Nosy Crow's Blog, page 157

The verdict on the latest Nosy Crow Masterclass: How to Write Picture Books

This Saturday we held the second Nosy Crow Masterclass: How to Write Picture Books – a packed day of talks on every aspect of writing picture books to a sold-out audience.

We had FANTASTIC sessions from Nosy Crow’s Managing Director, Kate Wilson, Head of Picture Books, Louise Bolongaro, literary agent Helen Mackenzie Smith, Shifty McGifty and Slipper Sam author Tracey Corderoy, Weasels creator Elys Dolan, award-winning author Jeanne Willis, and more.

As well as these individual talks, we also offered one-to-one manuscript critiques to all of our attendees, along with lunch, cakes, wine, and lots more. I had a lot of fun – I thought it was a great day, with fascinating insights from each our speakers, excellent questions from our attendees, a creative, lively atmosphere, and lots of interesting discussion. And here’s what some of our attendees said on Twitter afterwards:

Thank you NosyCrowBooks</a> for an amazing Picture Book Masterclass!A great day with amazing speakers!(Those biscuits were pretty amazing too!)</p>&mdash; Cara Winter (CaraWinterMusic) April 26, 2015

Huge thanks to NosyCrow</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/NosyCrowBooks">NosyCrowBooks for such a content-packed masterclass yesterday. Essential lessons for any budding pb writer

— Steve Howson (@Howsonbooks) April 26, 2015

Thank you NosyCrow</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/NosyCrowBooks">NosyCrowBooks for a great day at your picture book masterclass. Great advice and insight. Travelling home happy! :)

— Simone Greenwood (@GreenwoodSimone) April 25, 2015

It was a delight to meet traceycorderoy</a> at an event hosted by <a href="https://twitter.com/NosyCrow">Nosycrow today. An inspiring lady. Thank you for sharing your knowledge.

— Lucy Carpen (@StoryKingdom) April 25, 2015

Amazing day Amazing people Loved a day in the crow's nest. NosyCrowBooks</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/NosyCrow">NosyCrow TraceyCorderoy</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/ElysDolan">ElysDolan hmackenziesmith</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/tombonnick">tombonnick

— Yasmin Finch (@itsYasminFinch) April 25, 2015

TraceyCorderoy</a> hey, thanks for such a great talk at Nosy Crow today. Inspiring and full of joy. Keep doing what you&#39;re doing :)</p>&mdash; Steve Folland (SFolland) April 25, 2015

NosyCrow</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/tombonnick">tombonnick hmackenziesmith</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/TraceyCorderoy">TraceyCorderoy ElysDolan</a> Thank you for the amazing master class!Helpful&amp;fun! <a href="http://t.co/xu24iUnS89">pic.twitter.com/xu24iUnS89</a></p>&mdash; Mai Haruno (Mai_Haruno) April 26, 2015

Great to met you today ElysDolan</a> at <a href="https://twitter.com/NosyCrow">NosyCrow masterclass. My son will love Nuts in Space! #geniusnotmadness pic.twitter.com/DV9UIBdjzt

— Simone Greenwood (@GreenwoodSimone) April 25, 2015

The stunning #jeannewillis presenting this morning NosyCrowBooks</a> Picture Book Masterclass <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/amazing?src=hash">#amazing</a> <a href="http://t.co/ZCCEJafjJF">pic.twitter.com/ZCCEJafjJF</a></p>&mdash; Yasmin Finch (itsYasminFinch) April 25, 2015

Thank you TraceyCorderoy</a> for amazing talk <a href="https://twitter.com/NosyCrow">NosyCrow masterclass. You work so hard to help children love books & believe they can achieve.

— Simone Greenwood (@GreenwoodSimone) April 25, 2015

We haven’t announced details of our next Masterclass, but if you’d like the opportunity to attend, sign up to our books mailing list – subscribers get early access to tickets, and this one sold out in under 6 hours.

Win copies of our May books!

It’s time for our monthly book giveaway! Our new May titles will be published soon, and if you’re a resident of the UK or Ireland, you can win any of them simply by subscribing to our Books Newsletter and sending us an email with the book you’d like to win! Here’s what’s out next month – and what’s up for grabs:

You could win Superhero Dad by Timothy Knapman and Joe Berger – a vibrant, humorous and warmhearted picture book celebration of all the incredible things a dad can do. Dad might not have a superhero mask or wear his pants outside his trousers, but his super snores can be heard a thousand miles away, he tells super jokes and can even make super-scary monsters go away at bedtime! Here’s a look inside the book:



Pre-order the book online.

