Nosy Crow's Blog, page 154

A million copies sold of The Rescue Princesses: Why so successful? - a guest post by Annabel Deuchar

Today’s blogpost is by children’s book blogger Annabel Deuchar, on the success of the Rescue Princesses series.

Nosy Crow recently announced that Paula Harrison’s books for 5 – 7 year olds, The Rescue Princesses, have sold more than one million copies around the world. I’m not surprised.

Back in 2012, my five year old daughter discovered Rainbow Fairies. The interminable stream of Rachel and Kirsty’s chilly fairy rescue adventures saw me desperately hunting for a similar enough book that would catch her interest.

Paula Harrison’s The Rescue Princesses did the job perfectly. The colourful covers still appealed with their long-haired, wide-eyed girls in dresses. Acceptable themes were still present – princesses, animals. There was intrigue, big type and lots of pictures. But there was more.

The titular Rescue Princesses have gumption. Yes, they like animals, yes they are princesses, but they also climb trees, sneak out of royal dinners to try zip wires and make their own magic jewels. They are brave, kind and supportive of each other. They don’t limit themselves to being just Princesses – they endure their duties while thinking about the next adventure they’re planning with their friends.

The writing is fluid and engaging. There are short sentences, an extensive but accessible range of vocabulary and just the right amount of scene setting description.

I asked my daughter why she thinks girls like The Rescue Princesses books:

– It’s about a group of girls, and girls like being part of a group.

– They like animals, and loads of girls like animals.

– They can do cool things like create magic jewels.

– They aren’t just girlie, they get to do fun things like climbing, like boys do, and lots of girls like doing the same things as boys.

– They don’t have special powers like superheroes, but they can do special things like acrobatics.

– They are a bit naughty. Well, not naughty but they do things they’re not supposed to. They think for themselves? Yes, Mummy, they’re independent.

Would you like to be a Rescue Princess? I’m not sure, I don’t have any special skills. But the Rescue Princesses help new friends learn their skills, so you could too? Yes, that’s true, and I would get more confident. Yes, I think I might like to, Mummy, but I don’t want to be a princess. I want to be a writer.

Thank you, Annabel! You can find Annabel’s blog, where this piece was originally published, here – and if you haven’t yet discovered The Rescue Princesses, you can take a look inside the first book in the series, The Secret Promise, below.



Buy the book online.

Twitter, Facebook, Employees and Organisations: who makes the rules?

Yesterday, I noticed that the number of @NosyCrow followers on Twitter topped 20,000. (We also tweet as @NosyCrowApps with 5,680 followers and @NosyCrowBooks with 5,622 followers at the time of writing.

I’m are grateful to all of those followers, and really enjoy my online conversations with so many of you.

The last time I wrote about our followers on Twitter was, I think, back in November 2011, when the @nosycrow Twitter followers numbered 5,000. (I wrote this later blog post about following people on Twitter, though.)

Co-incidentally, on the same day that @NosyCrow reached the 20,000 milestone, I read this missive from Tom Doherty of Tor, the US fantasy and science fiction imprint belonging to Macmillan in the USA, explaining the distinction between what Tor wants to say and what an employee wants to say. I don’t know enough about the issues at stake to feel confident to comment on them.

Tom Doherty was writing about Facebook. Our/my landmark is a Twitter one, but, still, it made me think, all over again, about social media, and how and why a set of individuals thrown together as a company uses social media with a company perspective at all. Can an organisation have views? Is that the prerogative of individuals? I am not – sorry – enormously engaged with Facebook, so I have to write about Twitter as the social medium I am interested in and involved with.

As the person who posts the @NosyCrow tweets, I am of course aware that, for me, the divide between the personal and the professional is very blurry. Embracing Twitter was particularly easy as soon as I had founded and was running a small company: everything is personal. There isn’t a corporate voice to ventriloquise other than my own. In a previous role, I know that I offended some people within the organisation with an internal blog about something they would prefer not to have had discussed: I’d failed to catch the organisation’s tacit consensus on its way of thinking and expressing itself.

And it is that the consensus is often tacit that is, of course, part of the problem. If you don’t define the edges of acceptable utterance, how will people know when they’ve transgressed? How far should an organisation – or, because an organisation is just a bunch of people, a leader or a group of leaders within an organisation – attempt to articulate or codify the views of that organisation? And how far and in what circumstances should an organisation attempt to impose those views on the employees of that organisation, or, at least, ensure that the public utterances of employees conform to those views?

