Nosy Crow's Blog, page 184

Win some exclusive Jack and the Beanstalk postcards!

To celebrate the release of our Jack and the Beanstalk app we made some rather stylish postcard books featuring artwork from the app, and they’ve proven to be so popular that we’re running another competition to win some!

If you’d like a set, all you have to do to enter is subscribe to our apps mailing list (if you’ve already subscribed you’re still eligible for this competition) and send an email to tom@nosycrow.com with “Postcard competition” in the subject heading.

There are twenty different postcards in each pack – they’re A6-size and come in a fetching, Nosy Crow-red card wallet – and we have 10 sets to give away. Here’s just some of the artwork featured in the postcard sets:

Here’s the trailer for Jack and the Beanstalk:

And you can download the app here – if you like the app, we’d be incredibly grateful if you’d consider leaving a review on the App Store.

The competition is open to all UK and Ireland residents, and we’ll email winners next week. Good luck!

Saving Sophia

This July we’re publishing an incredible new novel for 9+ year olds from Fleur Hitchcock, author of the highly-acclaimed Dear Scarlett – Saving Sophia, an action-packed novel about friendship and searching for the truth. And today, you can read the first three chapters!

All Lottie wants to do is have adventures, but no such luck. Until she meets Sophia, a girl with an intriguingly mysterious history. When the two run away from a staged kayak accident to find Sophia’s mum, Lottie learns a lot about having adventures (they’re mostly brilliant but not the bits where you nearly die).

Here’s a sneak preview inside:

You can pre-order Saving Sophia online from Waterstones here.

And if you’d like to stay up to date with all our book news, details of competitions and giveaways, interviews with our authors and illustrators, and lots more, you can sign up to our monthly books newsletter here.

Celebrate Spring with Rounds: Franklin Frog - on sale now!

Spring is in the air, and frogspawn is in the water, and we’re celebrating with a price drop for our Rounds: Franklin Frog app! For one week only, the app will be on sale for just 99¢ (69p) on the App Store.

A fantastic mix of story and non-fiction, Rounds: Franklin Frog follows the life cycle of a frog through three generations, with a highly innovative, looping narrative, a unique, graphic illustration style, lots of interactivity, original animation, music, and children’s voices, and dozens of interesting facts about frogs – did you know that frogs chew by pressing food against the back of their eyeballs with their tongues?

Join in with every stage of a frog’s life – jump, swim, catch flies, avoid predators, find a place to hibernate, croak to attract a mate, lay eggs, hatch, and transform from a tadpole into a frog – and then start from the beginning again! It’s absolutely perfect for 3+ year olds, with easy, intuitive interactivity, lots of helpful dialogue and hints, and a great introduction to biology and life sciences, at home or in the classroom.

You can watch the trailer for the app below:

And you can download Franklin Frog from the App Store for 99¢/ 69p here.

The app will be on sale until Wednesday, April 30 – don’t miss out! And if you enjoy Franklin Frog, you might also like the other app in the series, Rounds: Parker Penguin – learn all about Penguins and the Antarctic! You can find it on the App Store here.

And if you’d like to keep up to date with all of our app news, you can sign up to our Apps Mailing List here, and we’ll let you know whenever there’s a new app, price promotion, or special offer.

We hope you have fun with Franklin Frog!

Win copies of our May titles!

Next month’s new books from Nosy Crow are a very circle-of-life sort of affair – we have two brilliant series drawing to a close, but also an exciting new sequence of novels launching, a brand new picture book series, and new paperback editions of some FANTASTIC existing titles. And so, with Spring truly in the air, it’s time for our monthly books giveaway! If you’re a resident of the UK or Ireland, you can win any of our May releases simply by subscribing to our Books Newsletter and sending us an email with the book you’d like to win. Here’s what’s up for grabs…

You can win Toddler Time: Big Book of Fun by Katie Saunders – capturing all the fun of a toddler’s busy world, this is ideal for dipping into and sharing with pre-schoolers who are ever eager to explore, learn and, of course, have loads of fun! Packed with activities, things to spot and stories to enjoy, this brilliant, bright book helps build essential skills. Here’s a look inside:

We’re publishing the first paperback edition of Princes Penelope and the Runaway Kitten by Alison Murray – a tactile treat of a picture book with glitter on every page! Follow Princess Penelope as she runs through the palace and the palace grounds, including a maze, garden and the royal stables, chasing her naughty runaway kitten – the kitten is all tangled up with wool, which makes a crazy pink glitter trail of shapes behind her as she leaps and jumps through the book. Here’s a look inside:

The Rescue Princesses: The Golden Shell will be out next month – the twelfth and final volume in Paula Harrison’s fantastic Rescue Princesses series, a great introduction to independent reading for 6+ year olds, featuring brave princesses, ninja skills, and animal rescue. This time around, Princess Ella is pretty nervous about starting school, but then she meets some lovely Rescue Princessses, and even has a baby rabbit, Daisy, as a pet! But things take a troubling turn when Daisy goes missing, and Princess Ella’s ninja moves come in very handy… Here’s the first chapter:

And May will also see the conclusion of another great series for early independent readers, Space Pirates: Treasure!, the final volume in the Space Pirates series by Jim Ladd. Sam and his Space Pirate friends have found Planet X (at last)! Now they just have to rescue Sam’s parents and carry off all the lovely treasure. But it’s not that simple. Not when Black-hole Beard is right behind them… A fast-paced, funny series with gags galore, this is a chase through space that will have you cackling from start to finish! Here’s the first chapter:

If you know someone who’s finished the Rescue Princesses series and is looking for something to move onto, Maya’s Secret might be just the thing – the first book in a brand new series by best-selling author Holly Webb. How do you save the planet when your parents have a private jet and couldn’t live without their outdoor swimming pool? And what if you really want to be a vegetarian but you love bacon sandwiches sooo much? Holly explores these questions and MUCH more in this fantastic new sequence of books about four friends who want to make the world a better place – entertaining, inspirational and ideal for 8+ year olds. Here’s the first chapter of May’s Secret:

And here’s a further excerpt:

And finally, you could win the paperback edition of The Grunts all at Sea by Philip Ardagh and Axel Scheffler – the second book in the hilarious Grunts series. Mr Grunt has become a man with a mission. He has to get a Person of Great Importance (or POGI) to someone called Mrs Bayliss by the twenty-fifth. Alive and well. And he can’t tell anyone more than that, not even his lovely wife, Mrs Grunt, because there will be people trying to snatch the POGI and so the POGI must be transported in secret. It’s an exciting adventure, but what interests Mr Grunt most are the silver coins he’s been promised at the end of it. Here’s the first chapter:

To win one 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@nosycrow.com with “Newsletter competition” in the subject heading and the title of the book you’d like to win 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 week.

The Children’s Bookshops of Bangalore

Today’s guest post is by Maegan Dobson Sippy, on the children’s bookshops of Bangalore. The picture above is of Lightroom Bookstore.

“Use it or Lose it” Nosy Crow tweeted, in response to a sobering report in The Bookseller that the number of indie bookshops in the UK had dipped below 1000 for the first time since records began.

The tweet popped onto my newsfeed just as I was researching and writing a piece about the vibrancy of the literary scene in Bangalore, my home for the last two years. Why was it, I wondered, that the trend in South India is of openings, while back in the UK each month seems to bring news of another bookshop closing its doors?

Although I worked in an indie bookshop in a small English market town before coming to India, my absence from my home country for the last four years has meant that I’ve only been able to keep track of UK developments online and through occasional visits. Here in Bangalore, though, I’ve watched as not just one but three bookshops specifically for children have opened in the city over the last eighteen months.

Just over a year ago Bookalore launched, with the aim of filling the gap that exists between the child and the book, and allowing children to encounter books in new and exciting ways. The idea was to achieve this through monthly events at various locations across the city. Using a book as the inspiration for each event, they’ve since had activities spanning storytelling, craft, art, creative writing and music.

Soon after launching their programme, they realised that parents and children wanted the opportunity to purchase not just the books that had been directly explored in events, but a far wider range of reading material. So emerged Funky Rainbow, a bookshop that travels with Bookalore to its events around the city, run by members of the Bookalore team. They exclusively stock books by Indian writers, believing that these books work best for Indian children in terms of connections and experiences. It’s the first time I’ve known a bookshop to emerge from an events programme, rather than the other way around.

Some of the Funky Rainbow team

A few months later came Lightroom Bookstore, tucked away on a largely residential street near to the centre of town. At the opening I was genuinely stunned by the mass of customers and well-wishers who’d turned out to mark the beginning of a space devoted entirely to children’s literature.

