Nosy Crow's Blog, page 140

A Christmas treat for fans of Shifty McGifty and Slippery Sam – Kitty Le Claw craft activities!

For fans of Shifty McGifty and Slippery Sam, everyone’s favourite robber dog duo and the heroes of Tracey Corderoy and Steven Lenton’s fantastic picture book series, we’ve got some fantastically festive craft activities to share, featuring Kitty Le Claw – star of the second brilliant Shifty McGifty and Slippery Sam book, Shifty McGifty and Slippery Sam: The Cat Burglar.

A couple of years ago Steven made some excellent Christmas decorations for Shifty and Sam – and and now you can make your own Kitty Le Claw decoration, too! Just click on the image below for a full-size version, print it out, and follow the step-by-step instructions for a purr-fect (apologies) Kitty Le Claw:

And that’s not all! Steven’s made lots of other great Kitty Le Claw craft activities –  great for keeping little ones busy over the Christmas holiday. Here’s a How to Draw Kitty Le Claw sheet:

And here’s a Kitty Le Claw colouring-in sheet:

And finally, here’s a Kitty Le Claw dot-to-dot sheet!

Click on any of these images for the full-size versions, then download and print them to get started!

If you’ve not discovered the book yet, here’s a look inside Shifty McGifty and Slippery Sam: The Cat Burglar:

You can buy the book online here – and there’s still time to have it delivered before Christmas!

We’d love to see your Kitty Le Claw craft efforts – if you make the Christmas decoration, do share the results with us on Twitter.

One month to go until the next Nosy Crow Illustrator Salon, with Axel Scheffler

There’s just under a month to go until the next Nosy Crow Illustrator Salon – and there are just a couple of places remaining!

This will be the second instalment in our new series of evening events, dedicated to celebrating the importance of illustration, and featuring none other than Axel Scheffler, best-selling illustrator of modern picture book classics including The Gruffalo, Room on the Broom, Stick Man, and A Squash and a Squeeze, as well as Nosy Crow’s Pip and Posy series, Flip Flap books, and The Grunts series.

The Illustrator Salon will be taking place on Monday 11th January, at The Book Club in Shoreditch. Doors will open at 6.30pm for drinks and conversation, and the main event will begin at 7.00pm.

Once again, our host and salonnière for the evening will be Nosy Crow’s founder and managing director, Kate Wilson. After an interview with Axel, there’ll be a Q&A with the audience, followed by a book signing and drinks.

Booking in advance is essential – you can book your place with the form below, or at this page. And you can save money on a signed copy of any of Axel’s books by buying one now with your ticket! General admission costs just £7. £11 will include entry to the salon, PLUS a signed paperback copy of any Pip and Posy book, or for £13 you can get either a signed hardback copy of any Pip and Posy book, or a signed Flip Flap board book.

You’ll also be able to buy copies of any of Axel’s books on the night itself.

If you don’t want to miss out on any of our future illustrator salon events, sign up to our mailing list below. We hope to see you there!



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Jobs in publishing: there are only a couple of days left to apply for an Editor/ Senior Editor position at Nosy Crow

Last week we advertised for an Editor or Senior Editor to join our full-colour books team – and if you’re interested in the position, there are only a couple of days left to apply!

Working closely with the Editorial Director, Head of Picture Books and Head of Non-Fiction, and our talented design team, you will be project-managing your own picture book, non-fiction, activity and novelty titles, including the books we are making for and with The National Trust and The British Museum. You’ll be passionate about children’s books, with a good understanding of both the UK and international markets, and you’ll be committed to making high quality, commercial titles that stand out from the crowd and have strong child-appeal.

Your role will include:

Project-managing a number of your own titles from acquisition to publication
Liaising with authors, agents and illustrators
Coming up with great ideas for picture, non-fiction, activity and novelty books
Editing texts and writing your own texts
Writing excellent back cover and sales copy

The successful candidate, who will probably be educated to degree level, will…

Have proven editorial and proof-reading skills
Have an eye for detail and a passion for accuracy
Have perfect written and spoken English
Have at least two years’ children’s book editorial experience (probably more and probably in illustrated books). This is essential, so please don’t apply for the job unless you have this!
Have a strong visual sense and an eye for design
Have an interest in, and knowledge of, the UK and international children’s illustrated book market
Be a hardworking, sparky and enthusiastic team player
Be organised and reliable
Be determined but tactful and have excellent presentation and communication skills
Be flexible: we’re a small team, and we all have to muck in

We want someone who. . .

