Nosy Crow's Blog, page 141

Buy a signed, limited edition Axel Scheffler Pip and Posy print and get a free signed hardback

We’ve got some fantastic Christmas offers coming up on the Nosy Crow website in the next few weeks – so if you’re looking for gift ideas, look no further! Here’s our first Christmas special: for the next two and a half weeks (while stocks last), we’re offering a FREE signed hardback copy of either Pip and Posy: The Super Scooter, or Pip and Posy: The Little Puddle, by Axel Scheffler, for everyone who buys one of our beautiful, signed and numbered, limited edition Pip and Posy giclee prints.

All you need to do to receive one of these signed books is add the title of the book that you’d like to receive in the ‘Order notes’ on the payment page.

These beautiful Pip and Posy prints are produced at a local Southwark press – printed on A3 (29.7 x 42.0cm) heavyweight (308gsm) Hahnemuhle German Etching paper with a hand-deckled edge finish. Each print is signed and numbered by Axel Scheffler, and one of a limited run – and available exclusively through the Nosy Crow website.

Here are the five pieces of Axel’s art available as limited edition prints:

Taken from Pip and Posy: The Little Puddle:

Taken from Pip and Posy: The Super Scooter:

Taken from Pip and Posy: The Snowy Day:

Taken from Pip and Posy: The Scary Monster:

Taken from Pip and Posy: The Big Balloon:

You can find our full range of giclee prints here.

The signed editions of both Pip and Posy books are also available to buy separately – you can buy The Super Scooter here and The Little Puddle here.

This special offer will end one week before Christmas, on Friday, December 18th – so if you’d like a beautiful, signed art print AND a signed book, don’t delay!

Come and work for Nosy Crow – we’re looking for an Editor or Senior Editor: Full Colour Books

We are looking for the right person to join our full-colour books team as an Editor or Senior Editor. 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).

Closing date: 13 December 2015

Follow that Car: “epic in my life ever”

One of the great joys of social media is that we have direct access to our readers in a way that was unimaginable to me when I started in publishing. While we love to hear from teachers, librarians and parents – other adults – it’s even better when we have insight into what children themselves think of our books.

This child’s book review of Follow That Car by Stephan Lomp was posted on Twitter by bookseller and picture book lover Leila Skelton.

#FollowThatCar: “…it was epic in my life ever. It was great and funny in my head.” five stars. #primarybookreviews pic.twitter.com/RVQkWCEXOS

— Leilah Skelton (@Leilah_Makes) November 25, 2015

Leilah shares books with her niece, who loved her copy of Follow That Car so much that she took it to school, and her teacher got the class to review it as a class project. Our very favourite was 6-year-old Harrison’s review. It made us smile and feel kind of moved too: it’s great to feel you’ve published a book that was “epic in my life ever” and “great and funny in my head.”

Here’s look inside Follow that Car:

Buy the book.

How we made the stop-motion trailer for our new app, Goldilocks and Little Bear

Our newest fairytale app, Goldilocks and Little Bear, has been out for one week – and today, Ed Bryan, our Head of Apps Development: Creative, explains how we made our beautiful stop-motion trailer for the app.

Getting everything ready

Over the last couple of weeks we; that’s AJ and I have been busy making a trailer for our newest children’s app, Goldilocks and Little Bear.

This time round we wanted to try something a little different, so having little experience whatsoever of how to film any kind of stop-motion animation, we decided the best thing to do would be just knuckle down and get on with it. Which is an approach that I’ve always been more than happy with. I’ve always been a fan of the work-it-out-as-we-go method.

Lights, Camera

The first thing we knew we had to sort out was some half decent lighting. We’ve struggled in the past to shoot video or photograph iPads and hands and all that. A quick hunt around Amazon and a few clicks later I am the proud owner of these.

Two no-frills softbox lights. Perfect for table-top shooting

Nothing fancy. Only £58 and just the job for lighting our cool new studio and when I say studio, you know I mean AJ’s garage and garden table.

With all this set up, we played around with the light positions and tried a few different items like spades, balls, paper and the iPad to get a feel for what how different materials and surfaces looked on camera. Having decent, soft lighting made all the difference here and you quickly realise how much you’ve struggled in the past with an inadequate set-up: Stuff just looks great under proper lighting. AJ attached his fancy new HD camera on a tripod balanced on the table and we were about ready to go!