A number of people working for Nosy Crow use Twitter, and some of them indicate the fact in their Twitter profile: @cawdelia, @kjstansfield, @ChiarionGiorgia, @LittleZeeBee, @TomBonnick, @CodingCrow, @axxxj, @OlaPolaBear, @ellie_corbett, @domdelaking and @dixie_dolores. Others working for Nosy Crow use Twitter but don’t identify themselves as part of Nosy Crow, though some of them refer to the company or its books or apps often enough that it’s not hard to work out who they work for.

Many companies insist on a “views are my own, not my employer’s” disclaimer (Tom Bonnick’s Twitter profile used to have a “views are my employer’s, not my own” disclaimer, which always made me smile). I’m never sure what weight, if any, those disclaimers have. Maybe we should insist that Nosy Crow employees add disclaimers, though it takes up a lot of space in a profile with a character limit.

We don’t have a social media policy and we haven’t presumed to provide social media guidelines for Nosy Crow staff. To me, at the moment, it feels not just inappropriately intrusive, but hopelessly impossible to police. I have never had cause to challenge or question anything I’ve seen any employee post. They somehow know what the edges are.

But what if, suddenly, it turns out that someone doesn’t know what the edges are?

Since reading the Tom Doherty piece, I found myself wondering what I’d do if someone did express on social media a view that was incompatible with what I think is the organisation’s tacit consensus. Let’s imagine someone who included the fact that they worked for Nosy Crow in their profile posted something that was, say, sexist? Would it matter whether it was an opinion expressed apropos of nothing to do with publishing, or in the context of a children’s book, or author, or children’s reading?

And I find that I don’t know the answer.

If someone who identified themselves online as working for Nosy Crow said something online that we would challenge if it were said in the office or in a public forum (like a sexist comment, say), then I would insist on a retraction and apology from that person. If they refused to apologise or retract I’d first insist on them removing the reference to Nosy Crow from their profile, and, if the issue were serious enough, I’d treat it as a formal disciplinary matter.

For what it’s worth, I can’t imagine, though, apologising for them, which is what Tom Doherty has done for Irene Gallo, and which just seems to blur all over again the separation between the individual view and the organisational view which was the problem in the first place.

What do you think?

Every reception-aged child in England and Wales will get a copy of Open Very Carefully

Gosh, we’re proud.

Open Very Carefully by Nicola O’Byrne with words by Nick Bromley has been chosen by Book Trust as the book that will be given to every reception-aged child in England and Wales in the course of the next school year, as part of the Booktime programme.

When you think of the rigour the panel has to bring to this choice – it has to be a great, engaging book, it has to work for children with a range of reading and other abilities, it has to work for children from a wide range of cultures and who use different languages – and the huge choice of books that the panel had (the book doesn’t have to be new), it’s absolutely remarkable that this debut picture book made its way through the selection process.

Diana Gerald, Chief Executive of Book Trust, said, “Open Very Carefully is a lovely book for families to share and discuss how words and pictures work and we are delighted to include it in this year’s Booktime pack.

“The Booktime programme is a fantastic way to support reading in the home and encourages parents and carers to share books with their children. We know that books help open children’s eyes, minds and hearts to different people and situations, and research also proves that children who love reading do better at school in all subjects. Best of all, reading together helps to build a strong and loving relationship with your child.”

That it’s a great book to share at home is suggested by the lovely video in this blog post made by a mum and her daughter, in which they talk about Open Very Carefully as a favourite book.

There’s real scope for using it the book in the classroom too, as this guest blog post by a primary school teacher indicates. Among other things, she encouraged children to feed cut-out letters to the crocodile.

Open Very Carefully won the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize and the Stockport Children’s Picture Book Award, was shortlisted for a number of other awards, and was named by the Sunday Times as one of the 100 best children’s books.

The book has been published in 13 languages other than English, and has reprinted many times.

Despite all of its success, Open Very Carefully did not have the easiest genesis, actually, as I described in this blog post. If ever there was an incentive to push and push to make a book the best it can be, the idea that it might end up in the hands of so many children has to be one of the best!

More than 700,000 copies of Open Very Carefully will be gifted through the Booktime scheme – which celebrates its tenth anniversary – with children aged 4-5 years in England and Wales receiving a free copy of Open Very Carefully to share and enjoy with their family and friends.