Can spot a text with potential at a hundred paces
Can turn a good text into a great one
Is curious about a wide range of subjects and knowledgeable about a few
Isn’t afraid of writing themselves and have a bit of a creative spark: people who are into crafts of any kind are particularly welcome
Is bursting with ideas for new titles

We’ve left the job title – and the level of the job – a little bit flexible because finding the person that fits is more important to us than that person being at a particular level.

This a fantastic opportunity to be part of one of the UK’s most exciting and fastest-growing children’s publishers. Please send your CV and a covering letter to our Editorial Director, Camilla Reid, either by email (camilla@nosycrow.com) or by post (Nosy Crow, 10a Lant Street, London, SE1 1QR).

The closing date for this position is Sunday, 13 December 2015 at midnight.

Send in your children’s book Christmas present quandaries and Down the Rabbit Hole will answer them!

Next week I am incredibly happy to be taking part in a special Christmas episode of Down the Rabbit Hole – the only radio programme dedicated entirely to children’s books, hosted by the fantastic super-trio of Melissa Cox of Waterstones, Louise Lamont of LBA, and The Mystery of the Clockwork Sparrow author Katherine Woodfine.

I’ll be on the show alongside fellow guest Non Pratt, author of Trouble, and a third mystery participant whose identity will be revealed on the Down the Rabbit Hole Twitter feed this afternoon.

We’ll be reviewing the year in books, sharing our festive favourites, and as part of this Christmas special, we’ll also be offering children’s book-related Christmas present suggestions for anyone looking for advice. If you aren’t sure what book to give this Christmas, send in your questions to Down the Rabbit Hole, and we’ll answer them on air! Do you have children/ nieces/ nephews/ grandchildren/ godchildren/ other young acquaintances, and don’t know what books to give them this Christmas? We can help!

We’ll be on air for a special hour-long episode at 3pm on Tuesday 15th December, live on Resonance FM – so if you’d like a book quandary answered, send us your question on Twitter or in the comments below before then.

And I’ll also be giving away a VERY early, exclusive proof copy of my most anticipated book of next year to listeners – so tune in to find out what the book will be and to be in with a chance of winning.

You can find previous episodes of Down the Rabbit Hole online here. To discover who the third guest on next week’s episode will be, keep an eye on the Down the Rabbit hole Twitter feed later on today!

 

Make your own Goldilocks and Little Bear puppets!

It’s just under a month since we released Goldilocks and Little Bear, our sixth phenomenal fairytale app, and we’ve been absolutely thrilled with the response to the app so far. It’s received a five-star review from Tech with Kids, and a 100% rating (and an Editor’s Choice Award) from Children’s Technology Review. It’s just been featured as one of The Observer’s Apps of the Month, and it’s received a great review from The Horn Book. And today we’ve got some great stuff to giveaway!

We’ve made some FANTASTIC cut-out-and-play puppets for Goldilocks and Little Bear, the two heroes of the app, which you can print out and make yourself – just follow the instructions below!

You can download printable versions of each puppet by clicking on the images below for full-size versions of Goldilocks and Little Bear.

Here’s our Goldilocks puppet:

And here’s our Little Bear puppet:

If you do make your own Goldilocks and Little Bear puppets, we’d love to see them – do please share them with us on Twitter!

And we’re giving away copies of the app, too! To be in with a chance of winning a copy of Goldilocks and Little Bear, just re-tweet this message:

Goldilocks and Little Bear is out now! Download on the App Store here: https://t.co/FWrwNaFYyj. Watch our trailer: https://t.co/f9ICio8rRl

— Nosy Crow Apps (@NosyCrowApps) December 8, 2015

If you’re entirely new to the app, you can watch our beautiful stop motion trailer for Goldilocks and Little Bear below:

 

 

You can read a great blogpost by Ed on how we made the trailer here, and you can download Goldilocks and Little Bear on the app store here. If you’d like to stay up to date with all of our app news, you can sign up to our apps newsletter below:

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Refuge, by Anne Booth and Sam Usher, in The Times and The Sunday Times

It’s just under month since the publication of Refuge, written by Anne Booth and illustrated by Sam Usher, our Christmas charity book raising money for War Child, and we have been absolutely overwhelmed by the response to the book so far.