We’ll be publishing The Big Monster Snoreybook, written and illustrated by Leigh Hodgkinson – a hugely hilarious, inventive new picture book from the creator of Goldilocks and Just the One Bear and the Roald Dahl Funny Prize-shortlisted Troll Swap. With masses of monsters to spot and an awesome onomatopoeic text, this is a book that will be enjoyed over and over again. Here’s a recent blog post from Leigh on where she works – and here’s a look inside the book:



Pre-order the book online.

Get Out Of My Bath by Britta Teckentrup, illustrator of the brilliant and innovative Playbook series, will be out next month – a BEAUTIFULLY-designed, interactive picture book for 2+ year olds, in which readers are encouraged to get involved in the story by tilting and shaking the book. And it has a very special tactile quality, too – spot UV on every spread creates a wonderful, glistening-water effect that you won’t be able to stop yourself touching. Here’s a look inside the book:



Pre-order the book online.

We’re incredibly excited to be publishing beautiful, physical editions of the second pair of our award-winning fairytale apps next month: Little Red Riding Hood and Jack and the Beanstalk, illustrated by the amazing Ed Bryan. Gorgeously designed, and packaged with delightful detail and drama, these are books to treasure and enjoy over and over again. Here’s a look inside the two books:

Pre-order the book online.

Watch a preview for the app:

Pre-order the book online.

Watch a preview for the app:

You could win Hubble Bubble: The Messy Monkey Business, written by Tracey Corderoy and illustrated by Joe Berger – three more stories of magical mayhem from the creators of the BRILLIANT Hubble Bubble picture book and illustrated fiction series. This time around, Granny gets the monkeys to paint the zoo, takes a wand-wielding toddler to a department store and builds the raft to end all rafts! Thank goodness Pandora’s there to sort things out… Here’s a look inside the book:



Pre-order the book online.

The paperback edition of The Grunts in a Jam by Philip Ardagh and Axel Scheffler will be out next month. The third book in the superlatively silly Grunts series sees the gloriously grubby Grunt family head to a country fair so Mrs Grunt’s mother can enter her homemade jam in the Preserves, Jams and Jellies Competition. There’s nothing in that plan to suggest they’ll encounter sabotage, bad poetry and prison, is there? Hmm. This is The Grunts we’re talking about… Here’s a look inside:



Pre-order the book online.

And you finally, you could win The Secret Rescuers: The Storm Dragon, the first book in a brilliant new series written by Paula Harrison and illustrated by Sophy Williams. Set in a fantasy world populated by dragons, unicorns, storm wolves and firebirds, this superbly-realised series for 7+ year olds by the author of The Rescue Princesses is packed with magical adventures and baby creatures in peril. Here’s a look inside the book:



Pre-order the book online.

To win any of these books, all you have to do is subscribe to our books newsletter (if you’ve already subscribed you’re still eligible for this competition) and send an email to tom at nosycrow dot com with “Newsletter competition” in the subject heading and the title of the book you’d like to win, and your address, in the body of your email. So have a good think about which book you’d like to win (we can only accept one entry per person), and good luck – we’ll pick the winners at random next month.

The Nosy Crow Reading Group Verdict on Journey by Aaron Becker and The Book with No Pictures, by B. J. Novak

The Nosy Crow reading group met last night to discuss two very different picture books – one with no pictures, and one with no words. The first, The Book with No Pictures, was of course the obvious, even possibly the only, choice for a picture book with no pictures. Journey, on the other hand, is one of a number of wordless picture books, and was chosen by Tom after an informal poll on Twitter suggested that this was the wordless picture book that was best-loved by the twittersphere.

I’m not sure this blog really warrants a spoiler warning, as something I think most of us agreed on was the general paucity of plot in both books. Nevertheless, if you have not read these books, and would like to without any preconceptions then READ NO FURTHER!