The Booktime pack also provides guidance for parents on reading with their child at an important transition stage in their learning and development

As well as the Booktime packs going out to reception pupils, 1,500 public libraries across England will also receive enhanced Booktime library packs to support storytelling sessions and school engagement. The Booktime programme is then further supported by a range of resources and games for parents, children, teachers and librarians at www.booktime.org.uk

Thanks to the Book Trust Booktime scheme for making this book accessible to so many more children.

Congratulations to Chris Riddell on becoming the new Children's Laureate today

It does NOT feel like two years since I wrote this blog post about Malorie Blackman becoming Children’s Laureate and this one about why I think she was a great choice, let alone four years since I wrote this blog post about Julia Donaldson becoming Children’s Laureate.

Anyway, today, as many of you probably know, Chris Riddell was named the new Children’s Laureate in a ceremony at BAFTA. I’d hoped to attend, but got snarled up with work stuff in the office, and so, very sadly, I didn’t make it. Sponsored by Waterstones, and run by Book Trust, the Children’s Laureate programme has done much to raise awareness of children’s books and reading since its inception in 1999 when Quentin Blake became the first Children’s Laureate.

I know I’ve been around the block a bit, but, once again, it’s just lovely to see someone I’ve had a publishing relationship with in this role. I first published Chris with Paul Stewart when Macmillan released their hilarious Muddle Earth books. (I am smiling all over again at memories of the Lord of the Teaspoons and the wizards Eric the Mottled, Ernie the Shrivelled, Melyvn the Mauve and Colin the Nondescript.)

I then acquired for Macmillan from Chris the lovely, quirky Ottoline books and some picture books too.

When we came to look for an illustrator for the covers and chapter header for Nosy Crow’s Witchworld and the forthcoming Witchmyth and Witchwild, Chris was the very first person to spring to mind. He did a fantastic job, and, with characteristic generosity, threw in some character illustrations that we used at the beginnings of the books. With their black and neon covers, and their neon-sprayed page edges, they’re really handsome books.

Witchworld and a proof cover of Witchmyth

In the context of the growing emphasis of the need to acknowledge illustrators, with the #picturesmeanbusiness campaign leading the charge, it’s great, of course, to have someone as capable at both illustrating and writing as Chris Riddell. That complete fusion of verbal and visual imagination result in some of his most arresting ideas, like William Cabbage in the Costa prize-winning Goth Girl, who becomes visible as he pulls away from the wall he’s been leaning against and “the yellow wallpaper … rippled like the surface of a pond”. William has, he says, “a way with blending in with my surroundings. It’s called chameleon syndrome.”

William Cabbage, a boy with chameleon syndrome

Sophisticated and witty, the books Chris writes as well as illustrates have the parent who is reading aloud as much as the child as their intended audience, and he embraces parody and wide-ranging references in his books in a way that reflects his trenchant political cartoons in the Observer.

Chris has already declared his focus on visual literacy and creativity, and will emphasise the meditative pleasure of creating a drawing every day.

His website is a witty delight (I have just finished laughing at She Stoops to Conkers in the Illustrations to Unwritten Books section, and he posts new pictures regularly on Twitter.

You can read more about his appointment

Congratulations, Chris, on becoming the new Children’s Laureate!

The new cover for The Baby That Roared by Nadia Shireen and Simon Puttock, and what it tells us about the UK picture book market

On Friday, a proof cover came in for The Baby That Roared by Simon Puttock and Nadia Shireen. We were very happy with it and so are Simon and Nadia. Here it is, though you can’t see its subtle glints of silver foil. It looks intriguing and amusing. It also, we think, looks classy.

Classy was what we were aiming for.

What do you think?

The Baby That Roared is not a new book for Nosy Crow. We published it in April 2012, when it looked like this:

It looked bright and funny. It also, we thought, looked commercial.

Commercial was what we were aiming for.

What do you think?

When this first cover was being designed in the late spring of 2011, the UK picture book market was different. Specifically, Waterstones was different. As this book cover was being designed, Waterstones was sold by HMV to Alexander Mamut and James Daunt was appointed to run it. Six months later, Melissa Cox was promoted to Children’s Book Buyer – New Titles. This, then, was a cover designed with “old” Waterstones in mind. We wanted, if anything, to downplay the classiness of Nadia’s art inside the book.

