Nosy Crow's Blog, page 120

The Inaugural BookTrust Annual Lecture, by Michael Morpurgo

Last week, I had the privilege of hearing Michael Morpurgo deliver BookTrust’s inaugural annual lecture.

Here – with thanks to BookTrust and Michael for giving me permission to post this – is what he said.

We live in dark and troubling times.

Bertolt Brecht once asked: ‘In the dark times, will there be singing?’

I will answer that later.

The concern I have about giving this talk  –  supportive as I am hugely of the aims of this Book Trust ‘Time to Read’ campaign. – is that I know, and you know, that I am talking to the essentially like-minded. We may differ, but even then perhaps only minimally, as to how we achieve what we are all hoping for, seeking and working for: a culture in which to love and cherish books is common to everyone, a society in which we all feel that literature is universally valued and respected, belongs to us all, helps us to grown intellectually and emotionally, helps unite us, a society where homes and schools encourage children to grow up listening to and reading stories, where local libraries are open and free at the point of delivery.

We know, without reminding ourselves endlessly ,the obvious and less obvious benefits children can glean from developing a life-long love of reading, the widening and deepening of knowledge and understanding, the ability to empathise, to explore and discover, to be comforted, excited, provoked and challenged, to spur confidence and creativity. Like many wordsmiths and storymakers, I speak of all this often, rather too often, I fear, at conferences here and there, at literary festivals, at gatherings of likeminded folk, as I am doing this evening.  Our hope of course when we do this is that we provoke debate, and that this debate will help to change attitudes, and ultimately contribute to the enriching of children’s lives, and life-chances, through a love of stories. That’s my hope.  That’s why I’m here.  I think it is why we are all here.

But is this a vain hope? What are we doing this for? What is the point?  Who will be listening, except ourselves?  I, like you, can sing the old song, blow the trumpet, bang the drum, for the love of books, the importance of literacy for our children, proclaim it loud. I can bemoan the closing of libraries, the homes where parents don’t read to their children, the schools where stories and poems can still so often be used simply as fodder for teaching literacy to the test. I could blame successive governments who have all indulged in short-termism in their education policies, to a greater or lesser extent, who corral schools and pressure teachers into teaching literacy fearfully, who insist that measurable outcomes and results are the be all and end all of the education process, who often make a chore and a trial out of reading and books, who have succeeded so often only in banishing enjoyment.

But that would be passing the buck. We live in a democracy – just, an imperfect democracy certainly.    Indeed books and literature have played a crucial role over the centuries in creating and preserving our democratic system as well as the freedoms and rights we now so often take for granted, the freedom to speak our mind, to write and read what we will, and our freedom to choose.  We choose our governments. We are all of us in some way responsible both for the successes and failures of our literacy and our society, for they are, as we know, intimately connected. So when it comes to reading and books, if we have failed to engage and enthuse generations of children, especially those millions from less advantageous backgrounds – and most certainly we have failed far too many of them –  then for all of us, even here amongst so many who have striven to create a more literate society, it is mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. Indeed I think it could be said that literacy, or the lack of it, helps divide us, helps define and separate those who have from those who have not, those who feel they belong and those who feel they do not, who feel alienated.  The truth is that over the years, the centuries, reading and literacy amongst our children, in our society, has certainly grown, but sadly it is also true it has not been all inclusive, as it should have been, far from it. And that has been the great failure on our part.

But let me focus a while on the progress that has been  made, the positive, on what has been achieved, by many people here today, and others, and not just in our time but over the centuries before us. We should see this progress in some kind of historical perspective, to see where we are, where we have come from.

This striving for a society which encourages reading and writing, where knowledge and understanding are accepted as important, indeed vital, to our wellbeing as well as our productivity, as well as our cohesion as a tribe, our sense of belonging – all this this striving was not entirely down to King Alfred.  But I like to think he helped begin it. I like Good King Alfred, because I love a good story.  I am one of those sleepy heads inclined to let the toast burn at breakfast, so I feel for the man. He was tired for goodness sakes, busy trying to drive out the dastardly Danes, but not too busy once he had done it to put his mind to the education of the people. He knew education and reading was the way forward. He pointed the way. So thanks for that, Good King Alfred.

The church then held the baton of education and reading and writing for many centuries – I myself went to a school founded by St Augustine. So quite old. But then I was at school a long time ago! So thanks for that, St Augustine. All right, so there was another agenda here. In reading terms it is true there was predominantly only one best seller out there, the Bible, a book by the way that is a treasure trove of great stories. But the growth of those early schools and universities slowly slowly spread the notion, through the monks, to the people, that this world of reading was beneficial both to our prospects in this world and the next, as well as to our spiritual wellbeing; and the notion grew that words were power, that we could have our say. There was a growing thirst for law and rights. The written word mattered, framed laws, framed Magna Carta.

