Nosy Crow's Blog, page 170

Happy Hallowe'en from Nosy Crow!

Hallowe’en is here – and we have some FANTASTICALLY spooky books for all ages, with witches, magic, pumpkins, and monsters and galore. There’s something for everyone! If you’d like to celebrate with some excellent hallowe’en reading, here’s what you can find in bookshops today.

We’ve just published Witchworld by Emma Fischel – the first volume in an exciting new series for 9+ year olds. Flo is a thoroughly modern witch girl – she has a spell stick, travels in her sky rider, and wouldn’t know a cauldron if she fell into one. But when her grandmother turns up on an actual broomstick, warning that ghouls are about to attack Witchworld, Flo realises that everything she’s been told about being a witch is just hocus pocus – and she soon finds herself involved in a thrilling adventure where old witchcraft and modern witchtech collide, with dramatic results…

With an ingeniously imaginative story from Emma, stunning cover artwork from Ottoline creator Chris Riddell, and a brilliantly bewitching new heroine in Flo, this is a fabulous foray into fantastical fiction for older readers – Sabrina with a smartphone! The Times have named it their Children’s Book of the Week, and described it as “fresh and fun”.

Here’s a look inside Witchworld:



Buy the book online.

For younger readers, Vulgar the Viking and the Spooky School by Odin Redbeard would make the perfect Hallowe’en read. Vulgar can’t wait for the school trip, to learn all about hunting and exploring and having adventures. But after a very VERY long walk and a tea of roasted slugs, Vulgar’s not so chipper. It’s getting dark, and he’s a bit spooked. There are trolls in these hills…

Here’s a look inside the book:



Buy the book online.

And for newly independent readers with a thirst for magic and mayhem, Hubble Bubble: The Super-Spooky Fright Night – the third young fiction title from Tracey Corderoy and Joe Berger, the creators of the highly-acclaimed Hubble picture books – will go down a treat. In this collection of three illustrated stories, Granny’s halloween party goes off with a bang, a birthday trip to a build-a-teddy factory careers out of control, and well, you can probably guess who magics up penguins at the local swimming pool!

Here’s a look inside The Super-Spooky Fright Night:



Buy the book online.

And, of course, the Hubble Bubble picture books would make EQUALLY suitable Hallowe’en reading – if you’ve not discovered the series before, start with Hubble Bubble, Granny Trouble, the very first story all about the little girl whose granny is (whisper it) a witch.

Here’s a look inside Hubble Bubble, Granny Trouble:



Buy the book online.

For young children who are still new to school, you can’t go wrong with Mouse’s First Night at Moonlight School by Simon Puttock and Ali Pye, a sublimely illustrated and gently reassuring new picture book. It’s Mouse’s first day at Miss Moon’s Moonlight School for the wee, small creatures of the night – but she’s a little shy. Wherever can she be? Inside the paint pots? On the tops of cupboards? Under a pile of special leaves?

Here’s a look inside the book:



Buy the book online.

And for very little ones, Wickle Woo has a Halloween party! by Jannie Ho would be absolutely ticket-boo. Designed for the smallest of hands, with wonderfully satisfying tabs and sliders, this robust, colourful board book will delight little readers again and again. You can read about some of Jannie’s fantastic Wickle Woo craft activities (and learn how to make your own!) here.

Buy the book online.

And, don’t forget – there are some fantastically spooky hallowe’en jigsaws, with artwork from lots of our books an apps, in our free jigsaw app, Nosy Crow Jigsaws! Here’s a quick preview of the app:

Happy Hallowe’en from all of us at Nosy Crow!

There are only a couple of days left to help Nosy Crow win the O2 Smarta 100 Business of the Year Award

A little while ago (just as the Frankfurt Book Fair was beginning, in fact), we blogged that Nosy Crow had been named a Smarta 100 Winner… and that we needed your help.

We’re one of the 10 winners in the “Most Innovative Business” category – and the overall winner of each category, and the O2 Smarta 100 Business of the Year, is decided by public vote.

And now – while Will works on Snow White; Ola steadily ploughs through Frankfurt follow-up; Kate trudges round New York with 23 kilos of books in a suitcase; I’m in a studio recording our next iBooks and apps; and everyone else does all the stuff we do every day to make our small independent company a success – we are asking again for your vote – the polls close at the weekend.

If you haven’t already done so, please do consider voting for us – we’d be incredibly grateful for your support. It takes 30 seconds, and you can vote for Nosy Crow here.

(If you want to know how we’re doing, you can see the results of the most recent votes here.)

Thank you, in advance, from all of us!