Over the weekend, Refuge was reviewed by both The Times and The Sunday Times. On Saturday, Alex O’Connell included the book in The Times’ list of the best children’s books of 2015, writing:

“Sam Usher’s charming, mostly monochrome illustrations use splashes of colour to convey warmth and hope. It concludes with a tableau of the refugees and their hosts tucking into a hearty dinner, a dinner from the heart. An excellent way to help children make sense of what they are seeing on the news every day.”

You can read the full review here.

And on Sunday, Nicolette Jones included Refuge in her round-up of children’s books of the year for The Sunday Times, writing:

“The nativity and the flight into Egypt, as simply recounted by Anne Booth and tenderly drawn in line and wash by Sam Usher, connect with the plight of modern refugees, in Refuge … A stocking filler about Christmas that fulfils its spirit.”

You can read Nicolette’s full review here.

Children’s Laureate Chris Riddell has called Refuge “an important Christmas book,” and “a book to share with a lump in your throat and an ache in your heart until the beauty and hope of the very last page”. You can take a look inside the book below:

Although Refuge has now sold out in many places, you can still buy the book from Waterstones, online and in store: £5 from the sale of every copy will go directly to War Child. Here’s the story behind Refuge, and here’s our publication day blogpost for the book.

Snow White wins a FutureBook Award!

Our Snow White app has won a FutureBook Award!

I went to The Bookseller’s fifth annual FutureBook conference on Friday – a fantastic day with great talks from, among others, Pottermore’s Susan Jurevics, Kobo’s Michael Tamblyn, Akala, and more. The day concluded with the prestigious FutureBook Awards, and there was a lot at stake for Nosy Crow: we are very proud to have won the FutureBook Award for Best Children’s Digital Book last year, for our Jack and the Beanstalk app, in 2013, for Rounds: Parker Penguin, and in 2011, for Cinderella.

This year we were nominated in the same category for both Snow White and Axel Scheffler’s Flip Flap Jungle, along with a further nomination in the Best use of Digital in a Marketing/Publicity Campaign category for our My Brother is a Superhero app. And we are extraordinarily pleased that Snow White was named the Best Children’s Digital Book!

Conceived and created with reading for pleasure at its heart, our Snow White app re-imagines the best-loved and most well-known fairytale of them all for a brand new audience. Seamlessly blending all of the classic elements of the Snow White narrative with ingenious, story-friendly forms of interactivity, the app puts the reader at the centre of the story, re-defining this iconic fairytale for the 21st century. With a beautiful fairytale environment, unique forms of interactivity (tilt your device to rock the baby Snow White to sleep, see yourself in the Magic Mirror, help Snow White clean the dwarfs’ house, mine for jewels, and lots more), hundreds of lines of dialogue and interactive touch-points, original music, text-highlighting, and more, this is a truly incredible reading experience.

Here’s a look at Snow White:

 

 

The app has received five-star reviews from The Guardian, Tech With Kids, The iPhone Mom, and Digital Storytime. It’s the recipient of an Editor’s Choice Award from Children’s Technology Review. In their review, USA Today wrote: “Nosy Crow is to fairy-tale apps as J. K. Rowling is to wizards’ tales — both are masterful. It’s no surprise then that Snow White, Nosy Crow’s newly released fifth app, is brilliant.”

You can download Snow White on the App Store here – and you can read the full list of FutureBook Award winners here. If you’d like to stay up to date with all of our app news, you can sign up to our apps mailing list below.

Thank you, FutureBook, for this fantastic honour!

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Great Christmas books from Nosy Crow

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas at the Nosy Crow office… By which I mean about seventy parcels arrive at the office every day as the Crows get going on their Christmas shopping (Ola is currently in danger of being buried in an avalanche of Kate’s purchases that are stacked behind our desks – see below).

If you’re stuck for a really great Christmas present, we just happen to have published lots of rather lovely Christmas books this year that might catch your eye. Here’s a round-up of all of our favourite Christmas titles from our list so far, from old favourites like Snow Bunny to fab new titles like Christmas for Greta and Gracie.

