Nosy Crow's Blog, page 182

Come and work for Nosy Crow: we're hiring a Rights and Digital Assistant

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 Rights and Digital Assistant on a full-time basis, working in our London office near London Bridge and starting in July 2014 (or sooner, actually, if you’re available).

The Digital and Rights Assistant will work with the Rights Executive and Digital Project and Marketing 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 have excellent written and spoken communication skills in English, combined with a good grasp of arithmetic

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

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

• Will have strong digital skills (some knowledge of HTML would count highly in your favour), an interest in various digital and social media channels, and be comfortable using content management systems

• Will have foreign language skills (the ability to speak, and ideally write, competently in at least one language other than English would count highly in your favour).

• Will have some experience of writing copy – a blog, perhaps, or a student newspaper

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 Friday 13 June (unlucky for some).

Fan mail for the Rescue Princesses

Today’s guest post is by Paula Harrison, author of the Rescue Princesses series, on receiving fan mail from around the world – and some frequently asked questions…

It’s always FANTASTIC to hear from children who’ve enjoyed reading The Rescue Princesses and when they’ve made the effort to write a letter that makes it extra special!

I’ve had letters from around the UK, USA, Ireland and an email from Australia! I have to “fess up” here and admit I’m a bit behind on answering, but that’s only because I’ve been finishing a new book. I shall be back on track with my replies very soon!

The first thing I LOVE about fan letters is the information I get about the readers. They don’t tell me their height or how good they are at times tables. None of the boring stuff adults focus on. They tell me what’s important to them such as their favourite colour, favourite animal and what pets they’ve got.

One girl writing from Hawaii said, “My favourite animal in Hawaii is the monk seal…I have brown eyes. My favourite color is silver.”

Some letters include the most amazing pictures, like this one drawn by a girl from Omaha. There’s no WAY I could draw as well as that at age seven (I still can’t draw as well as that!).

The second thing I love about the letters is the questions they ask. These provide a lovely insight into how these readers feel about the stories, what interests them and what they’re thinking. So in honour of all those letter writers out there, I’m going to answer some of the most common questions.

1. Why do you write?

Eek! This one really puts me on the spot! I’ve always been drawn to stories and one day I decided I wanted to have a go at writing my own. After that I practiced for a long time and learnt the skill of writing. I find it really fun!

2. What is your favourite animal?

I love elephants! They’re so intelligent and funny. I would have liked to have written a rescue adventure with an elephant in, but it was pointed out to me that it wouldn’t work well in the story. One day I SHALL write a book with an elephant in!

3. Do you have any pets?

We used to have two guinea pigs but sadly they grew old and died. One of my children has gerbils but they are really hers and I’m not allowed to interfere. They’re very inquisitive animals though – great to watch!

4. Where do you get your ideas from?

Ideas often pop into my head and it’s not always easy to tell where they’ve come from! To me, it’s all to do with brain soup (which is less gross than it sounds!). Imagine all the things you’ve ever done, all the things you’ve ever seen and all the things you’ve ever thought, all mixing up inside your head. This is brain soup! Sometimes the stuff in my head jumbles up perfectly to give me a new idea.

And one last thing! Lots and lots of children ask if I can make them a character in one of my stories. My answer to that is: look very carefully – you’re already there in the book!

Thank you, Paula! The final volume in the Rescue Princesses series, The Golden Shell, is out now – you can read the first chapter below, and buy the book online from Waterstones here.

Re-telling picture books

Last week the Nosy Crow Reading Group met to discuss three innovative picture books: Open Very Carefully, by Nicola O’Byrne with words by Nick Bromley, Press Here by Herve Tullet, and It’s a Book by Lane Smith.

A full round-up of the evening will be forthcoming, but in the meantime, I wanted to share one of the lovely, creative projects that has sprung from the group.