Come to the November Nosy Crow Reading Group - we're reading Flora and Ulysses

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

In November we’ll be discussing the Newbery Medal-winning Flora and Ulysses by Kate DiCamillo, which Kirkus described as “original, touching and oh-so-funny”.

We’ll be meeting on Wednesday, November 19 at 6.30pm, here at the Nosy Crow offices – 10a Lant Street, London, SE1 1QR. If you’d like to come to the physical event at our office in London, send an email to tom at nosycrow dot com and we’ll try to fit in as many people as possible. If we can’t save a place for you this time, we can, if you’d like, keep you on our waiting list for cancellations and add you to our mailing list for future events.

You can order the book online from Waterstones here – and watch a trailer for the book at the top of this post.

If you can’t make it here, we’d love for you to join in online, either on Twitter with the #NCGKids hashtag, or in the comments section of our blog for the evening.

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

Baby Aliens Got My Teacher shortlisted for the Red House Children's Book Award!

Yesterday the shortlists for the Red House Children’s Book Awards were announced, and we were THRILLED to see Baby Aliens Got My Teacher, Pamela Butchart’s HILARIOUS fiction debut, shortlisted in the Young Readers category.

It’s a particularly exciting prize to be shortlisted for as it’s the only national book award that is entirely voted for by children – and voting is now open to decide the winners!

If you’ve read Baby Aliens Got My Teacher with your children, we’d be incredibly grateful for your support. Children (who’ll need permission from a parent and an adult’s email address if they’re under the age of 13) can vote for their favourite books here.

You can read the full shortlists for the prize here

And in case you’ve not discovered it yet, here’s the first chapter of Baby Aliens Got My Teacher:



You can buy the book online here.

The winners of the Red House Children’s Book Awards will be announced in early 2015 – congratulations, Pamela, and good luck!

There's one week left to apply for a Publishing Assistant position at Nosy Crow

There’s just one week left to apply for our Publishing Assistant vacancy at Nosy Crow!

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

The Publishing Assistant will work across the company, but primarily with the Rights Manager and Business Development Manager on Nosy Crow’s award-winning digital and foreign rights programmes. While the job is predominantly an administrative role, Nosy Crow is a fast-growing company with opportunities for career development.

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

• Will be able to demonstrate a strong interest in children’s books, in other cultures and languages, and in digital publishing and marketing

• Will be highly organised (and willing to do a lot of admin stuff), with great time management skills, and excellent attention to detail

• Will have perfect written and spoken communication skills in English, combined with an excellent grasp of arithmetic

• Will be a self-starter with lots of initiative who is ready to ‘muck in’

• Will have strong digital skills, an interest in various digital and social media channels, and be comfortable using content management systems

• Will be able to produce great copy, and will have some experience at writing – a blog, perhaps, or a student newspaper

• Although not essentially, ideally might have some foreign language skills

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

The closing date for applications is Sunday November 2nd at midnight (UK time).

We need your vote! Help Nosy Crow win the Smarta 100 Most Innovative Business Award by voting here.

Halloween Story Time and Crafts with Wickle Woo

Hello! Jannie Ho here, illustrator of the Tiny Tabs series. Lovely to be on the Nosy Crow blog! I’ve been celebrating the release of Wickle Woo Has a Halloween Party by coming up with fun crafts and treats related to the book.

First up, Wickle Woo treat bags! You can make your very own by downloading the free template here.

Next, there need to be treats in a Halloween celebration! I put round stickers on these lollipops to make them officially Wickle Woo lollipops.

I also wanted to make something else to hand out which was not candy related… so these square postcards with Halloween themed erasers did the trick.

I had the pleasure of hosting a Wickle Woo Storytime and book signing at my local children’s book shop called Blue Bunny Books. To top things off, my brilliant mother-in-law Carolyn made these Wickle Woo cookies. They are made out of gingerbread and taste as delicious as they look!

Wickle Woo and I wish everyone a Happy Halloween!

Thank you so much for sharing these amazing Wickle Woo treats, Jannie! You can buy Wickle Woo Has a Halloween Party online here – and for amazing craft activities like these ones, you can sign up to our books newsletter here. And don’t forget – there are now also halloween Wickle Woo jigsaws in our free Nosy Crow Jigsaws app! You can read more here.

Celebrate Halloween with super-spooky new jigsaws!

A couple of days ago we wrote about an upcoming update to our Nosy Crow Jigsaws app… and it’s now live on the App Store!

This update to our free jigsaw app contains some brand new Halloween jigsaws from books including Mouse’s First Night at Moonlight School and Wickle Woo has a Halloweeen party – perfect festive fun!

Here’s the trailer for Nosy Crow jigsaws:



Download it on the App Store.