And all the while, let us not forget, the old stories were being told aloud, passed around, passed on, sometimes told and sung and performed in town squares, on village greens, ancient stories from earlier times, stories that had their origins from myths and legends of our own, and from far away too, brought to us from the far off lands of traders, travellers and invaders. Even then we had our stories and our songs. We have always had them, renewed and retold for each generation. They helped make us who we have become, to keep us in touch with who we have been.

Then technology gave us all in this country a huge helping hand, truly a giant leap for mankind, womankind too, childkind as well. William Caxton thought up the printing press. Now, stories and poems and pamphlets could be printed in their dozens and hundreds and thousands.  No longer did everything have to be copied out laboriously, and often beautifully, exquisitely, by monks.  No longer could the church hold such sway over what we wrote and read. The book genie, the story genie, was well and truly out of the bottle. The book took off, went viral. So thanks for that Mr Caxton! What an invention, Mr Caxton!   Still going strong, more needed that ever! The printed word could now be read by anyone who could read, and because of the printing press more and more people could read, and more and more people wanted to read. This reading thing was spreading like wildfire. Knowledge was for everyone. Stories, ideas, were for everyone.  To feed this yearning for stories, ever more poems and plays were written too, and performed. Theatres sprang up. Shakespeare happened. And from where did he get the plots for so many of his plays? From the stories he grew up with, passed down to him, learnt at school, from books, from history.

The book, the play, was new and exciting, but seriously dangerous to those who wished to control the way we thought. This spread of new ideas through reading and performing was overturning old dried up myths, revolutionising how we thought, opening up new possibilities, new concepts, raising hopes and aspirations. The people were discovering that any Emperor’s New Clothes were somewhat transparent. The world was round. God did not bestow Divine right on Kings, and he would have found it impossible to create the world in 7 days. Darwin ensured, in a book, that other ideas as to how we had evolved as a species seemed to make more sense. The more we read the more we realised that we had the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, the right to speak our minds, express our ideas, the right to strive for greater fairness and equality. We realised we needed books to expand our horizons, make sense of this often dark and difficult world, to make sense of ourselves and our lives on this beautiful tormented and fragile planet. Make no mistake it was not simply strife and struggle that achieved all this, it was the written word, the printed word, the book, and the courage of women and men, who so often risked life and limb to write.

Yet even now after all this time there were still millions mired in poverty, hungry and effectively disenfranchised. Despite the spread of education, despite the new libraries being built in towns and cities up and down the country, there were still those children who could not read, who had scarcely ever seen a book, never had one in the house. Books to buy were expensive, a good education by no means universally available, and sometimes too minimal to make much difference to the lives people could lead, to their prospects. The elite had to a large extent taken possession of this new world, seeming to want to keep it exclusive, expensive, to manipulate it for their own purposes. For the majority this new world of knowledge and understanding was still unattainable.

But books and education and the ideas they had sown and nurtured, would not be denied. In this country in the 1930’s little orange paperback books appeared on our bookstalls, with a jovial little penguin dancing on the front covers.  They were cheap, 6 pence a copy.  Now books became rampant.  So, thankyou Mr Penguin. These were books for everyone, all sorts of books too, crime, mystery, poetry, great classics from all over the world, books you could slip into your pocket, take anywhere, read anywhere. Books were not exclusive any more. Books were on a roll.  There was the BBC now broadcasting into millions of homes – so thank you Mr Reith –  books being read out, stories new and old, dramatised, there was poetry too and even some programmes for children. Out of the horrors of war, and the burning pyres of books, came a peace built on hope, and on a determination to extend rights and power to everyone, through education, through knowledge and ideas. There were ever more libraries, and bookshops, and the 1944 Education Act ensured a better education for our young.  More and more publishers were bringing out children’s books, all sorts and kinds, fiction and nonfiction, and more and more people were reading them writing them and illustrating them and telling them and selling them. For children, for all of us, it really was going to be the best of all possible worlds.  Now we were all of us, irrespective of income, geography or background, going to be able to enjoy the benefits of reading and enjoying books, and through books to aspire, to follow a pathway to fulfillment.