First thoughts

I think it is fair to say that when we first went round the circle to hear people’s thoughts, there was much more love felt for Journey than for The Book with No Pictures. Lots of people mentioned the beautiful illustrations, and wanting to pore over the details in each spread. The Book with No Pictures generated more of a Marmite (marmitic?) response, with some declaring they were disappointed and found it gimmicky, and others being very impressed by its effect on the children that they had read it to. In fact, I would say that the majority of people who really liked the book were those who had read it to children. There wasn’t (to my recollection) a single person who had received a nonplussed response after reading it to a child. Many of the children were described as thinking it was ‘the funniest thing they had ever heard in their entire lives’ and one member of the group even admitted to having had to read the book to her children every single night FOR TWO MONTHS, which provoked huge and unanimous sympathy. Few people appeared to have read Journey with children, which might be due to the fact that it doesn’t necessarily lend itself to telling or sharing, unless, as some suggested, one were to give it to a child to hear them create the story. This is one of the key differences between the two books that was felt by most of us in the group: The Book with no Pictures is meant for (indeed cannot work without) sharing, whereas Journey is meant for solitary consumption.

Original vs. Unoriginal

Lots of our discussion centred on the originality of each of the books. It was generally agreed that the concept of B.J. Novak’s book, no matter one’s feelings on the execution, was truly original. One person described it as one of those books that you see in a bookshop and kick yourself for not thinking up yourself. Another suggested that it was similar to the Stroop effect (the difficulty one encounters when reading the word ‘blue’ when it is printed in the colour red etc.) in the way it demonstrated the power and complexity of the written word, and even suggested that perhaps this makes the book work in a different way for children at different ages, as only literate children would be able to appreciate how words were exerting a power over the reader and compelling them to read something they didn’t want to, whereas younger children might be drawn to the book largely for its use of the phrase ‘boo boo butt’.

Journey, on the other hand, was seen to be much less original, and followed in the same vein as many before it. It was often compared with Shaun Tan books (which many felt was an unfair comparison, given the different target ages) and was described variously as like a computer game, a Studio Ghibli film, a Monet painting in the Clueless sense (“From far away, it’s OK, but up close, it’s a big old mess”), and a McDonalds Happy Meal, whereas I’m not sure I heard The Book with No Pictures compared to anything except a script. It was pretty unanimously agreed that it could only be done once, although many said that, this being the case, they would have liked it to have been done better, for instance one person suggested that Puffin had missed a really great opportunity with the design and typography of the book.

Who are these books for?

It was suggested that both of these books, in different ways, might be good for those who struggle with reading, or children who are reading English as a foreign language. The Book with No Pictures could certainly persuade a child that being read to, and even reading alone, could be a fun activity, and also might provide parents who don’t feel particularly comfortable reading to their children a script that tells them exactly how to perform the book to their child. One member of the group told the story of a young boy who had persuaded his grandmother, who would not normally get involved with this kind of thing, to read it with him, which surprisingly ended with both of them giggling away.

Journey could also be great tool for children who don’t feel comfortable with reading (in English or at all), as a way to encounter storytelling in book-format without the stress of following written narrative. The huge and detailed scenes and the lack of strong plot meant that a child could take the story wherever they wished. However, some people felt that there was a sense of menace in the book that would make it tough to introduce it to young or sensitive children, and other people said that the solitary nature of the book, and the fact that the main character doesn’t return home at the end, upset them while reading it, although they also accepted that these could be quite adult/parental concerns!

Final thoughts

Tom and Kate had previously considered including a third book with both words and pictures in this discussion, in an effort to have the full range of combinations of words and pictures. They decided against it, fearing that we would reach the inevitable and somewhat boring conclusion that in fact, a book with both words and pictures IS preferable to one lacking in either. In fact, at the start of the reading group, it was suggested that this might end up being the conclusion anyway. However, I think that there were a gratifying number of different issues raised, and this conclusion was never one that we really reached. Indeed, I think most people, if not all, liked some elements of both books, and it was generally agreed that wordless picture books in particular were rather overlooked, especially in Anglophone children’s literature, with one person commenting on the plethora of wordless picture books in other languages that she had seen at Bologna this year.

The Nosy Crow reading group will be back in May, and if you’re interested in attending, send an email to tom at nosycrow dot com, and he will add you to our mailing list.