Lightroom Bookstore

Unable to fight my way through the crowd on that first hectic day, I fell in love on later, more peaceful, visits, when I was able to savour the beautifully designed space, and to fully appreciate the love and knowledge that had gone into the curating the selection of books. As far as I am aware, they are the only Indian stockists of books by experimental international publishers such as One Stroke from Japan and Italy’s Corraini Edizioni.

Kutoohala has been the most recent addition to the children’s book map in Bangalore, opening its doors for the first time six months ago. Meaning curiosity in Hindi, the space in South Bangalore aims to bring together a collection of books that nurture creativity, social and emotional development, problem solving and a host of other skills.

Kutoohala

The shop is made up largely of books, but environmentally friendly and educational games – largely with an Indian context – also find space. Unlike Lightroom, there is also a section devoted to used books. They seem to have sourced these internationally, and they are priced extremely reasonably, making it an inexpensive way to pick up picture books from that aren’t usually available in India.

What they’ve become best known for, though, is their programme of events both for children and their parents. These are not strictly book-focused, and have included healthy eating sessions, art classes and science workshops. Next month, during the long summer holiday, they’re holding a five day programme which allows children to put together their own magazine, in collaboration with some of the Bookalore team.

While each of these bookshops has its own personality and specific purpose, all of them offer something above and beyond being a conventional “shop”. In the space of a year they’ve all developed event programmes, identified their niche, and generally bedded into their local communities. In a way, what they seem to be doing is giving their customers a whole range of different ways to use them. I hope against hope that this means Bangalore doesn’t ever lose them.

Thank you for sharing this fascinating trend, Maegan! If you’re interested in learning more about children’s bookshops in Bangalore, you can find Maegan on Twitter here and Tumblr here.

12 of the best books with bunnies

Just in time for Easter, we’ve been thinking about our favourite books featuring bunnies – a highly populated field, it transpires. We’ve been rather strict in our criteria (no hares – sorry) and even so, this list could have been twice as long (let us know the rabbits that you think merit inclusion in the comments below). And without further ado, here’s our selection:

The Tale of Peter Rabbit, Beatrix Potter



The most famous fictional rabbit of them all – no list could be complete without Beatrix Potter’s Peter, who over-eats in Mr. McGregor’s garden, and is put to bed with chamomile tea.

Little Grey Rabbit, Alison Uttley and Margaret Tempest



Another classic of children’s literature, Little Grey Rabbit was Adrian and Mary’s immediate choice.

Watership Down, Richard Adams



An ambitious and epic adventure novel, the story of Hazel, Fiver and Bigwig features, I think it is fair to say, the most traditionally heroic rabbits on this list.

I Want My Hat Back, Jon Klassen



The villain of Klassen’s modern picture book classic is a Very Bad Rabbit. With almost no words at all and an incredibly minimal art style, Klassen manages to convey so much – deception, guilt, realisation, anger, retribution: an entire dramatic arc in little more than the direction of a gaze and the colour of type.

Little Rabbit Foo Foo, Michael Rosen and Arthur Robins



Little Rabbit Foo Foo is another Bad Rabbit. The thing I love most about this book is the way in which it wonderfully, mischievously confounds expectations: Foo Foo is warned, and warned, and warned again to stop bopping other animals on the head… and in a lesser book, this is what he would do, along with a suitable dose of contrition and a heavy moral lesson. Here, though, he does not, and the Good Fairy delivers on her threat, with spectacularly funny consequences.

Poo Bum, Stephanie Blake



Another modernist masterpiece – even more minimalist than I Want My Hat Back. Funny, surreal, brilliance, which will appeal to adults and children alike.

Pip and Posy, Axel Scheffler



Pip the rabbit is one half of this pair of best friends in the best-selling series by illustrator Axel Scheffler. Together they’ve got up to all sorts of adventures – filled with gentle humour, the books are wonderful reflections of day-to-day toddler life.

Use Your Imagination, Nicola O’Byrne



Nicola O’Byrne’s follow-up to the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize-winning Open Very Carefully features a bored rabbit who finds himself stuck with a wolf, who calls himself a librarian and takes an unhealthy level of interest in amusing rabbit with a story. But what story will they find themselves in? This is another brilliantly imaginative picture book about storytelling – it won’t be published until August, but you can pre-order it online here.