I was reading these books – not often enough I was told – and comics too – and listening to children’s radio, from about 1948. But there was no library at St Matthias, my Church of England, LCC School on the Warwick Road in west London, no books for enjoyment, just school text books, readers. I had loved stories before I went to that school, because my mother read to us, only her favourite stories and poems, read them with a passion. We loved them with a passion.  They were fun, they were exciting, l longed for our storytime with her, loved books, loved stories. School killed all that, took the wonder of stories, the music and playfulness of language, and turned it all into a ‘subject’, to be used for comprehension tests, handwriting tests, grammar tests, parsing, spelling tests and punctuation tests. In these tests at least as many of us failed as succeeded. That’s the point of tests to separate those who pass from those who fail. Testing is supposed to encourage both.  It doesn’t. When you fail it brings only a sense of worthlessness and hopelessness.  It brings fear and shame and anxiety. It separates from those who have passed, rocks confidence, ruins self esteem. You disappoint yourself, disappoint others. You give up. I gave up.  To give up on books is to give up on education, and if you give up on education, then you can so easily give up on hope, give up on your future. This way you can so easily turn children away from books and reading, and that can be a life sentence, a life without books. So many avenues are barred, so many possibilities never imagined, so many discoveries never made, so much understanding   of yourself, of others stunted for ever.

But I was lucky. I was granted a second chance.  I had a mother who had sowed the seed early on, passed on to me her love of words and stories and poems. I had enough wonderful teachers in each of my three schools, and then at university, to begin to restore my confidence. They helped grow the seed which had almost died in me. I was fortunate indeed. I was later to become a teacher, and in a sense I have never in my adult life not been a teacher. Yet despite my best efforts as a teacher, and the best efforts before me of King Alfred, William Caxton, William  Shakespeare, libraries, paperback books, publishers, great writers and illustrators and  thousands upon thousands of talented teachers, and devoted parents, there still exists almost an apartheid system of a kind in this country, between haves and have-not children, between those who read, who through books, through developing an enjoyment of literature, can have the opportunity to  access the considerable cultural and material benefits of our society;  and those who were made to feel very early on that the world of words, of books, of stories, of ideas,  was not for them, that they were not clever enough to join that world, that it was not the world they belonged to, that it was shut off from them for ever. In the country of Shakespeare, of Wordsworth, of Hughes, and Dahl and Pullman and Rowling, the great divide was still there, is still there, maybe not wider still and wider, but shamefully still there.

I may, I hope, have helped some of the children I taught on their way, I may have through my writing encouraged some children to become readers for life.  But not enough, not enough.  There are far too many children I failed, as a teacher, as a writer and campaigner too. Our prisons are full of them, full of those we have failed. Many remain lonely and marginalised all their lives. The right book, the right author, the right parent, the right teacher, the right librarian, at the right time, might have saved some of them at least, made the difference, shone a light into a dark life, turned that life around.

So, in spite of our best intentions, yes of politicians, writers, illustrators, storytellers, the whole publishing and bookselling world, libraries, theatres, parents, all of us, to reach out and include, millions of our children still feel excluded and alienated. What are we to do? Where have we gone wrong?

Well, it’s obvious. It’s the story, stupid! We know what works and it really is simple. Mum and Dad telling stories, reading stories they love too; teachers given the time and space within school time to do the same; a good library in every school, and in the community; writers and storytellers and illustrators, visiting schools, telling their tales, drawing their pictures, singing their songs, theatres reaching out to family audiences and coming into schools with their productions, as many do, shows being put on a prices families can afford.

So what more can we do? Most certainly we have to go on singing the song, blowing the trumpet, banging the drum, but not always louder, more tunefully perhaps. Just  talking about it, giving lectures about it amongst ourselves certainly doesn’t put it right.

Here are a few notions that cost very little or nothing.

Do not ever close libraries, in or out of school, make them better. Librarians, teachers, parents, need the tools to do the job.

Read a story to every child at bedtime every night.

Let there be half an hour of Storytime at the end of school in Primary schools up and down the country. Choose an author the children love. Call that half hour, Philip Pullman time, or Quentin Blake time, David Walliams time, Roald Dahl time. Julia Donaldson time, David Almond time, Shirley Hughes time, JK Rowling time, Judith Kerr time, Michael Rosen time, Michael Morpingo time, if you’re desperate, whoever you like. But make this the half hour they all long for, that they don’t want to be over.

Invite in parents and grandparents, people from the local community, from the world community to come in to tell their own stories, pass them on. Make Storytime at the end of the day a special time, a fun time, devoted entirely to reading, to writing, to storytelling, to drama. No testing, no comprehension, no analysis, no interrogation. Let the children go home dreaming of the story, reliving it, wondering.

All that matters at that early age is that they learn to love it, that they want to listen to more stories, read them, tell them, write them, act them out, sing them, dance them. All the rest will come later, the literacy side of things, which is important, once that seed is sown.  Sow seed on stony ground, try to make it grow with no sun and no rain, it won’t happen. You cannot force-feed children with literacy. Metaphors are better mixed! Encourage parents, unchain the teachers, take away the fear. Children have to want to learn.  So give them the love of story first, the rest will follow.  Horse before cart, horse before cart.