Just Right for Christmas, written by Birdie Black and illustrated by Rosalind Beardshaw: [image error]

One snowy Christmas eve, the king buys some soft red cloth to make a cloak for the princess – little does he know that the left-over cloth will be used to make presents for many more of the kingdom’s inhabitants, right down to the last teeny bit of cloth made into a scarf, which is just right for the smallest mouse to protect him from the winter chill.

The very first Nosy Crow Christmas book to be published, Just Right for Christmas is a heart-warming tale about the joy of giving at Christmas, with a ‘waste not, want not’ message!

Take a look inside:

Olivia’s Winter Wonderland by Lyn Gardner

It’s winter at the Swan Academy, and that means panto! While Olivia practises being the back end of a horse, everyone else is auditioning for a major new movie. Soon the school is full of rivalry and suspicion, nasty tricks and strange mysteries. To lighten the mood, Eel organises a festive ice-skating trip. But as the skaters twirl and leap among the twinkling lights, Olivia realises that the season of goodwill is anything but…

This is the fifth book in Lyn Gardner’s brilliant Olivia series, and it makes a perfect wintry read to cuddle up with this Christmas, with enough pantomime, skating, mystery and intrigue to keep you occupied until the New Year!

Take a look inside:

Snow Bunny’s Christmas Wish and Snow Bunny’s Christmas Gift, illustrated by Rebecca Harry:

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[image error]These books will always be some of my favourite Christmas titles, with just the right amount of adorable animals, snowy scenes, and glittering foil on every spread! In the first book, a small bunny goes in search of Santa to ask him to make her Christmas wish come true. In the second book, Snow Bunny and her friends love to play together in the snow, but when the weather turns colder, no one wants to play anymore. It is up to Snow Bunny to save the day with some much-needed Christmas gifts!

Take a look inside Snow Bunny’s Christmas Wish:

Take a look inside Snow Bunny’s Christmas Gift:

 

Pip and Posy: The Snowy Day by Axel Scheffler:

 

Pip and Posy discover the highs and lows of snowman-building in this lovely seasonal picture book, leading to my favourite ever scene in Axel Scheffler’s wonderful Pip and Posy series, which involves poor Pip being hit with a rather large snow-mouse head. Needless to say, an argument ensues, but everyone makes friends again before bedtime.

Take a look inside:

Bizzy Bear: Christmas Helper by Benji Davies:

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Bizzy Bear gets a very festive makeover as he helps Father Christmas get ready for the big day! This most recent addition to the fantastic Bizzy Bear novelty series by the brilliant Benji Davies is bound to thrill any young fans of Bizzy Bear this Christmas.

Can You Say It Too? Jingle! Jingle!  illustrated by Sebastien Braun:

Another festive addition to the great Can You Say It Too novelty series, Can You Say It Too: Jingle, Jingle has five spreads of lovely illustrations by Sebastien Braun, big, recessed flaps and a host of festive friends to spot, name and mimic. A delightful little board book to share with the very young this Christmas.

Christmas for Greta and Gracie by Yasmeen Ismail:

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This is a truly gorgeous book from award-winning author-illustrator Yasmeen Ismail about sibling relationships at Christmas. Whether you have older siblings or younger siblings, you’re sure to recognise the dynamic between these two very different sisters, and appreciate the sweetly satisfying end to the tale! A perfect book to share in the exciting run-up to Christmas.

Take a look inside Christmas for Greta and Gracie:

Violet Rose and the Very Snowy Winter by Jannie Ho:

A fantastic book to whip out during the long Christmas holidays, this is the second title in the gorgeous Violet Rose series, written and illustrated by Jannie Ho. We all had a lot of fun putting together the 3D press-outs and sticking the stickers in when these books first arrived in the office – and with even more activities available online, this book is sure to keep children entertained for hours.

Take a look inside:

Poles Apart, written by Jeanne Willis and illustrated by Jarvis:

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Everybody knows that penguins belong at the South Pole and polar bears live at the North Pole – but what would happen if, one day, a family of picnicking penguins accidentally got lost? When the hapless Pilchard-Brown family find themselves at completely the wrong pole, they need Mr White, the friendly polar bear, to guide them all the way home. . .