It wasn’t a particularly easy to come up with, actually, and we did work with Waterstones then to get to the point of the version published in April 2012. An earlier version looked like this (we put the owl in later because Waterstones advised us that it was a good idea to have something visible in the top left-hand corner because of the way they display paperback picture books on shelves (you can see the spine and part of the left-hand part of the book, but not the whole cover):

An employee of Waterstones since before her professional life began (she worked there as a student), Melissa combines an ingrained sense of what the Waterstones customer wants with very definite personal taste. Since Melissa’s arrival – and I don’t think it’s a co-incidence – we’ve seen books like Maps by Aleksandra Mizielinska and Daniel Mizielinski, I Want My Hat Back by John Klassen, Oh No, George! by Chris Haughton and Where Bear? by Sophie Henn sell to a wider market than they would have done before 2011. This “classing up” of picture books has influenced, I think, the covers of books like Max the Brave by Ed Vere and The Queen’s Hat by Steve Antony.

This isn’t to say that there’s been a revolution in the kind of picture books books that sell in the UK, or ever the kind of picture books that sell in Waterstones: a look at the 3-5 section of the Waterstones website sorted by bestseller ranking will tell you that. But there has been a recalibration, and a little shift towards classiness.

We sold over 6,000 copies of our edition of The Baby That Roared in three years – a respectable if not remarkable number. We also sold US, French, Greek and Chinese rights. It was shortlisted for the Roald Dahl Funny Prize. We ran out of stock last month. We could have left it there. But we love this witty, quirky book, and we want to give it another life.

We worked away at it for several months, looking through the book for images we thought might work on the cover. Nadia creates her art digitally, so it was possible to “de-layer” it and take characters and objects off their backgrounds. The new cover is based on, but not identical to, the final spread of the book (there’s a twist on the last page, though):

When we decided to do a new cover, we tried many (many, many) versions. One possible cover looked like this:

But it doesn’t stop there: even the proof we now have will have further work done on it. It’s hugely hard to judge what foiling will look like before you have a printed version in your hands, and we all agree that while Giorgia did a terrific job on the design and the foiling, but we could do with making the foiling, which is very subtle, just the tiniest bit bolder.

But a digital version of the cover at the top of this post was the cover we showed to Florentyna Martin, Melissa’s successor several weeks ago. And she liked it. Frances popped a proof of the cover into the post to her on Friday.

One of the great joys – and challenges – of children’s book publishing is that your audience is constantly renewing itself. A child who was 5 years old in 2012 is 8 now, and probably feels themselves to be too old for picture books, so we need this to appeal to a new lot of 3-5 year olds and their parents, teachers and librarians. We really hope that, with this little bit of publisher nurturing, The Baby That Roared has a long life ahead of it, not just in Waterstones, but, as they say, “in all good bookshops”.

You can pre-order The Baby that Roared online from Waterstones here, and take a look inside the book below:

Tom Bonnick is a Rising Star

Tom, with celebratory champagne, and, of course, cake

Today, The Bookseller published its annual list of thirty-nine Rising Stars – “the publishing industry’s movers and shakers, [who] have caught the eye by going above and beyond the call of duty.”

Tom Bonnick – Nosy Crow’s business development manager – is on this year’s list.

Tom first contacted Nosy Crow in November 2010, before we’d published anything at all. He started on 5 April 2011 as an intern. Adrian chose him, and I was in Australia visiting our friends and distributors, Allen and Unwin, when he started. By the time I came back, Tom had somehow made himself invaluable, already demonstrating the initiative, goodwill, intelligence, learning speed and baking skills that we have the privilege of drawing on today.

After a few weeks, he told me that he wouldn’t be coming in the next day or for the next week or so. I was a bit annoyed, frankly, because we’d got used to having him around. When I asked why, he disclosed that he had to sit his final exams at Glasgow University. I was horrified: I had assumed he’d graduated the previous year, and was really anxious that we’d eaten into his revision time. He, by contrast, was entirely calm… and returned within a fortnight with a first class honours degree in English Literature.

As soon as he came back, we offered him a job, and he accepted. But, honestly, I was a bit iffy about appointing him, not because I didn’t think he was very good, but because I wasn’t, at that point, convinced that he wouldn’t suit an adult literary imprint better (he’s quite, you know, intellectual, is Tom). He persuaded me out of this view over slightly margarine-y coffee and walnut cake in a church cafe round the corner from the Imperial War Museum. I am glad he did.