All of us here live in this world of making books, or loving books, all of us need no reminding of the power of books to transform the lives of children, to release their own creative energy and genius. We do not need convincing of this. But I can, I hope, try to remind us of the power of stories, for all of us, child or grown-up child, by reading a story, to finish.

So imagine now your Grandpa is sitting by your bed, and you are waiting for a story. You know Grandpa, he’ll even read two stories if you pester him, because he can’t say no to you.  That’s what you like about Grandpa, but you really wish he wouldn’t grow hair in his ears.  He says it’s to catch flies. He hasn’t got much hair on his head, so how come he grows hair in his ears?   Anyway here comes his first story.

“It’s a story about stories, Michael, ” he says.

“Wot no witches or wild things!”

“It’s about a man called Stephan Zweig, who loved stories, loved listening to them, telling them.”

[…]

“To be honest I thought that was a bit boring, Grandpa. Have you got another one?  A better one?”

“Yes, I have, it’s a story about stories,” he says.

“But I just had one of those.  I want a unicorn story.  I like unicorns.”

“All right. Unicorns it is,” he says.  “By a fellow called Morpingo”

“Never heard of him,” you tell him.

“Nor me,” he says, “but don’t be picky. it’s about unicorns. And that’s what you wanted, right?

[…]

We began with Bertold Brecht, if you remember, with a question.  Let’s end with him.

‘In the dark times, will there be singing?’

“Yes, Mr Brecht,” I tell him, “there will be singing, and storytelling and reading too, and writing too maybe, Mr Brecht.  That’s maybe the only way we can come one day out of the darkness and into the light.”

Thank you to Michael and to BookTrust for granting permission to reproduce the speech. You can watch a video of Michael’s lecture here.

Fleur Hitchcock’s Top Five Thrillers

To celebrate the launch of Fleur Hitchcock’s latest thriller, Murder in Midwinter, we asked Fleur for her favourite five books and films for thriller fans…

There are millions of thrillers out there. Good or bad, we love holding our breath, the peril, the risk, the injustice, the ultimate, satisfying resolution. I’ve been reading them since Peter Rabbit – how was it going to end? And I spent my first year at secondary school consuming everything that Dick Francis and Clive Cussler ever wrote. I have, I confess, read large numbers of truly awful books, and some of the worst still have special places in my heart. I suspect that the thriller is particularly vulnerable to this rubbishness because in more than half of them, plot comes first, and other things, like characterisation and real atmosphere, are bolt-ons.

There’s another way of writing though. Starting from the inside out – where the characters dictate the progress of the story, just as they would in another genre. When I wrote Murder in Midwinter, I started with Maya and her family, her home on the Southbank, and I let the story pan out because of the person she is. It was harder to tightly plot – but it bonded me and Maya, and hopefully the reader, making the thrill and the fear more real. So here are my choices. They aren’t all perfect, but they’re all well characterised, well written, all consuming and to me, inspirational thrillers.

I’ll start with two films from Hitchcock. He dominated the thriller for so much of the twentieth century, it’s impossible to leave him out. First, The Lady Vanishes. It’s a wartime thriller, dressed up as a comedy romance. It’s the only one in this pack that’s suitable for children and has been top of my list since I was ten. It’s about the delightful and unlikely Miss Froy, who with her Mazawattee tea goes missing from a train that’s travelling across Europe with a very unlikely crew of passengers. A young woman notices her absence and tries to find Miss Froy, but nobody believes her, and despite most of the filming being limited to a couple of railway carriages, the tension mounts. It’s psychological, but it’s also adventurous – there is peril, there is uncertainty, there is even romance. But best of all, there are excellent characters – lots of them.

The second, both the film and the book, is Strangers on a Train. A double whammy: Patricia Highsmith AND Alfred Hitchcock – both masters of suspense and darkness. You can read the book or watch the film, they aren’t actually quite the same – and the original script (subsequently rejected) was by Raymond Chandler. Two men meet on a train, and make a bargain, except that one of them doesn’t really make the bargain and the other one is a psychopath. It’s dark, with extra dark. Uncomfortable, funny in places, terrifying in others, and it plays with you. It rollercoasters from false lulls of security to sudden bottomless pits of despair – a thriller writer’s thriller if ever there was one. See also Rebecca (Daphne du Maurier/Hitchcock)

Moving to the twenty first century and Scandi Noir. Headhunters, the film. It’s adapted from the book by Jo Nesbo but I’m choosing the movie. It’s about a woman, two not very likeable men, and a picture, but like so many thrillers, the plot is almost irrelevant; what really grabs me is the pursuit of one man by the other. It’s breathless. A relentless story that really doesn’t give the viewer a chance to relax. It’s how I imagine white water rafting. There are parts of it which are only for the strong stomached. Surprisingly, despite being in places, horrific, Headhunters is also funny. See also No Country for Old Men (very extra relentless, not very funny).