Be the first to hear about Nosy Crow's next event

We’re holding the second Nosy Crow Masterclass this Saturday – How to Write Picture Books. It’s shaping up to be a fantastic day, and it sold out in record time – less that six hours.

And we’re now making plans for our next set of events… and we don’t want anyone to miss out!

Several of our next events will be illustrator-focussed (a mixture of free and paid events), with limited availability – so if you think you might be interested, sign up to our mailing list here, and you’ll be the first to hear about the upcoming events in our programme. Space for these events will be extremely limited, and we’ll announce them to our newsletter subscribers first.

And we also want to hear from you! If there are particular events that you would like to attend – certain subjects, formats, or content that would interest you – then please get in touch by email to tom@nosycrow.com.

"What have they done to my library?" - Caitlin Moran's latest column

This Saturday’s Times featured a fantastic column from Caitlin Moran on the importance of libraries – not the first time she has written on the subject. This piece is re-published here with Moran’s kind permission.

I went up and saw some of the austerity last month.

I hadn’t intended to – I was just visiting my old home town – but I ended up in my local library: the one I lived in between the ages of 5 and 15. And there, in the library, was some austerity. A visible thing. Something you could mark on a map, with a pin.

I’ve written about that library before. About how this place was the delight of my life – a thing I would have married, in my pre-pubertal anthropomorphic phase. I would have been as happy as a clam and, if the gods had so blessed us, in later years, I would have got pregnant by that library, and we would have raised a couple of little mobile libraries together.

It was a Sixties red-brick cube, with the shelving inside packed tight. And the shelving had to be packed tight, for there were so many books inside – that place was rammed full of every and any kind of book you could think of. Carousels of “trashy” paperbacks. Big shelves for atlases and illustrated histories of the wars. Smaller shelves for hardback fiction. Audiobooks, which I was very snobbish about. “I have read 337 books,” I wrote in my diary. “I mean properly read – with my eyes. Not audiobooks.”

I learnt everything there. Sex, witchcraft, baking, butchery, geography, navigation. I read Larkin sitting on the lawn outside, and I cried to be the real girl, in a real world, from his Lines on a Young Lady’s Photograph Album.

That library was a Pandorica of fabulous, interwoven randomness, as rich as plum cake. Push a seed of curiosity in between any two books and it would grow, overnight, into a rainforest hot with monkeys and jaguars and blowpipes and clouds. The room was full, and my head was full. What a magical system to place around a penniless girl.

But then – 21st-century austerity. I knew what the cuts had done to libraries: I’d seen the piles of books for sale outside them in Swindon and Barnet. But they weren’t my libraries, so I couldn’t calibrate what was being thrown out and what was being kept. I could when I went back to Wolverhampton, though, because that library is the inside of my head. I know everything about it.

And everything had gone – or near enough to make no difference. Most of the shelving was gone; all that was left were racks of Andy McNab and Fifty Shades, and rip-offs of Fifty Shades. So few books. Weepingly few books.

To the side, a single, lonely carousel labelled “Classics” – in the midst of all the pink and gold-embossed lettering, the Brontës and Dickenses looking like martinets in the middle of a hen night. And, by the door, old books piled high, for sale: the history books, the maps, the novels and poetry.

Now, you may say we have no need for reference books any more, now that we have the internet. Why go to a library (because you need to get out of the house! Because you will die if you stay in the house!) when you could just google something (because you have no computer! Because you are old, or poor, or in a valley where broadband does not venture!) instead?

Well, because a search engine will just show you what is most popular, rather than what is best. You, like a billion other googlers, will be herded to the footage of a shark biting a man, or the same shallow Wikipedia entry: we are all reading the same 10,000 words, walking the same paths, thinking the same thoughts, filtered through the single lens of Google.

We are approaching a mono-knowledge – diametrics herding us; migrations of thought, as unquestioning as a million dumb buffalo.

But do we need libraries to be clever? What is wrong with a room containing only light modern fiction about mercenaries or submissive sex? Can the working classes not have rooms of cheap pleasure?

What’s wrong is this: it will not survive.

If you take out the intelligence and knowledge from a library – if you take away the purpose, the usefulness, so that it is filled only with sugary treats – then when the next round of austerity cuts come in, that library will die.

No one will fight for it – no one can fight for a room like that. How could you argue to put money into that neutered, monosyllabic, intellectually sterile room when there are hospitals and schools?