Jarvis’s beautiful and distinctive illustrations combine with Jeanne Willis’s witty and thoughtful prose to make Poles Apart a really stand-out wintry story about following your dreams, and finding your way home.

Take a look inside:

Hubble Bubble: The Wacky Winter Wonderland, written by Tracey Corderoy and illustrated by Joe Berger:

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If you’re looking for some fantastically festive young fiction, then look no further than Pandora antics with her… unusual grandma, in Hubble Bubble: The Wacky Winter Wonderland, the latest book in Tracey Corderoy and Joe Berger’s Hubble Bubble series. Find out what happens when a naughty toddler waves Granny’s wand in a posh shop. Can Granny build a raft that doesn’t sink? And enjoy a visit to Winter Wonderland with some surprises in store…

Take a look inside:

And last, but by no means least, this list wouldn’t be complete without our most recent Christmas book, Refuge, written by Anne Booth and illustrated by Sam Usher.

A timely and timeless retelling of the Christmas story, written by Anne Booth and illustrated by Sam Usher, we published this book in November in support of refugees, with £5 from the sale of each book going to War Child. You can read more about the story behind the book here, and here is a peek inside:

There should something on this list for just about anyone, from very endearing novelty and activity books, to beautiful picture books, to enthralling fiction to take you right through the holidays. And why not take a look at our Gifts page too, for a great companion present for one of our books!

A peek inside Baxter’s Book – a fantastic debut by Hrefna Bragadottir

We’re all very excited about what has arrived in our office this week… it’s finished copies of the brilliant Baxter’s Book, the fantastic debut picture book from Hrefna Bragadottir, which we’ll be publishing in February 2016!

Baxter LOVES books! He likes stories about scary wolves, cuddly bears and cute rabbits. If only he could be in a book, too! But when Baxter auditions to star in a book, the judges cut his dream short – what a curious creature, they cry! Poor Baxter! He knows he can’t be like scary Wolf, cuddly Bear and cute Rabbit, and decides he doesn’t want to be in a book anymore.

But wait . . . what’s that on the bookshelf? Could it be Baxter’s very own book?

Brimming with heart and humour, and with an adorable (and unusual) hero, this is perfect for fans of Open Very Carefully and other books-about-books – it is clever and charming. Hrefna Bragadottir has created a truly wonderful picture book debut.

We won’t be publishing Baxter’s Book until February next year, but you don’t have to wait that long for a sneak peek – here’s a preview of what you’ll find in this lovely book!

If you’d like to be in the know about what we’re publishing each month, and be in with a chance of winning copies of our new books, please do sign up to our books newsletter below:

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An open call for children’s fiction submissions from debut BAME writers

Today we’re announcing an open call for children’s fiction submissions from debut BAME writers.

Earlier this week, writer and journalist Nikesh Shukla made headlines for his comments on a lack of diversity in the publishing industry, and in particular, the fact that the list of books announced for the 2016 World Book Night do not include any titles by BAME (Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic) writers.

Nikesh has since announced a fantastic project with crowd-funding publisher Unbound – The Good Immigrant, featuring essays about race and immigration by fifteen BAME writers, poets, journalists and artists. You can pledge to help fund the project here.

And Nikesh’s comments prompted me to think about our own efforts to publish writers from a diverse set of backgrounds.

I think that it’s incredibly important that our industry represents a wide range of voices, not only so that children from every background can recognise their own lives and experiences in the books that they read, but also simply to enrich the body of children’s literature that we publish, by moving out of a monoculture and embracing a wider world of ideas.

It’s an area in which we could definitely do better, which is why today I’m posting this open call for children’s fiction submissions (so, anything in the 5 – 12 age range, but I’d be especially interested in 9 – 12, aka “middle grade”) from BAME writers. I’m very happy to receive submissions from agented and un-agented authors – and although I’d particularly like to see children’s fiction submissions from debut writers, if you’ve already been published, I’d still be very pleased to hear from you!

I’m happy to consider writing in any genre. If you’d like to submit something, you can email me at tom@nosycrow.com – ideally with a synopsis and the first three chapters of your manuscript. I’ll reply to everyone who submits something, but it might take a week or so before you hear from me, so please don’t be discouraged if it takes a while!

If you have any questions, please do send me a message. And if you’ve written something, please send it in!