A teacher (and the author of this guest blog) at our neighbour, Charles Dickens Primary School, shared our chosen books with her year two class, and one student, Elizabeth (pictured above with Oliver) was so inspired that she decided to make her own version of Press Here… with a bit of a twist ending. Here (with many apologies for the terrible quality of the photographs) is Elizabeth’s story (press the arrows to scroll through the story):

If the blurriness of the photographs makes it difficult to read, Elizabeth’s Press Here (which builds upon the existing structure of Herve’s original Press Here with the inspired introduction of a character-building element) ends with (SPOILER ALERT) a crocodile entering the story…and eating its way through the pages! Does that sound familiar…?

I was VERY lucky to have Elizabeth read me the story herself and hearing it was a true joy – it shows such imagination and creativity, and the mash-up of Press Here and Open Very Carefully is, I think, very in keeping with the “books about books” theme around which our chosen titles were grouped. So thank you, Elizabeth and Oliver, for sharing your story with me!

I you’ve not seen Open Very Carefully before, here’s a look inside:

Buy the book online.

And here’s a trailer for Press Here:

If you’d like to join our monthly reading group, send an email to tom@nosycrow.com and we’ll add you to our mailing list to notify you about future events.

Readers review The Spy Who Loved School Dinners

We’ve had some lovely early reviews from young readers who were lucky enough to get their hands on early copies of The Spy Who Loved School Dinners, the superb sequel to Pamela Butchart’s hilarious fiction debut, Baby Aliens Got My Teacher.

If you’re looking for funny books for 6 – 9 year olds, these books are BRILLIANT. But don’t take our word for it – here’s what some of Pamela’s target audience made of them (click each image to enlarge):

And here’s a look inside The Spy Who Loved School Dinners:

The book won’t be out until July, but you can pre-order it online from Waterstones here.

And if you’d like to be kept up to date with news on Pamela’s books, and have the chance to win copies yourself, you can sign up to our books newsletter here.

Come and work for Nosy Crow: we're hiring a Designer

A few of the books that Kristina has worked on

We are very, very sad that we will be saying goodbye to our brilliant designer, Kristina Coates. She’s going to be a senior designer at Bloomsbury. She joined us in January 2012, having made such a stellar impact at her design assistant interview that we hired her on the spot. She’s been promoted several times while she’s been with us, and we really look forward to seeing what she does as her career progresses.

And that means that we have a fantastic opportunity for a highly creative, talented, hardworking and bright designer to join our design team at Nosy Crow. This is a full-time role and the successful applicant will be based in the London office of Nosy Crow in Borough (near London Bridge, Borough and Southwark tube stations, and 15 minutes’ walk from Waterloo).

Candidates will have a minimum of 3 years’ experience in graphic design, mostly if not exclusively in children’s publishing. Proficiency in Indesign, Photoshop and Illustrator programmes, excellent proven book design and typographic skills, and a love of children’s book illustration are essential, along with good written and spoken communication skills, and the ability to work to a deadline.

The successful candidate will manage illustrated book projects (currently picture books and novelty books, but who knows what we might do in future?) from initial layouts all the way through to production, supporting the illustrator or the author/illustrator throughout the creative process. The designer will report to the Head of Design but will work closely with other members of the Nosy Crow team, particularly the editorial staff, to produce child-focused, parent-friendly, high-quality books.

We are a small, close team here at The Crow’s Nest working in a friendly, highly creative and professional environment and we need a team player who is willing to muck in, particularly during busy times.

If you would like to apply for the role, please send a CV and application letter, along with digital samples of your design work, to Stephanie Amster via email (stephanie@nosycrow.com).

The closing date for applications is 6 June 2014.

Bedtime isn’t bedtime without a story

Today’s guest post is by Jon Duckworth, and is a response to Wednesday’s blog about bedtime reading.

Tom’s recent blog post reported on the new study from Booktrust that revealed the reluctance of young fathers to read to their children.

Of course, it’s hardly surprising that only 19% of 16-24 year-old fathers say they enjoy bedtime stories with their children. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) recently showed England to be among the stragglers in the great race for adult literacy. And adults who don’t (or can’t) read themselves aren’t very likely to put another rendition of “The Gruffalo” at the top of their priorities – especially when, as we all know, it can be stressful enough doing all the other things that need doing between the end of the school day and the switching on of the night-light.