This is a tactic we must all grow furious about. That when something cannot be axed straight away – because it is important, because it is loved, because people protest – that thing is then starved or bled until it is a weak, mutant ghost. Until no one wishes to defend it. Until no one can defend it, because all the words they could have learnt and used are now heaped up by the door, for sale.

Until, walking into that room again, 20 years later, you cry, “My God, my love, what have they done to you? What have they done to your brilliant, brilliant mind?”

Where I Work: Leigh Hodgkinson

This is the latest instalment in an occasional series of blogposts, in which some of our authors and illustrators share their favourite working spots. Today, Leigh Hodgkinson, author and illustrator of Goldilocks and Just the One Bear, Troll Swap, and the soon-to-be-published The Big Monster Snorebook, takes us inside her shed…

My commute to work is approximately 31 steps (or a few more if I have to circumnavigate the odd space hopper or rogue icky slug). I work in the shed at the bottom of the garden. It is bliss, but terribly messy. I keep meaning to tidy it and make it all wonderfully aspirational – but as I am the mother of two children that is just not possible. As every moment I have to work is incredibly precious and I need to make the most of every slice of time.

I have two desks in my shed. The one in the photo is where I do all my real life actual artwork – where I get to pretend I am a proper artist with inky paintily hands and find lovely jars to put brushes and pencils in.

There are two things I can never throw away, Bonne Maman jam jars, and Tate and Lyle Golden Syrup jars. They are things of great beauty and should be cherished. So on my desk are a gaggle of them. I am quite embarrassed about the state of the water in my paint jar. My little girl has taken to coming in to the shed to paint and draw while I work, and even she commented on it saying she couldn’t possibly clean brushes in that.

The jar of old Christmas nuts on the left of the photo, are waiting to have little faces painted onto them when I have time. The penny whistle in a jar is tooted loudly when I get frustrated about not being able to draw something the way I want it to look.

I love using things that have had a previous life, like every object has its own history and story. I got my 1950s formica table from a junk shop in London when I lived there. Its bright yellow top is such a happy colour, that even in the grey glooms of winter, the shed is warm and welcoming (assisted of course by the hard working little heater!) The chair I found on a street in London when I lived there. I painted it red and reupholstered it with a loud flowery 1970s polyester shirt that I got from a charity shop and wore as a student before I turned all sensible.

The other desk is where I do all my digital work… where I scan artwork in to tweak and polish and make it look like I want it to look. This is also where I write new stories and try and not to get distracted and overwhelmed by the internet. Around this desk is series of little string washing lines where I peg up things that inspire me. From a family portrait by my daughter and postcards of stuff to picture book dust jackets that I love and don’t want to get crinkled by my enthusiastic little boy.

I like to work quickly and only really draw things once. I hope that this is not due to laziness, but to do with the fact that I like the line and colour to feel alive and not all stale and overworked. I use a smorgasboard of techniques and materials that are around me (pen and ink/collage from homemade textures/crayon scribbles/ paint/ pencil). I find the combination of working freely at my messy desk and then digitally hopefully allows the work to maintain its energetic spirit. As the work I do digitally is to finalise colour and composition and of course erase the odd ink smudge where I wasn’t patient enough to wait for it to dry before scanning it in.

Thank you, Leigh! The Big Monster Snoreybook will be out in May – you can take a look inside the book below, or pre-order it online here.

Previously in the series: Helen Peters, Caryl Hart, Elys Dolan, G. R. Gemin, Olivia Tuffin, Benji Davies, Simon Puttock, Steven Lenton, Paula Harrison

8 Things We Learnt at the 2015 London Book Fair

The 2015 London Book Fair has just finished – three busy and exciting days of meetings, talks, seminars, parties and more – and here are eight things we learnt:

1. The biggest change that’s come about from the move from Earl’s Court to Olympia (to me at least) is that this year’s book fair was bathed in glorious natural light, thanks to Olympia’s marvellous glass roof. It made the most EXTRAORDINARY difference to the atmosphere inside.