He started working for us on 8 June 2011 (we think: it was all very fluid). When I get off my bike and stamp upstairs to the Crow’s Nest with a new idea, he’s usually the first person I talk to about it, and he’s taken on every new project that we’ve thrown at him with admirable sang-froid and diligence, independently working out how to do things that, often, none of us knows how to help him with. That’s not to say he’s uncritical: he speaks his mind, and we don’t always agree on what Nosy Crow should do. He is, I think, a sceptical (he says he’s named after Thomas the Apostle – “Doubting Thomas”) optimist, which makes him a useful counterbalance to some of our wilder aspirations and my more bonkers ideas, but he’s not a nay-sayer. We know we are lucky to have him every day.

I am proud of Nosy Crow as a business in an abstract way. I am hugely proud of the books and apps we publish. But I also take enormous pride and pleasure in seeing all (and I mean all) the people we have been able to attract to the company develop their careers and skills: I think it’s true to say that there isn’t anyone who has joined Nosy Crow who’s not changed and learned a lot while they’ve been here. We think they’re all pretty starry, but it’s great to see individuals’ starriness acknowledged by people outside the company. Last year, Ola Gotkowska, our excellent rights manager, was named as a Rising Star. Tom, before this most recent accolade, won the Independent Publishers Guild’s Young Independent Publisher of the Year Award a few months ago.

Congratulations, Tom, on being a Rising Star.

It's June publication day!

Summer is finally here, and with it, lots of glorious new books – it’s our June publication day! Here are the brilliant new Nosy Crow titles that you can find in bookshops now:

It’s publication day for Violet Rose and the Surprise Party, illustrated by Jannie Ho – a gorgeous story-and-activity book in one! When busy rabbit, Violet Rose, discovers that her friend Lily has a birthday coming up, she and her buddies decide to throw a surprise party, With stickers, press-outs and puzzles, plus additional activity material to download, this delightfully unique book is sure to inspire crafty kids – creativity without the mess! You can read more about the book, and our new Violet Rose website, here – and here’s a look inside the book:



Buy the book online.

The Fairiest Fairy, written by Anne Booth and illustrated by Rosalind Beardshaw is out today – a beautiful picture book from a brand new author-illustrator team, with a charming rhyming story and an uplifting message. Betty is a fairy who is ALWAYS getting into messy muddles. She can’t paint a rainbow, or scatter dewdrops, and her pirouettes are, well, pretty precarious. You see, with so many animals to rescue and friends to help, there’s just no time for Betty to practise all the things a fairy should. But when it comes to the Fairy Ball, Betty’s friends return her gifts of kindness and it becomes clear who is actually the fairiest fairy of them all. Here’s a look inside the book:



Buy the book online.

We’re very proud to publish There’s a Bear on My Chair by Ross Collins today – echoing Dr Seuss through the clever use of a single rhyme throughout, this joyously illustrated picture book by a multi-award-winning talent is perfect for sharing. Poor Mouse! A bear has settled in his favourite chair, and that chair just isn’t big enough for the two of them. Mouse tries all kinds of tactics to move the pesky Bear, but nothing works and Mouse gives up. Once Mouse has eventually gone, Bear gets up and walks home. But what’s that? Is there a Mouse in Bear’s house? Here’s a look inside the book:



Pre-order the book online.

The Princess and the Giant, written by Caryl Hart and illustrated by Sarah Warburton, is in shops now – a gorgeous rhyming picture book about the power of bedtime stories. Princess Sophie is EXTREMELY fed up. She can’t go to sleep and it’s ALL because of that grumpy old giant, who is stomping about all night. But when Sophie reads her favourite book of fairy tales, she suddenly has a bright idea and figures out EXACTLY what that giant really needs. Here’s a look inside the book:



Buy the book online.

It’s publication day for The Swivel-Eyed Ogre-Thing, written by Barry Hutchison and illustrated by Chris Mould. In this second brilliant Benjamin Blank adventure, trolls are going missing from under their bridges and will goats are running amok! Benjamin sets off to find out what’s happening, and discovers a dastardly villain with a dastardly plan to feed trolls cabbages and use their trumps for EVIL! Who would do such a thing and WHY?? Here’s a look inside the book:



Buy the book online.