For all that a thriller needs to be dark, and breathless, so many of my favourites are my favourites because I care about the characters. Witness, the 1985 crime thriller, starts with a small Amish boy seeing a tawdry murder, and you know from that moment that he and his mother are in terrible danger. The film shows the boy’s whole community, how they work, what matters to them, and it gives it soul. It also means that the bad guys seem badder, the good, gooder. It’s a film of light and dark, and although it was made thirty years ago, still stands up very well. See also The Fugitive – Tommy Lee Jones at his finest.

Lastly, Geoffrey Household’s 1939 spy thriller, Rogue Male. Isolation is a powerful tool. Often in thrillers the protagonist is cut off from physical and psychological support. Rogue Male offers an extreme version of this as the main character goes to ground in a burrow in Dorset. He’s alone from the beginning. He doesn’t even have a name, and ultimately, his only friend is a cat. Although the background is politics, and the rise of a thinly disguised Hitler, Household’s attention to the details of living underground make it an intimate thriller, based on primal fears. Once again it’s made of two men pitted against each other. It’s old, and some of it probably seems irrelevant, but it’s endured and is still in print. It’s very dark, grim, hard stuff – not so much hard-boiled as fossilized.

And that’s it. There are so many I haven’t listed, because five, well, five?

So here’s a random appendix in no particular order: The Moonstone, Gorky Park, The Riddle of the Sands, The French Connection, The Day of the Jackal, The Woman in White, the Bourne films, Speed, most of Graham Greene and anything by John le Carré

… And feel free to add your own!

Thank you, Fleur, for this brilliant list! You can take a look inside Murder in Midwinter below:

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If you’d like to stay up-to-date with all of our book news, you can sign up to our books newsletter at this page, or with the form below, and you’ll never miss a thing:

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There are just a couple of days left to apply for a Digital Publishing and Marketing Assistant position at Nosy Crow

There are just a couple of days remaining to apply for a Digital Publishing and Marketing Assistant position at Nosy Crow – the closing date for applications is this Sunday, September 25th, at midnight (UK time).

This is an incredible opportunity for a hardworking, bright individual with the right to live and work in the UK to join our team at Nosy Crow as a Digital Publishing and Marketing Assistant on a full-time basis, working in our London office near London Bridge.

The Digital Publishing and Marketing Assistant will work across the company, but primarily with the Business Development Manager and Commissioning Editor on Nosy Crow’s award-winning digital publishing, audio publishing, digital marketing, and events programmes. While the job is predominantly an administrative role, Nosy Crow is a fast-growing company with opportunities for career development.

The ideal candidate is likely to be educated to degree level, and, in addition…

Will be able to demonstrate a strong interest in children’s books, and in digital publishing and marketing
Will be highly organised (and willing to do a lot of admin stuff), with great time management skills, and excellent attention to detail
Will have perfect written and spoken communication skills in English
Will have strong digital skills, an interest in various digital and social media channels, and be comfortable using content management systems
Will be a self-starter with lots of initiative who is ready to ‘muck in’
Will be able to produce great copy, and will have some experience at writing – a blog, perhaps, or a student newspaper

 

You can read the full job description for the position here.

To apply, please send Tom Bonnick your CV, accompanied by an application letter, as soon as possible via email (tom at nosycrow dot com).

Come to the next Nosy Crow Reading Group – we’re discussing Cogheart by Peter Bunzl

Would you like to come along to the next Nosy Crow Reading Group?

In October we’ll be discussing Cogheart, by Peter Bunzl. Piers Torday called the book “a glittering clockwork treasure”, and Katherine Woodfine described it as “a gem of a book”.

We’ll be meeting on Tuesday, October 25th at 6.30pm, here at the Nosy Crow offices – 10a Lant Street, London, SE1 1QR – for a discussion of the book (along with wine and crisps). If you’d like to come along, just register for a place with the form below, or at this page.

You can order Cogheart online from Waterstones here.

We’ll post some discussion points for the book a little closer to the date – we hope you can join us!

More sing along videos for our Sing Along With Me nursery rhyme series!

Last week we shared a brand new series of sing along videos to accompany the wonderful Sing Along with Me nursery rhyme series, illustrated by Yu-hsuan Huang.

Every board book in this brilliant series comes with a QR code – scan the code for a free audio version of each nursery rhyme, sung to original music. And today we have four new videos to share, for four more Sing Along books – so now you can also enjoy the songs with our free nursery rhyme video series.