2. Iceland has a population of just 300,000, but they buy a surprising number of children’s books.

3. The signature cocktail at the tequila bar was the aptly-named Tequila Mockingbird.

4. The newly-combined Penguin Random House stand is ENORMOUS.

5. One of the big theme’s of this year’s fair – in children’s publishing, at least – was diversity and inclusion. There were several well-attended events on the subject: on why children’s books should be inclusive, and how we can make them more so – and, from the looks of the #lbf15 hashtag, it seemed to be the subject on everyone’s lips.

6. Mary Berry, who officially opened this year’s fair, is incredibly glamorous in the flesh.

7. Gate-crashing other people’s drinks receptions at the end of the day seemed to be easier than ever.

8. I will leave the last word to literary agent Caroline Sheldon – there was no stopping these dinosaur beauties at the Nosy Crow stand:

NosyCrow</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/PennySDale">PennySDale No stopping these Dino beauties . They barge in everywhere. #LBF15 pic.twitter.com/oKehs5XDY5

— Caroline Sheldon (@CarolineAgent) April 16, 2015

My Brother is a Superhero is here!

Yesterday, while I was at the London Book Fair, some INCREDIBLE post arrived in the Crow’s Nest: the first beautiful finished copies of My Brother is a Superhero, the hilarious, laugh-out-loud debut by David Solomons. This is an EXTRAORDINARY book – very funny, truly gripping, and full of heart – and we are so thrilled and proud to be publishing it later this year.

Here’s the finished book in all it’s foiled glory:

We’ve got some very exciting plans for the book over the next few months (including a website and an INCREDIBLY addictive game app), and we’ll have lots to share in the run-up to publication in July. And soon we’ll be offering the chance to win a copy of the brilliant finished book! To be eligible, all you need to do for now is sign up to our books newsletter, and we’ll write to all of our subscribers soon.

In the meantime, here’s a look at the book’s opening two chapters:



And here’s an early review from one lucky reader who enjoyed the book so much that he filmed his response:

You can pre-order My Brother is a Superhero here – we can’t wait to share it with you!

Join in with next week's Nosy Crow reading group - we're discussing Journey and The Book With No Pictures

It’s the Nosy Crow Reading Group next week, and we’ll be discussing two rather unusual picture books – one without words (Journey, by Aaron Becker), and one without pictures (The Book With No Pictures, by B.J. Novak).

We’ll be meeting on Wednesday, April 22 at 6.30pm, here at the Nosy Crow offices – 10a Lant Street, London, SE1 1QR. Although there’s currently a waiting list for places for the physical event, if you’d like to still take part, please do join in online, either on Twitter with the #NCGKids hashtag, or in the comments section of this post.

We’ve prepared a few questions in advance to get everyone thinking – here’s some of what we might be talking about:

1) Which of these two books do you think has the greatest “re-read” potential?

2) Did you feel an “absence” in either of these books, or do you think they felt complete? Do you think the “missing” element would have added anything to either book?

3) How child-friendly do you think each book is?

4) How successfully do you think each book developed its narrative with only words or pictures?

5) Why do you think each Novak and Becker chose to tell their stories in this way?

Here’s a trailer for Journey:

And here’s a video of B.J. Novak reading from The Book With No Pictures:

You can buy The Book With No Pictures online from Waterstones here, and Journey here.

If you’d like to add your name to the waiting list for a place (or add your name to our mailing list for future reading group events), you can do so with the form below, or with this link.

Event registration for Nosy Crow Reading Group: Picture Books powered by Eventbrite

The Messy Monkey Business - three more stories of magical mayhem!

Next month we’re incredibly excited to be publishing Hubble Bubble: The Messy Monkey Business, written by Tracey Corderoy and illustrated by Joe Berger – three more stories of magical mayhem from the creators of the BRILLIANT Hubble Bubble picture book and illustrated fiction series. This time around, Granny gets the monkeys to paint the zoo, takes a wand-wielding toddler to a department store and builds the raft to end all rafts! Thank goodness Pandora’s there to sort things out…

These illustrated fiction Hubble Bubble books are PERFECT for newly-independent readers – the three stories in each book are just the right length to read on your own or together. Here’s a very first look inside The Messy Monkey Business:

Messy, funny and beautifully illustrated, these are laugh-out-loud stories from a dream team. The Messy Monkey Business will be out on May 7 – you can pre-order it online now, and if you’d like to be kept up to date with all of our book news, you can sign up to our books newsletter here.