And finally, Zoe’s Rescue Zoo: The Cuddly Koala, written by Amelia Cobb and illustrated by Sophy Williams, is out now – the eighth book in a highly collectible series featuring a go-getting central character who can talk to animals, compelling storylines, and evocative illustrations. A new baby has arrived at the zoo, but he’s very clumsy and Zoe is worried he’s going to hurt himself. So she comes up with a very cuddly way to keep him safe – a koala sling! Here’s a look inside the book:



Buy the book online.

Congratulations to all of today’s authors and illustrators!

Welcome to the World of Violet Rose!

Tomorrow we are incredibly proud to be publishing the first book in a fantastic new series: Violet Rose and the Surprise Party by Jannie Ho – a gorgeous story-and-activity book in one! When busy rabbit, Violet Rose, discovers that her friend Lily has a birthday coming up, she and her buddies decide to throw a surprise party, With stickers, press-outs and puzzles, plus additional activity material to download, this delightfully unique book is sure to inspire crafty kids – creativity without the mess!

And today, we’re very pleased to launch a brand new website dedicated to the book: Welcome to the World of Violet Rose!

You can find lots of extra things to make (including party invitations, bunting, a tea set, birthday cards, and more), download print-and-colour sheets, learn all about the books and characters, AND play games! We’ve created some special jigsaw and matching pair games, available exclusively at www.worldofvioletrose.com.

If you’d like to discover more of Violet Rose, you can take a look inside Violet Rose and the Surprise Party below:



Pre-order the book online.

Enjoy the world of Violet!

A million copies sold of Paula Harrison's The Rescue Princesses series!

We are DELIGHTED to announce that The Rescue Princesses series, written by Paula Harrison and illustrated by Sharon Tancredi, has sold over one million copies. With princesses as interested in zip wires and ninja moves as tiaras and ballgowns, the series has been celebrated for its feisty, empowered central characters as well as for its diversity.

To mark the occasion, Paula Harrison was presented with a golden crow’s egg – engraved with the words Corvus Curiosus (Latin for Nosy Crow) To Paula Harrison to celebrate the sale of 1,000,000 Nosy Crow books.

Paula says: “It’s been amazing seeing The Rescue Princesses grow and reach so many readers. The success of the series is the result of a great team effort at Nosy Crow. I’m really happy to be working with them on new books in both the Red Moon Rising and the Secret Rescuers series. Chapter books are the stories that turn our children into independent readers which makes them arguably the most important books there are!”

Kate says: “The success of The Rescue Princesses in particular and Paula Harrison’s work more generally is all the more satisfying and exciting because The Rescue Princesses is a “slushpile” find: Adrian Soar, our commercial director, read the manuscript of what became the first book in the series in the first months of Nosy Crow’s existence. Paula’s spot-on sense of her audience, and her ability to tell put together a terrific plot with all the right ingredients was there from the start. We’re so proud that Paula is the first recipient of a Nosy Crow golden egg celebrating a million books sold globally.”

Kirsty says: “It was clear from the outset that The Rescue Princesses was going to be a right royal success! It’s such a great idea and so brilliantly executed. I couldn’t be more pleased for Paula!”

Many congratulations Paula! If you’ve not yet discovered The Rescue Princesses series, you can read the first chapter of the first book in the series, The Rescue Princesses: The Secret Promise, below:



Buy the book online.

"A non-stop action-packed, laugh-out-loud winner of a story": a starred review for My Brother is a Superhero

It’s not long now until My Brother is a Superhero, the hilarious, laugh-out-loud debut by David Solomons, will be released into the wild, and it’s already getting some FANTASTIC reviews.

As well as some lovely video reviews by our class of child reviewers, and a great review from Steve Coogan (“A brilliantly funny story about growing up, sibling rivalry and saving the world. You’ll laugh until you fall out of our tree house.”), the book has now earned its first starred review, from none other than School Library Journal!

In their review, the journal call the book: “a non-stop action-packed, laugh-out-loud winner of a story. The main characters are finely drawn and their voices are authentic … A great book that will charm reluctant readers as well as anyone who has ever dreamed of being a superhero. It also makes for a fun read-aloud.”

This is such a fantastic honour for My Brother is a Superhero, and we are so thrilled that SLJ love the book as much as we do.

If you’d like to find out what all the fuss is about, here are the first two chapters of the book:

And here’s our class of reviewers’ favourite bits from the book:

My Brother is a Superhero will be out next month, and you can pre-order it here – we can’t wait to share it with you!