And that’s not our ONLY app news. You can also find updates of our other story apps, including our award-winning fairy tale apps, on the App Store now, complete with new video previews on iOS 8 devices.

For app developers like us, video previews are really exciting new feature – they let you really see an app before you buy.

Here’s a look at all of our new video previews on Youtube:

If you’d like to be kept up to date with all of our app news (and be the first to see artwork from our upcoming Snow White app), you can subscribe to our apps mailing list here.

We need your vote! Help Nosy Crow win the Smarta 100 Most Innovative Business Award by voting here.

Take a look inside the fantastic sequel to The Secret Hen House Theatre

Proofs have just arrived for a FANTASTIC book that we’re publishing next February: The Farm Beneath the Water by Helen Peters, the sequel to the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize-shortlisted The Secret Hen House Theatre. And today, for the first time, you can read the opening chapters!

Hannah’s farm is facing a new threat – a water company wants to flood the land to make a reservoir. How can she stand by and watch as the land her family has farmed for generations, and the wildlife, all disappear under a deluge of water? Hannah won’t go down without a fight, and the school play might just be the answer… When the going gets tough, the tough take to the stage!

The book has all the same hallmarks as its predecessor: great writing and an emotionally engaging, entertaining narrative. It’s PERFECT for 9-12 year olds who love a brilliantly-told story.

Here’s a first look inside The Farm Beneath the Water:

You can pre-order the book today here – and if you’d like to be kept up to date with all of our book news, and find out as soon as The Farm Beneath the Water is in shops, you can sign up to our books newsletter here.

We need your vote! Help Nosy Crow win the Smarta 100 Most Innovative Business Award by voting here.

Nosy Crow Jigsaws is about to get even bigger

We’re about to release a special Hallowe’en update of our free Nosy Crow Jigsaws app, with LOTS of fantastic new artwork from some of our spookiest books – and to celebrate the app update, we’re giving away copies of some of our other apps!

To win ANY of our story apps, just download Nosy Crow Jigsaws for free from the App Store and let us know by email to tom@nosycrow.com your favourite puzzle in the app, and the story app you’d like to win. It couldn’t be easier!

Nosy Crow Jigsaws is a free-to-download jigsaw puzzle app, featuring over 200 jigsaws based on artwork from our award-winning apps and print picture books. It’s packed full of great features, which make it incredibly intuitive and unbelievably easy to use, and also a wonderfully satisfying, absorbing jigsaw experience – fun for the whole family!

You can choose the level of complexity for each jigsaw, from 4 to 300 pieces, using an intuitive slider that adjusts the difficulty level. There’s a “piece rotation” toggle, which allows you to start with jigsaw pieces randomly assorted or in the correct position. There’s a very easy-to-use “tray” to search through pieces as you work on your jigsaw. You can zoom in and out to explore detail in each jigsaw and see the whole picture. There are information pages at the end of every jigsaw – learn more about our books and apps and explore more of the picture with “Can you see” questions for young children. And there’s lot’s more! You can watch Ed demonstrate just a few of the great features in the app at the video at the top of this post.

We’ll pick the winners at random once the app update has been released. And if you’d like to be kept up to date with all of our app news (and find out as soon as the new, halloween edition of Nosy Crow Jigsaws has hit the App Store), you can subscribe to our apps mailing list here.

Nosy Crow on the Greenaway and Carnegie nomination lists

The nomination lists for the 2015 CILIP Carnegie and Kate Greenaway Medals – the UK’s oldest and most prestigious children’s book awards – have been released, and we were thrilled to see three Nosy Crow titles included!

Cowgirl, by G.R. Gemin, has been nominated for the Carnegie Medal, and Use Your Imagination, by Nicola O’Byrne, and Nuts in Space, by Elys Dolan, have both been nominated for the Kate Greenaway Medal.

The Kate Greenaway Medal was established in 1955, named after the popular nineteenth century artist, and is awarded annually for an outstanding book in terms of illustration for children and young people. The Carnegie Medal was established by in 1936, in memory of the great Scottish-born philanthropist, Andrew Carnegie, and is awarded annually to the writer of an outstanding book for children.

You can read the full list of titles nominated for the Carnegie medal here, and for the Kate Greenaway medal here.

Here’s the opening chapter of Cowgirl:



Buy the book.

Here’s a look inside Use Your Imagination:



Buy the book.

And here’s a look inside Nuts in Space:



Buy the book.

The winning titles will be announced at an awards ceremony in Summer 2015. Congratulations to Nicola, Elys, and G.R.!

We need your vote! Help Nosy Crow win the Smarta 100 Most Innovative Business Award by voting here.