Monitor with live feed from camera and Laptop with Adobe Lightroom for the final shots

So we could see what we were doing, AJ managed to get the camera to send the image from the view-finder to a second monitor we set up on the floor. We had to make do with the picture being upside down, but it let us see what was happening on the table in real time. We also had the camera export the photographs we shot straight to Adobe Lightroom that AJ had running on his laptop. With this rig we could scrub back and forth through the pictures as we working to see whether it all looked okay.

Our plan for the trailer was to feature the iPad in the middle of the frame showing the story with our home-made stop-motion making up a border around the outside. We wanted these borders to feature some of the things that are in the story, so we wanted a painted wooden tabletop, a picnic rug, breakfasts and toys. That sort of thing.

Props

Having got no suitable rustic painted kitchen table I made one instead. Using some off cuts of wood and some left over wall paint and the kids poster paints, I was able to fashion quite a convincing section of table top to film.

Using different greens and blues and plenty of sand paper and wire wool to make a rustic kitchen table top

We wanted a nice wooden floor too and for that I cheated and bought a packet of suitable floor boards from the local DIY store and cut them to length. The picnic rug came from my father-in-law and the forest floor we had to build from soil and leaves and stones and moss we collected from the garden – this was much more fun than we’d imagined.

For all the smaller props, we collected together the things we thought we’d use, such as the plate of pancakes, a toy snake, sandwiches and a bowl of porridge, etc. Before shooting we spent time composing each scene to look fun and during this time we planned how we were going to move things around. The plan was to have each scene start kind of empty and have the items ‘walk’ on and dance about and then leave. With this footage we’d then be able to cut together to make something much longer.

AJ printed the white paper guide for where we would comp in the ipad afterwards and it helped us keep any of our animating borders away from this middle part of the shot.

With everything ready, it was time to start shooting …

Cold Tea and Porridge

The first scene was the table top with the porridge and toast. We found it worked best if I was responsible for one half of the animation and AJ kept track of the other. He did toast and butter whilst I looked after the sticky cold porridge and the mug of cold tea. We made the toast dance on and the bowl fill with porridge and spin round. Nothing too clever. Having the mug fill with tea was easy, having it empty again was not so nice and involved me sucking some of the tea through a straw and spitting it into the jug each frame.

Hmmmm. Cold porridge

Having both of us focus on different parts of the animation worked well I think. Even our simple efforts required us to remember a fair few things that needed to be moved each frame, so sharing the work helped that.

We had a rough idea about what we could do for each scene. Most of it came down to having things dance on and spin or shake. Food would appear and be eaten. I think there was equal ammount of AJ and I trying to have some fun with something neither of us had done before and wanting to make a trailer that did something a bit different to what we’ve made in the past. We got the kids involved too; finding props and even helping with the animation.

I think, all in all, we spent about 3 days in total in the garage. Somethings worked better than others. It would have perhaps been cool to try and do some more interesting animation in some of the shots, but we wanted to be sure we could finish everything in time. Maybe next time we’ll be more daring.

With all the photography done we moved inside and set to work in Adobe Premiere to add in the ipad and in-app footage and edit the final trailer.

The Final Countdown

The footage from the story itself was captured from the iPad using Quicktime and AJ edited together a rough cut of everything we wanted to include in the trailer. Around that he placed the stop-motion shots we’d filmed in the garage. During this time the cut when back and forth between us as we chopped bits out and added bits in and over a couple of days we settled on something that we we both happy with.

Once we had the final edit we added the music, speech and sound effects back in. From past trailers, it’s easier to do this than try and make use of any of the audio from the app footage.

With the audio all in, I think the last thing we did was colour grade the trailer. We worked independantly to begin with on this; I tried a few things out, AJ did the same and then for the final go, we sat together in front of the computer for a morning and adjusted the footage until the whole thing had the right tone and colour that we were after.

And that was about it. A really fun little project. It was great to get some good lighting and it’s really amazing, I think, that we now have access to such great tools and equipment, that a few years ago would have been out of our league. Looking at the finished trailer, I like to think we’ve made something that’s fun to watch and captures the feel of the story and is enough to get people on to the App Store to download the app!