Here are the latest videos in our Sing Along with Me series:

Hey Diddle Diddle:

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Happy Birthday:

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If You’re Happy and You Know It:

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Incy Wincy Spider:

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You can find out more about the series here – and you can find our full collection of Sing Along nursery rhyme videos here. If you want to stay up to date with all of our book news, you can sign up to our newsletter at this page, or with the form below.

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There’s just under a month to go until the next Nosy Crow Illustrator Salon

The next Nosy Crow Illustrator Salon is taking place in just under a month’s time – if you’d like to come along, book your ticket today!

Our featured illustrator at this edition of the Illustrator Salon will be the incredible Sam Usher, the highly-acclaimed illustrator of Refuge.

Join us for the evening and discover how Sam creates his artwork, find out who and what his inspirations are, how he built a career as a children’s book illustrator, his process of creating a picture book from start to finish, how he collaborates with authors and publishers, his advice for illustrators, and more!

We’ll be returning to The Book Club, in Shoreditch, for Sam’s Salon, on the evening of Monday 17th October. After an interview with Sam there’ll be a Q&A with the audience, followed by a book signing and drinks.

And you can save money on a signed copy of Refuge by buying one now with your ticket!

General admission costs just £5. £9 will include entry to the salon, PLUS a signed paperback copy of Refuge.

Doors will open at 6.30pm for drinks and conversation, and the salon will start at approximately 7.00pm.

Booking is essential and tickets are extremely limited – save your place today!

Here’s a look inside Refuge:

If you don’t want to miss out on any of our future salon events, sign up to our mailing list below.

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We hope to see you there!

A Piglet Called Truffle is out soon – and you can win a proof copy!

Next month we’re incredibly pleased to be publishing A Piglet Called Truffle – the first book in a FANTASTIC new series for younger readers, written by Helen Peters, author of the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize-shortlisted The Secret Hen House Theatre and The Farm Beneath the Water, and illustrated by Ellie Snowdon. And today you can win a proof copy of the book!

Hattie’s dad is a farmer, and her mum is a large-animal vet, so Hattie spends a lot of time caring for animals and trying to keep them out of trouble. Unfortunately, this often means getting herself out of difficulty, too…

In A Piglet Called Truffle, Hattie rescues a tiny piglet from certain death. But Hattie’s parents don’t believe in farm animals being pets and insist that Truffle must be sold as soon as she’s big enough. So Hattie begins a campaign to keep her – one that doesn’t seem to be going very well as Truffle gets older and ever-closer to market… In the end, it takes two lost guinea pigs and one cold, frosty night-time adventure to save the mini piglet from disaster…

Brilliant story-telling that will make you laugh and cry, and beautifully illustrated by Ellie Snowdon, this is James Herriot for a new generation.

You can take an early look inside A Piglet Called Truffle below – here’s the first chapter:

We have five A Piglet Called Truffle proofs to give away – to be in with a chance of winning one, just sign up to our books newsletter at this page or with the form below, and send an email to tom [at] nosycrow [dot] come with A Piglet Called Truffle in the subject heading, including your postal address. This competition will close on Friday, September 23rd, and  is open to residents of the UK and Ireland only.

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Good luck!

There’s just over a week left to apply for a Digital Publishing and Marketing Assistant position at Nosy Crow

Last week we announced that we are recruiting a Digital Publishing and Marketing at Nosy Crow, and there’s just over a week left to apply for the position – the closing date is next Sunday, September 25th.

This is an incredible opportunity for a hardworking, bright individual with the right to live and work in the UK to join our team on a full-time basis, working in our London office near London Bridge.

The Digital Publishing and Marketing Assistant will work across the company, but primarily with the Business Development Manager and Commissioning Editor on Nosy Crow’s award-winning digital publishing, audio publishing, digital marketing, and events programmes. While the job is predominantly an administrative role, Nosy Crow is a fast-growing company with opportunities for career development.

The ideal candidate is likely to be educated to degree level, and, in addition…

Will be able to demonstrate a strong interest in children’s books, and in digital publishing and marketing
Will be highly organised (and willing to do a lot of admin stuff), with great time management skills, and excellent attention to detail
Will have perfect written and spoken communication skills in English
Will have strong digital skills, an interest in various digital and social media channels, and be comfortable using content management systems
Will be a self-starter with lots of initiative who is ready to ‘muck in’
Will be able to produce great copy, and will have some experience at writing – a blog, perhaps, or a student newspaper

You can read the full job description for the position here.

To apply, please send Tom Bonnick your CV, accompanied by an application letter, as soon as possible via email (tom at nosycrow dot com).