Yet, however tempted I am to let off those fathers who lack confidence in reading, I can’t help but dwell on what they – and their offspring – are missing out on. Even so, it saddens me further to consider that there is another kind of reluctant bedtime story-teller out there. The man who thinks getting the children to bed is, somehow, “woman’s work”. It’s a myth that needs dispelling.

Studies have repeatedly shown that boys who are read to by their fathers often achieve higher levels of literacy. But, of course, if we did things simply because studies tell them they’re good for us, we’d have all stopped drinking, taken up badminton and switched to gluten-free wholemeal bread and Omega 3-enriched macrobiotic yoghurt by now.

So what are the other benefits of sharing a book at bedtime? I thought a list might appeal to any of the reluctant readers among you…

1. It’s a chance to flex your acting muscles

Reading aloud to (let’s face it) a pretty indulgent audience who are predisposed to hanging on your every word is fun. It gives you the opportunity to unleash your otherwise hidden thespian tendancies, employing your best funny voices to bring picture book characters to life. For instance, I have a particular voice for “The Tiger Who Came To Tea” (British Colonel in the last days of the Raj, if you want to know) and tend to impersonate Arthur Lowe for all the Mr Men books. Perhaps I get carried away sometimes. I’ve been told to tone down my witch and troll characters. They’re too too scary.

2. It’s education by stealth

The best books prompt questions and conversation. The pictures and words should fire the child’s imagination. Fifteen minutes before lights out might not be the ideal time for “Maisy Goes To The Museum” to trigger a lengthy discussion about space travel, Ancient Egypt and why a snail is incorrectly classified as an insect exhibit, but how lovely to think that all that wonderful information has been absorbed by their young minds just before they start dreaming.

3. It’s an opportunity to showcase your amazing personality

Harry de Quetteville makes this point far better than I could in his recent piece for The Telegraph (although we may take exception to his branding of reluctant readers as “idiots”). But to save you the time, I’ll summarise it thusly: bedtime story-time is a dad’s time to tell terrible dad jokes, be silly, make mischief and impart both your wisdom and your lack of it.

4. It could well be valuable research

I’ll ‘fess up. I’m an aspiring children’s writer. And that aspiration has come, in no small part, from the joy I experience sharing books with my daughters. Not only have I been able to rediscover favourites from my youth (Dr Seuss, John Burningham, Judith Kerr), I also get to enjoy the books that will go on to be their own fondly remembered favourites (Emma Chichester-Clark, Julia Donaldson, Tracey Corderoy, Caryl Hart). When my youngest daughter showed that she was less inclined to settle down for a bedtime story than her older sister by taking the book out of my hand and throwing it on the floor (not exactly “Farenheit 451”, I’ll grant you, but fairly shocking, even from a 1-and-a half year-old) I was worried that we had reared a non-book-lover (and, in which case, were we even related?). It turns out she just likes different kinds of books. Books with flaps to lift, pull-out bits, pop-up stuff. Books she can physically engage with. A particular hit is Bizzy Bear: Zoo Ranger. All that’s a long way of saying that reading to my children has opened my eyes both to the vast array of children’s books available and the very different children they appeal to. As a fledgling author of picture books, story-time is a valuable way of observing first-hand what works and what doesn’t.

5. It can be an oasis of calm

We’re all so busy. All the time. And that’s one of the main excuses given for not reading to our children. Yet, when some sado-masochist at the office decides to extend the working day by calling an “important” two-hour meeting at 4.30pm, I begin to worry that I won’t get home in time to see the kids to bed. And it’s something I hate to miss. The simple reason is that bedtime story-time is our time (if I might get all “The Goonies” about it). Cosy, snuggled up, pyjama-clad (the grown-ups too, all being well), it provides a rare moment of calm tranquility in a life that is frequently harried. It’s quiet, reassuring, intimate. It helps the children sleep (once the requests for “one more story…” have abated). It makes them feel loved and safe. Our most savage and primitive tribal ancestors knew the value of bedtime stories told around campfires. Why don’t we?