You can read more about Goldilocks and Little Bear here, and find it on the App Store here – and here’s Ed and AJ’s beautiful, finished stop-motion trailer!

 

 

If you do download Goldilocks and Little Bear, we’d be incredibly grateful if you’d consider leaving a review on the App Store – it makes a huge difference! 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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Come to the next Nosy Crow Reading Group – we’re discussing Shackleton’s Journey by William Grill

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

After a Christmas break, we’ll be back next year to discuss Shackleton’s Journey by William Grill – winner of the 2015 Kate Greenaway Medal, and our reading group’s first illustrated non-fiction title.

We’ll be meeting on Wednesday, January 20 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.

Tickets are free, but very limited! If the book group is full, you can add your name to the waiting list and we’ll let you know if a place opens up.

You can order the book online here – and you can find a gallery of William Grill’s artwork from the book here. We’ll email everyone some discussion points a little closer to the date – we hope you can join us!

 

Book your ticket for the next Nosy Crow Illustrator Salon, with Axel Scheffler

There are only a few tickets left for our upcoming Nosy Crow Illustrator Salon – 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 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 salon events, sign up to our mailing list below. We hope to see you there!



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The story behind Refuge

Two months ago today, a literary agent, Anne Clark, sent a picture book text to me via email. It was by Anne Booth, who has written The Fairiest Fairy for us and is writing The Christmas Fairy for us next year, and who is a Waterstones Children’s Book Prize shortlisted novelist for Girl with a White Dog.

The text was called, When the Last King Left, and Anne (Clark) said, “Anne Booth has written this beautiful, moving and terribly topical text which depicts the newborn Jesus as a refugee, heading for safety in Egypt. It’s written from the viewpoint of the donkey. Perhaps not typical Nosy Crow material, but I wondered if you might be interested nonetheless?”

I read it myself as soon as it came in, and found it very moving, and immediately thought that it was something we should do (a) immediately, because it felt so very relevant, and (b) to raise the maximum amount of money for charity. But such a thing isn’t undertaken lightly. We’ve done quick-turn-around books for Christmas before, including three books based on the John Lewis Christmas ads of 2012, 2013 and 2014, and we know how much effort and time they require: they are as exhausting and stressful as they are disruptive to the rest of our carefully-planned programme. We also worried a bit that we might be seen as appropriating a Middle Eastern story in some way, and imposing a Christian narrative on it: would publishing the book be interpreted in a completely counterproductive way?

In fact, we discussed it and decided that it WASN’T something that we felt able to take on, though we felt sad about it.

That was on a Thursday. I found, though, that the story wouldn’t quite leave me alone over the weekend, and by Monday, we all agreed that this was something we wanted to do.

We had a text.

We needed an illustrator.

Looking through the books we had in the office, we stumbled upon Snow by Sam Usher, and were struck by how brilliantly he’d used white on the page – he’d managed to evoke a scene though he’d left much of the page blank. His art – which he creates in watercolour – had a classic feel, but it was child-friendly. He was, we thought, our man.

So early on 30 September, we contacted Sam’s agent, Penny Holroyde.

This was my email, with the heading, “Probably a bonkers idea but in aid of refugees”:

“Forgive me for writing to you with what is, probably, a bonkers thought.

Unexpectedly, we have just received a manuscript for a picture book from an author we publish – not a household name, but someone who has won prizes. Told from the point of view of the donkey, the basic premise is that Jesus was a refugee – forced to flee to Egypt with Mary and Joseph because of the threat of Herod.

We were thinking that we could do a small-format hardback book illustrated with black and white sketches, or watercolours with a limited palette.

We thought that Sam Usher would be great for this.

We’re a small company, so we can’t quite give this away completely – we couldn’t cover the cost of printing – but we could commit to ALL profits going to a charity that supports refugees during this crisis.

Of course, the horrible thing is the schedule. We would need to send this to press in two weeks.

This schedule probably makes the whole thing ridiculous, but, if you would like, by any chance, to talk about it, let me know.”