There’s a week left to apply for a Digital Publishing and Marketing Assistant position at Nosy Crow

Last week we announced that we are recruiting a Digital Publishing and Marketing at Nosy Crow, and there’s a week left to apply for the position – the closing date is next Friday, September 23rd.

This is an incredible opportunity for a hardworking, bright individual with the right to live and work in the UK to join our team on a full-time basis, working in our London office near London Bridge.

The Digital Publishing and Marketing Assistant will work across the company, but primarily with the Business Development Manager and Commissioning Editor on Nosy Crow’s award-winning digital publishing, audio publishing, digital marketing, and events programmes. While the job is predominantly an administrative role, Nosy Crow is a fast-growing company with opportunities for career development.

The ideal candidate is likely to be educated to degree level, and, in addition…

Will be able to demonstrate a strong interest in children’s books, and in digital publishing and marketing
Will be highly organised (and willing to do a lot of admin stuff), with great time management skills, and excellent attention to detail
Will have perfect written and spoken communication skills in English
Will have strong digital skills, an interest in various digital and social media channels, and be comfortable using content management systems
Will be a self-starter with lots of initiative who is ready to ‘muck in’
Will be able to produce great copy, and will have some experience at writing – a blog, perhaps, or a student newspaper

You can read the full job description for the position here.

To apply, please send Tom Bonnick your CV, accompanied by an application letter, as soon as possible via email (tom at nosycrow dot com).

A look at next month’s new books from Nosy Crow

We’ve got a fantastically festive collection of new books coming out next month – wonderfully winter-y books for children of all ages, from charming Christmassy board books for the very young, to hard-boiled crime fiction for 9-12 year olds! Here are all of the new Nosy Crow books that you’ll be able to find in shops from October.

Next month we’ll be publishing Can You Say It Too? Brrr! Brrr!, illustrated by Sebastien Braun – the latest book in the fantastic Can You Say It Too? series. As all parents know, very little children love to play ‘I-Spy’, but they also adore making animal sounds. So a flap book in which they can spot a bit of an animal, lift the flap to reveal the complete creature, and then make its noise is guaranteed to be a winner! Sturdy flaps and simple texts combine with friendly artwork in these fantastic first books that are great for sharing with children who are just starting to talk.

Pre-order the book online.

Sing along with me! We wish you a Merry Christmas, illustrated by Yu-hsuan Huang, will be in shops next month – brimming with cheer and energy, this delightful addition to the popular Sing Along series features five slider mechanisms and both an instrumental and vocal version of We Wish You A Merry Christmas: simply scan the QR code on the first page for little ones to listen and sing along! [image error]

Pre-order the book online.

We’ll be publishing the latest book in the wonderful Tiny Tabs series, illustrated by Jannie Ho, next month – Roly Poly looks for Santa Claus! Help Roly Poly find Santa Claus in this chunky interactive board book – designed for the smallest of hands, these robust, colourful books will delight little readers again and again. With simple stories, repeated refrains and a host of faces to spot and name, they are the perfect books to engage and entertain the very young.

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Pre-order the book online.

Jannie Ho’s Christmas ABC will be in shops next month – filled with cheery seasonal characters and bold images, this is a gentle introduction to letter sounds and the alphabet sequence for the very young. With a sturdy cased-board format and beautiful, graphic illustration, it makes the perfect stocking-filler for little ones.

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Pre-order the book online.

We’ll be released a new board book edition of Snow Bunny’s Christmas Wish, illustrated by Rebecca Harry, next month – featuring a cute, kindly bunny and a flurry of foil on every page, this is an ideal Christmas gift. One snowy Christmas Eve, a small bunny goes in search of Santa to ask him to make her Christmas wish come true. On the way she mets many other animals in need of a little help, which she gladly offers, and in the offering makes her very own wish come true! Here’s a look inside the book:

Pre-order the book online.

And we’ll also be publishing a brand new board book edition of Pip and Posy: The Snowy Day, illustrated by Axel Scheffler, next month. This seasonal story sees Pip and Posy enjoying the perfect snowy day, until they decide to build a snowman, when things start to go a bit pear-shaped. Pip wants a snowRABBIT, but Posy wants a snowMOUSE! Luckily they resolve their differences over a cosy craft session indoors. Another perfectly-pitched, brilliantly-observed story, this is a wonderful addition to the best-selling series. Here’s a look inside the book:

Pre-order the book online.