As a father I like nothing better than sharing a book with my children. Should they still require an impromptu reading of Goldilocks and Just the One Bear when they’re 28 I’d be happy to oblige.

Since becoming a father I seem to spend an increasingly large percentage of my non-work life either riding on miniature railways or reading “I Love You, Blue Kangaroo”.

I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Thank you, Jon, for sharing your experience of bedtime reading! If you’d like to contribute to our blog with your thoughts on the subject, please get in touch! We’d love to hear from you – email tom@nosycrow.com.

A thoroughly modern Witch...

This September we’re launching an exciting new series for 9+ year olds, Witchworld, by Emma Fischel – and today you can read the opening chapters for the first time!

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!

Here’s a very first look inside Witchworld:

And you can pre-order the book from Waterstones now.

If you’d like to be kept up to date with news on Witchworld, and find out about exclusive competitions to win the book and other prizes, you can sign up to our books newsletter here.

Bedtime reading

A new study from Booktrust has revealed that only 19% of 16-24 year-old fathers say they enjoy reading at bedtime with their children, and, while this may not be quite the national disaster that some coverage of the study is making it out to be (the 81% of 16 – 24 year old fathers who don’t enjoy reading actually represent a relatively small figure overall), there’s also been countless pieces of research into why bedtime reading is a valuable exercise, and so it’s clearly a number that could do with some improving.

Booktrust have provided some really great suggestions for bedtime reading on their website, and in the past we’ve written about some of our favourite books about bedtime.

But we do also recognise that it’s not always possible, for whatever reason, for parents to read to their children every night, which is why we’ve launched programmes like Stories Aloud, which provides free digital audio readings for each of our paperback picture books (along with music and sound effects), giving young children another way of having stories read aloud to them.

And if you find reading to your children at bedtime challenging, we’d love to hear from you. Do you read to your children every night, or every week, or every month? Have you found ways of making it easier? Are there particular sorts of stories that you and your children enjoy at bedtime? Have you adjusted your schedule in order to make sure it happens? What’s worked well for you? Do share your thoughts in the comments below, on Twitter, or – if you’d like – with a guest blog (just email tom@nosycrow.com if you’d like to write one) on your own experience.

Nosy Crow is highly commended in the Independent Publisher of the Year category of The Bookseller Industry Awards

Last night, Axel Scheffler, Catherine Stokes from Bounce, Camilla, Adrian and I went to The Book Industry Awards at the London Hilton Hotel. It’s a fairly swanky bash, actually, particularly for those of us whose work attire these days is a tiny step up from pyjamas: an evening-dress dinner for hundreds and hundreds of publishers, booksellers, agents, librarians, authors and illustrators. This year Mariella Frostrup (funny, relevant to the industry, beautiful and tiny) compered.

We were highly commended in the “exceptionally closely fought” Independent Publisher of the Year category. The judges said, “Nosy Crow had another year of huge sales growth and digital innovation cementing its place as one of the most notable start-ups of recent years. This was the year it established itself as a trusted publishing brand”. They described our achievements as “awe-inspiring”. The category was won by Canongate, where I happened to start my career 28 years ago. For Nosy Crow to be highly commended after just three years of publishing is really great. It’s a terrific tribute to the Nosy Crow team, our authors and illustrators, and the support of our UK and international customers. And the judges don’t mess about: there were 22 awards, and only one other highly commended and a single pair of joint winners.

Frankly, I’d be even more chipper about the whole thing if I hadn’t thought for a minute (and, to be fair, this misapprehension was shared by other people too) that we had won the award, and so I began to stagger, astonished, with no speech prepared, to the stage. When the fact that Canongate had actually won the award was announced, I had to drop swiftly to the floor and commando crawl across the front of the ballroom in my long dress and heels to an empty seat at a table next to the stage, and then grin and clap like crazy to try to suggest that I’d just wanted a front-row view of Canongate’s managing director accepting the prize. The subsequent commiseration of friends and a big glass of white wine only partly cooled the combined heat of shame and carpet-burns.