Penny got back the same day, saying, “Good to talk to you earlier. I’ve chatted with Sam and he thinks it would be a good thing to do, and so is on! He’d like to have a meeting in the next couple of days, obvs! Coincidentally, he has suggested black, blue and yellow, which is exactly what you suggested so it feels there is a bit of kismet around the project.”

Meanwhile, I’d contacted Melissa Cox and Florentyna Martin at Waterstones. I was impressed by their Books For Syria campaign, which suggested that they might be open to discussing a project like this, and their backing for it might make the different between the book working and the book not working. They came back with characteristic speed, enthusiasm and insightful comments.

We had an author. We had an illustrator, we had a retail supporter.

On Wednesday 30 September, I wrote to Anne Clark:

“Louise and I read this as soon as it came in, and we were both hugely moved by it and saw instantly how timely it is.

We have talked about it every day since.

We have an idea that is quite radical.

We think that we would like to bring this out as a small format hardback as an “all profits to charity” book for this Christmas.

We have an artist, who has already engaged with the refugee crisis in a personal capacity, and that’s Sam Usher, whose Snow was much acclaimed. His work is lovely, and he is able to work very quickly, which is essential, as we’d need to get this book to press in the next ten days. He is thinking of working in a limited blue/black/yellow palette. We need someone who’s really accomplished and experienced.

We have support from Waterstones and we would also have support from other retailers, I am confident.”

And Anne Clark wrote back the same day saying, “YES! Anne is more than thrilled, and your plan sounds perfect.”

Sam started work that week, and I went with him to meet Irving Finkel at The British Museum (shamelessly using our new connection to the institution) to check that we weren’t imposing Christian imagery on what we wanted to be a very human story with a real, historical setting. Satisfied that there were, for example, tables two thousand years ago: as Irving said, “We have the Hebrew and Babylonian words for ‘table’”, Sam and I spent the rest of that afternoon photographing objects in the relevant rooms of the museum.

Sam delivered art on 13 November. We had an author, we had a text, we had an illustrator, we had illustrations, we had a retail supporter – in fact, by then we had several, and Bounce was on board offering their field sales services for free. We had negotiated a discount from our distributor GBS, and, via Imago, who waived their cut, we got a great price from an Italian printer, Lego.

We did not have a charity. Conversations with two big charities had run aground: it was impossible for such big organisations to respond fast enough. But Camilla has a friend who knew someone at War Child… and we’d worked with them already when we had helped Leigh Hodgkinson run an art auction in support of War Child last year. War Child’s CEO rang from a trip abroad to say they’d love to be involved.

Finally, we got a quote from Chris Riddell, Children’s Laureate: “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”.

6,000 copies of Refuge – a thousand books for every week between publication and Christmas – arrived in our warehouse from the printer on 6 November, and we published on 12 November at £7.99 and we guaranteed that we will pay £5.00 to War Child on every copy sold.

All the books in the warehouse are now in shops, so we’ll have made £30,000 for War Child, assuming that people buy them between now and Christmas. The cash cost to Nosy Crow of making, distributing and publicising the book (we allocated a few days of a PR agency’s time to publicising it), is a bit north of £2,000 and there are additional costs in terms of opportunity and, crucially, time.

The response to the book has been fantastic. We’ve been so happy to see people talking about it on Twitter, recommending it as a Christmas gift. In the week of publication, it was a Times Children’s Book of the Week: Alex O’Connell said, “An excellent way to help children make sense of what they are seeing on news bulletins every day … It’s a simple but important story about the kindness of strangers that refuses to preach and — amid all the policy-changing bluster — reminds us to remind our children that there is more to consider this Christmas than the looming Lego crisis.”

If you’ve bought a copy, thank you very much for your support. If you haven’t bought a copy, do please buy one of the many that are still in the shops, and we’ve a few available online still on our own website.

It’s been one of those books that makes me happy to be a publisher.

You can take a look inside Refuge below, and order the book online here.

Tech with Kids reviews Goldilocks and Little Bear

Our sixth fairytale app, Goldilocks and Little Bear, came out yesterday, and we’ve been absolutely overwhelmed by the response so far.

The app has been promoted as one of the Best New Apps on the App Store, and is rapidly climbing the charts.