A Lullaby for Little One, Dawn Casey and Charles Fuge



At the end of a lovely, fun-filled day, there’s time for just one last game for Little Bunny and Big Daddy Rabbit and their woodland friends. But when Little Bunny gets tired and it becomes too much of a hullabaloo, Big Daddy Rabbit knows that a special lullabaloo lullaby is exactly what’s needed. This beautifully lyrical lullaby illustrated by internationally acclaimed artist Charles Fuge will be published next year – you can pre-order it online here..

Toot Goes to Dinosaurland, Catherine and Laurence Anholt



An adorably inquisitive new character from a much-loved picture book team. Toot’s little car has a most unusual feature – it has a magical sat nav system! So, when he presses the special button, off he zooms on an adventure with his trusty toy puppy for company. But where will he go first? To Dinosaurland, of course! You can buy it online here.

Bunny Boo has lost her teddy!, Jannie Ho



It’s bedtime for Bunny Boo, but where is her teddy? In the toy box? On the bookshelves? In the laundry room? Designed for the smallest of hands, and with chunky tabs for little hands to push and pull, this robust, colourful board book will delight baby readers again and again – you can buy it online here.

What are your favourite books with bunnies? Please do add your suggestions below – and Happy Easter!

Come to the May Nosy Crow Reading Group!

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

Every month we meet and discuss new and interesting children’s books over a glass of wine – it’s lots of fun. In May, we’ll be discussing a trio of fantastic picture books… with, appropriately enough, the unifying theme of “books about books” (or, as one member of last month’s group pithily described them, “meta-books”).

We’ll be talking about It’s a Book, by Lane Smith – a story which Smith himself describes, rather straightforwardly, as being “about a book loving monkey, a tech savvy jackass and a straight talking little mouse.” But is that really all it’s about? Here’s a trailer:

And you can buy the book online here.

We’ll also be looking at one of our own titles: the recent winner in the picture book category of the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize, Open Very Carefully, illustrated by Nicola O’Byrne with words by Nick Bromley. A crocodile has ended up in totally the wrong story, and his attempts to escape – by eating his way through the pages – make this a fantastic book for sharing and discussing how words and pictures work. Here’s a look inside:

You can buy Open Very Carefully online here.

And finally, we’ll be discussing Press Here, by Herve Tullet – a truly unique picture book about the power of imagination and interactivity. Here’s a trailer:

Press Here is currently only available at a hardback price of £9.99, but we’ve got a limited number of copies for sale for £6.99. If you’d like to come to this month’s book group, you can buy a copy from us in person at any point before the event (just email tom@nosycrow.com for more details) – or, if you’ve come to the book group before, we can post you a copy and you can pay us on the night.

The group will be taking place here at the Nosy Crow offices – 10a Lant Street, London, SE1 1QR – on Thursday, May 15 at 6.30pm. If you’d like to come to the physical event at our office in London, send an email to tom@nosycrow.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.

And 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!

Oscar’s First Book Prize

Two Nosy Crow picture books have been longlisted for a new book prize established by the Evening Standard in memory of the son of City editor James Ashton, who died suddenly at the age of three.

Weasels, by Elys Dolan, and Open Very Carefully, illustrated by Nicola O’Byrne with words by Nick Bromley (and recent winner of the picture book category of the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize), are both in the running for Oscar’s First Book Prize, which will reward “the most magical book for pre-school children”. Judges include former Pearson CEO Dame Marjorie Scardino, and the winning book will be awarded £5000.

You can take a look inside Weasels below:



Buy the book online.

And here’s a look inside Open Very Carefully:



Buy the book online.

You can read the full longlist here – good luck to Elys, Nicola and Nick!

Growing up with Nosy Crow - a guest post by Sarah Giddings

Today’s guest post is by Sarah Giddings, a parent who got in touch with us to share her experience of reading Nosy Crow books with her new baby.

My husband and I have always been enthusiastic readers. When we decided to have a baby, we knew we had some book shopping to do. By the day our son was born he already had a large collection of books waiting for him. We started reading to him on his first day home from the hospital. To get him started we showed him high contrast black and white images, which he was fascinated by. We looked forward to the day when he would begin interacting with books as he got older.

