I became successful because my workouts were 20 minutes long and my recipes 15 minutes. I wanted to show people that they can lead a healthy life with minimal effort.

Then I moved onto pastel pencils and finally I've started working digitally. But no matter what the medium, it always starts with finding the characters and the story." The star has now released his first ever picture book, The Burpee Bears, and dropped in to Kirkhill Primary to do a burpee bear workout with the children, a special reading of the book and also a Q&A session.Teachers say how enthused children are with that approach. Visual literacy is inclusive and embraces people of all abilities. Those with learning difficulties may have trouble with words - but it's not to say they can't tell a narrative. The curriculum doesn't cater for these kids and it's an eye opener for a lot of children and teachers." The Fellowship was created as part of Queen's University and the Arts Council's joint 10-year Seamus Heaney Legacy project supported by Atlantic Philanthropies.

Going out on my motorbike (a Triumph Bobber). Or taking the kids to Richmond Park or Virginia Water Lake. My garden is a little sanctuary. I’ve got an ice machine, a metal bath I fill from the hose and then I throw in lots of ice. I’ll lie in there for four or five minutes and it’s amazing. Nothing brings you more into the moment than freezing water. This is just one of the many "random and creative" scenarios that award-winning author and illustrator Paul Howard has received from 10 and 11-year-olds during workshops when he challenged them to think about what Plop, the little barn owl, in the beloved children's book The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark would be doing now.I leave them my drawing and then they have a little display with all their owls. There are little parliaments of owls all around classrooms in Northern Ireland now," he proudly beams. While he has seen many technological changes in his craft, the essence of his job remains the same. The Workout Badges will be available on The Body Coach TV YouTube channel and on the YouTube Kids app, starting 22 September