And the FANTASTIC Tech with Kids website have given Goldilocks and Little Bear a glowing 5-star review – Tech with Kids’ Jinny Gudmundsen writes:

“Goldilocks and Little Bear by Nosy Crow is simply brilliant … one of the most innovative apps of the year … Delivering two simultaneously-told stories in one app is an exciting concept, and this app delivers the switcheroo seamlessly. Each character’s story is one that kids will want to read over and over again. And it’s fascinating to flip the device and hear the same story told from a different perspective.”

You can read Jinny’s full review here – and here’s Tech with Kids’ video review of the app:

And here’s our beautiful stop-motion trailer for Goldilocks and Little Bear:

You can find out more about the app here – and you can download it on the App Store here. We’ll be sharing lots of great stuff from the app over the next few days – if you don’t want to miss anything, sign up to our apps newsletter:

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Our sixth phenomenal fairytale app, Goldilocks and Little Bear, is out today!

We are incredibly, incredibly happy: our sixth fairytale app, Goldilocks and Little Bear, is out today! We are so proud of this app – it is truly unique. You can download it from the App Store here.

Goldilocks and Little Bear features a unique, interactive new form of storytelling: rotate your device at any point and experience the dual stories of Goldilocks and Little Bear. Enjoy each story in parallel, individually, or however you’d like – you can toggle between the two at any point. Here’s a VERY quick video demonstrating this great new feature:

 

 

It’s the classic story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears – as you’ve never seen it before. While Goldilocks is in the bears’ home, eating their porridge, sitting in their chairs, and sleeping in their beds, Little Bear is in Goldilocks’s family’s home – eating their pancakes, wearing their clothes, and reading their books!

The app features:

features:

A hugely innovative, playful new form of storytelling – rotate your device at any point in the narrative to experience a second story
An imaginative, witty, modern re-telling of the classic fairytale – now with Little Bear’s story, too!
Unique forms of interactivity in each scene: play hide-and-seek with the bears, collect berries in the forest with Goldilocks’s family, help Little Bear try on Goldilocks’s clothes, see yourself in the app using your device’s front-facing camera, tilt your device to rock Goldilocks on Little Bear’s chair, try each bowl of porridge and plate of pancakes… and tap, swipe, drag, and tilt to explore within every scene!
A beautiful fairytale environment: meet Goldilocks and Little Bear as you’ve never seen them before.
An emphasis on reading for pleasure – interactive elements that enhance, rather than detracting from, the story.
Rich and detailed artwork from the creator of Nosy Crow’s award-winning Snow White, Jack and the Beanstalk, Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella and The Three Little Pigs apps
Fully animated: characters are constantly on the move
Hundreds of lines of dialogue voiced by child actors
Hundreds of interactive touch-points
Incredible, originally-composed music
Text-highlighting to support emerging and early readers

 

I think that this is our most imaginative, innovative app yet: as well as being another fantastically told, beautifully created fairytale, it also introduces a brand new form of narrative storytelling for Nosy Crow. And it embodies the kind of story that can only be told and experienced on a touchscreen device – Goldilocks and Little Bear really celebrates the potential of digital storytelling for children.

You can watch our official (beautiful) trailer for Goldilocks and Little Bear at the top of this post. You can also find out more about the app here, and you can download it on the App Store here. We’ve got lots of great stuff from the app to share over the next few weeks, so if you don’t want to miss anything, sign up to our apps newsletter!

 

 

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Goldilocks and Little Bear is on sale tomorrow!

Last week we blogged about our next fairytale app, with the very first piece of artwork and a reveal of the title of the app.

And we are very pleased that Goldilocks and Little Bear will be on sale tomorrow!

We’ve got lots of FANTASTIC stuff related to the app to share over the coming weeks – behind the scenes making-of posts and videos for the music and the trailer, some great bits of do-it-yourself downloadable artwork, videos, giveaways, competitions, and more.

And, of course, there’s the app itself! Goldilocks and Little Bear is SUCH a brilliant story: we cannot wait to see what you think.

If you don’t want to miss any of our exciting app news, you can sign up to our newsletter below. And don’t forget to come back here tomorrow to read more about Goldilocks and Little Bear once it’s been released!

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