We were also shortlisted for the Children’s Publisher of the Year Award. Given our scale and youth, just being shortlisted was terrific: the other publishers on the list – HarperCollins (who won), Penguin, Dorling Kindersley, Egmont, Scholastic, Simon and Schuster, Usborne and Walker Books – are all hugely bigger and decades older than we are.

I spent last weekend in my home city, Edinburgh, so perhaps my antennae were particularly attuned, but it was good to see three organisations with close ties to that city as winners: Canongate, The Edinburgh Bookshop and Midlothian Library Service.

In an event that’s always dominated by adult books, this was also a pretty good year for children’s books as well as our high commendation, Vineeta Gupta and Zosia Knopp work exclusively on books for children, Pan Macmillan’s prize was for their publication of Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler’s picture books and Midlothian Library Service’s children’s events programme was key to their win.

The full list of the 23 winners is here:

Young Retailer of the Year: Rachael Wing, The Wallingford Bookshop

Editor of the Year: Helen Conford, Penguin Press (and Vineeta Gupta of Oxford University Press was highly commended)

Manager of the Year: Paul Thornton, Blackwell’s Bookshop

Rights Professional of the Year (joint winners) Andrea Joyce, Canongate Books and Zosia Knopp, Penguin

Literary Agent of the Year: Caroline Dawnay of United Agents

Independent Bookshop of the year: Dulwich Books, London

Library of the Year: Midlothian Library Service

Children’s Bookseller of the Year: The Edinburgh Bookshop

The BA Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Book Trade: Dame Gail Rebuck for the marketing campaign, Books Are My Bag

Publicity Campaign of the Year: Ben Willis, Headline for The Silent Wife

Supply Chain Innovation Award: NetGalley

Marketing Strategy of the Year: Gone Girl, Orion Publishing Group

Digital Strategy of the Year: Faber & Faber

E-Book Retailer of the Year: e-books by Sainsbury’s

Academic, Educational and Professional Publisher of the Year: Bloomsbury Academic & Professional

Independent Academic, Educational and Professional Publisher of the Year: Edward Elgar Publishing (and Bright Red Publishing was Highly Commended)

Imprint of the Year: Jonathan Cape, Penguin Random House

Children’s Publisher of the Year: HarperCollins

Independent Publisher of the Year: Canongate (and Nosy Crow was highly commended)

The Bookseller Special Award: Pan Macmillan for sales of The Gruffalo and other books by Axel Scheffler and Julia Donaldson (It was cheering to see this, given all my years at both Macmillan Children’s Books and Scholastic spent publishing Axel and Julia, and huge congratulations go to them, of course, for making the books in the first place.)

Book Retailer of the Year: Blackwell’s

Publisher of the Year: Little, Brown Book Group

Congratulations to the winners, and a mix of congratulations and commiserations to the shortlisted individuals and organisations. And thanks to the event organisers,The Bookseller, whose take on the event you can read here.

Join in with our Books About Books reading group this week!

This month’s Nosy Crow Reading Group is taking place on Thursday, and we’d love for you to join in!

If you missed our previous posts, the theme for this month is “books about books”, and we have a trio of excellent picture books to discuss that fit the bill: It’s a Book by Lane Smith, Press Here by Herve Tullet, and Open Very Carefully, illustrated by Nicola O’Byrne with words by Nick Bromley. As usual, we’ve prepared a few questions in advance to get everyone thinking – here’s some of what we might be talking about:

1) A theme of all three of these texts is “the book as physical object”. How effectively do you think each book takes advantage of the physical format?

2) Do these books sacrifice “story” at the expense of the book-about-a-book meta-conceit? Do you think this matters?

3) Who do you think the intended reader is for each of these books?

4) How present is the authorial voice in each text? Do you think the texts interact successfully with the artwork?

5) All three books rely on a striking degree of repeating imagery. What effect do you think this has?

Places for the physical event have now all gone, but we hope you’ll be able to join us online, if you’d like – you can leave your comments underneath this blogpost, or join us on the night on Twitter from 6.30pm with the #NCGKids hashtag.

Here’s a trailer for It’s A Book:

Here’s a trailer for Press Here:

And here’s a look inside Open Very Carefully:

We hope you can join us!