The Christmas Fairy, written by Anne Booth and illustrated by Rosalind Beardshaw, is out next month – a wonderful Christmas story from the pair behind The Fairiest Fairy. Clara knows exactly what she wants to be when she grows up – a Christmas fairy! But she’s so excited and full of beans, she can’t possibly be still and quiet like a fairy should… Whether you’re a bouncy chatterbox like Clara, or a bit of a quiet fairy, this beautifully-illustrated story has an uplifting message about being true to yourself – there’s more than one way to be a Christmas fairy! Here’s a look inside the book:

Pre-order the book online.

The Winter Fox, written by Timothy Knapman and illustrated by Rebecca Harry, will be in shops in October – a heartwarming tale about friendship and sharing. Fox loves to play, but his friends are worried about him. It’s time he started getting ready for winter, and he just won’t listen their advice! When winter comes, Fox finds himself cold, hungry and all alone. But what’s that? As Fox wishes that he had listened to his friends, a box of treats falls from the stars and he knows EXACTLY what to do with them! Here’s a look inside the book:

Pre-order the book online.

Next month we’re enormously pleased to be publishing a wonderful new addition to the fantastic Princess and the… picture book series, written by Caryl Hart and illustrated by Sarah Warburton – The Princess and the Christmas Rescue. Princess Eliza is AWFULLY lonely in her beautiful snow palace. Stuck inside all day with no-one to play, she’s becoming brilliant at building her own toys. Eliza can make anything with a few bits of wood and some string! Anything, that is, except the one thing she wants most… a friend. As she sets off to find one, Eliza stumbles across a wintry grotto full of elves – but OH DEAR! Santa is poorly and there are still so many presents to make! Could Princess Eliza be the person to save Christmas? This is a FABULOUSLY festive rhyming picture book, celebrating the joy of giving (and making!) gifts at Christmas time. Here’s a look inside the book:

Pre-order the book online.

We are proud to be publishing the first paperback edition of Refuge, written by Anne Booth and illustrated by Sam Usher, next month. We published this extraordinary book for the first time last year, with just seven weeks from receiving a manuscript to putting the book in shops, and we’re incredibly to be able to publish a new, larger-format paperback of the book this Christmas, with £1 from the sale of every book going to the charity War Child. Here’s our publication day blog post for Refuge, and here’s the story behind this amazing book – and here are some of the amazing reviews Refuge received when it was first published. You can take a look inside the book below:

Pre-order the book online.

And Sam will be the subject of the next Nosy Crow Illustrator Salon, taking place next month – you can find out more here, and buy your ticket for the salon at this page, or with the form below:

We are incredibly pleased to be publishing A Piglet Called Truffle next month – the first book in  a FANTASTIC new series for younger readers, written by Helen Peters, author of the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize-shortlisted The Secret Hen House Theatre and The Farm Beneath the Water, and illustrated by Ellie Snowdon. Hattie’s dad is a farmer, and her mum is a large-animal vet, so Hattie spends a lot of time caring for animals and trying to keep them out of trouble. Unfortunately, this often means getting herself out of difficulty, too…

In A Piglet Called Truffle, Hattie rescues a tiny piglet from certain death. But Hattie’s parents don’t believe in farm animals being pets and insist that Truffle must be sold as soon as she’s big enough. So Hattie begins a campaign to keep her – one that doesn’t seem to be going very well as Truffle gets older and ever-closer to market… In the end, it takes two lost guinea pigs and one cold, frosty night-time adventure to save the mini piglet from disaster… Here’s a look inside the book:

Pre-order the book online.

Murder in Midwinter by Fleur Hitchcock will be in shops next month– atmospheric, hard-boiled crime for 9-12 year olds. When Maya takes a photo from the top of a bus, she has no idea of the trouble it will bring. The bright shop window is gorgeous but the couple arguing in front of it look as if they want to kill each other. And when her flash goes off, they look as if they want to kill her too… Then a body turns up. The police suggest that Maya should go away for a while – somewhere remote, somewhere safe. Her aunt’s farm in the Welsh mountains is the perfect place to hide, and soon it’s snowing hard enough to cut them off completely. No one can get in and no one can get out. But does that mean there’s nothing to fear? A tense, snowy drama that keeps you guessing until the very last page, this is thrilling, gripping middle-grade reading. Here’s a look inside the book:

Pre-order the book online.

And finally, next month we’re enormously happy to be publishing The Colouring Book of Beautiful Gift Boxes: Christmas, the beautiful first book in a fantastically clever and innovative new activity format, illustrated by Sarah Walsh. Each page of this brilliant book is actually a box! Simply tear along the dotted lines and fold along the scored lines to create a gift box perfect for storing all kinds of Christmas treats. The 24 boxes are ornately decorated with black and white festive designs, which can be customised with pens or pencils. This fantastic book of boxes is a fuss-free and effective way to make truly special Christmas gifts. Here’s our animated trailer for the book:

Pre-order the book online.