We found our first Nosy Crow book at our local independent book store, The Avid Reader Magazines and Books in Cobourg, Ontario (Canada). It was Bizzy Bear: Fire Rescue. We choose this title because it looked like it would be a lot of fun to read with him, and it it was a very well constructed book.

Around the 8 month mark, he started really taking an interest in this book. Because it was so durable, there was no concern that he would damage the book (as a book lover, it pains me to see him tear or bend pages of his other books). The older he gets, the more he can interact with the features, such as pulling back the flaps, turning the wheel, and pushing Bizzy Bear up and down the fire pole.

We started buying more Nosy Crow titles and he loves them all. The Teeny Weeny looks for his mummy! book is another big hit. They are by far his favourite books, and he stays engaged through multiple readings of the same books each time we sit down to read (and sometimes gets grumpy if I try to read him something else!). He is always surprised and delighted to see what is behind the flaps and slides. These books are really helping his vocabulary develop – he now knows what I mean when I say “up and down” and can demonstrate this by pushing Bizzy Bear up and down the fire pole. In Bizzy Bear: Fun on the Farm, he is able to recognize several of the animals, and it is fun for him to find the familiar animals on each page. After months of use, the books all still look brand new which is something we really appreciate. The books have a simple and fun rhyme scheme and very detailed, colourful pictures.

We look forward to exploring the whole Nosy Crow library as he gets older.

Thank you, Sarah! Bizzy Bear: Fire Rescue is available to buy online here and Teeny Weeny looks for his mummy! available here. If you’d like to stay up to date with all of our book news, you can subscribe to our monthly books newsletter here.

Familiarity with fairy tales: using Jack and the Beanstalk in KS1

Today’s guest post is by Lucy Marcovitch, an education consultant and writer who blogs about writing and children’s literature at www.lucymarcovitch.wordpress.com, on using our Jack and the Beanstalk app in the classroom.

Can there be any new ways to teach fairy tales in the classroom? The answer, with Nosy Crow’s Jack and the Beanstalk app, is: absolutely. And what a lovely innovative way it is too, lending itself to a whole range of teaching possibilities that go beyond straightforward storytelling.

On the face of it, Jack and the Beanstalk is an attractive, interactive re-telling of the fairytale. That in itself would qualify its use against the 2014 National Curriculum for KS1, which requires a familiarity with fairytales in its reading – comprehension strand. A younger or less able reader could choose to have the text read to them and words highlighted, while still interacting through swiping or touching the clearly-signposted ways through the story. A more able reader could read the text to themselves, an adult, or other children. The app’s versatility means it could be used for whole-class teaching displayed on a whiteboard, in small groups on tablets for guided reading, or for paired and individual work for a more personal experience.

Jack has other tricks up its sleeve, however, which takes it into a whole other realm of teaching opportunities. For example, you don’t have to proceed through the story in a linear way if you choose to do otherwise. By using the screen that gives a graphic overview of the story, you can enter different rooms in the giant’s castle and make various choices, solve puzzles or play games within those rooms. If you make particular choices, the story might end very differently – wake the giant up when you steal his gold coins or the goose who lays the golden eggs, and you’ll be chased from the castle and have to do some quick thinking at the bottom of the beanstalk. Each child could end up with their own individual version of the story, which they could use to re-tell the fairytale as their own version of the story.

Alternatively, you could develop inference and prediction skills with older or more advanced readers, by doing some careful questioning of each screen. What might happen if you wake up the giant? What will you do if he wakes? What could be behind that door? Or you could comment on one another’s progress through the story, based on what you already know, both of the story and of fairytales in general: if your friend takes Jack into that room, what do you predict might happen?

New research published by the National Literacy Trust in conjunction with Pearson (March 10th 2014) has found that children from more disadvantaged backgrounds are less likely to perform below the expected reading standard for their age if they look at stories using books and touch screens, rather than using books alone. The research also found that children from all backgrounds are more likely to enjoy reading if they use both books and a touch screen to look at stories. Using an app such as Jack and the Beanstalk as another way into teaching fairytales could therefore provide not just an opportunity to teach about texts, but another way to lay the foundations for reading enjoyment.

Jack and the Beanstalk is available on the App Store here, and you can watch the trailer below. If you’d like to stay up to date with all of our app news, you can sign up to our Apps Mailing List here.