Nosy Crow's Blog, page 185

Where I Work: Benji Davies

This is the latest instalment in an occasional series of blogposts, in which some of our authors and illustrators share their favourite spots for work. Today Bizzy Bear illustrator Benji Davies takes us inside his studio…

This is my studio – I’m fairly new here. Six months in and I’ve still not managed to put any shelves up or hang any pictures on the walls. Just left of this photo are stacks and stacks of books, other people’s work, vintage and new, waiting for their new home to be completed.

Before I was in a large open plan space, where I lived and worked, with a distracting lounge and kitchen all around me and my studio. But no longer. The new studio is more compact but more peaceful and hopefully more productive. Time will tell.

It’s still part of my home though and tea-making is a staircase away. I live with my wife who is a fashion designer. Her studio is downstairs so its very much a live-work house and we get to meet by the kettle.

The plan chest is off ebay and was supposed to be a way of cataloguing old work neatly but quickly became more of a stuff-it-and-see system. The key to a good working space for me is to keep things simple and efficient, or at least fool myself into thinking they are.

Two desks; one for digital the other for real pencils, paper and paint. The square one, my iMac atop, is my dad’s old family kitchen table which he ate around as a boy and still has meat-mincer clamp marks under the table top edge where my gran used it for cooking. It has a great cutlery drawer with a brass handle where I stash all my ink cartridges and other stationery nick-nacks. On the right, an industrial sewing machine frame that I salvaged from my wife’s old studio, makes my drawing desk. I stripped all the cabling and fittings and had a new top made, but kept the lamp and rewired it. But I need a better chair – the inherited Ercol is not so ergonomic.

The room itself is a simple white box so its nice to surround myself with objects that have a bit of history. I would hate everything to be shiny and brand new (except the technology). I think the familiarity instantly grounds me to the space and my work, and I settled much faster when I moved.

The two latest volumes in the Bizzy Bear series, Zoo Ranger and Knights’ Castle, are out now – you can buy Zoo Ranger online here and Knights’ Castle here.

Previously in the series: Helen Peters, Caryl Hart, Elys Dolan, G. R. Gemin, Olivia Tuffin

The Nosy Crow Reading Group verdict on Rooftoppers by Katherine Rundell

The Nosy Crow reading group book this month was Rooftoppers, by Katherine Rundell. Winner of the Blue Peter Award and of the 5-12 category and overall Waterstones Children’s Book Prize, this was a particularly popular read for the group. We all commented on the quality of the writing – and it’s a style packed with aphorism, imagery, metaphor and simile, so it’s a very “visible” style.

This blog post contains plot-spoilers, so consider yourself warned.

Style

While a few of us found that some of the similes and metaphors just didn’t work (“The [railway station] ceiling was a maze of glass and bright iron. It looked like a hundred pianos.” Though it’s worth saying that, on looking up at a station ceiling today my older child said that she thought that it referred to the white sky divided into strips by black iron looking like piano keyboards on top of one another, and she may be right…), and that Charles’s constant aphorisms were a bit wearing, all of us responded to the richness and beauty of the language of the book: my own favourite lyrical Charlesism is his declaration of paternal love to Sophie: “You have been the great green adventure of my life. Without you, my days would be unlit.”

We also, though, talked about some of the observed detail – the description of the London house, for example, and, for me, the description of Matteo’s improvised equipment: “[The sheet] was sewn with layer upon layer of pigeon feathers. It was oddly greasy, but beautiful.” And we all agreed that food, from teeth-gluing jammy biscuits to a sausage sandwiched in venison with a slop of boiled-down tomato and cream soup sauce, was brilliantly described.

Character

Pretty much every woman in the room had a bit of a crush on Charles at the end, and at least one of us felt jealous of Katherine for creating him. Several of us thought that Benedict Cumberbatch would be pretty good casting (Tom held out for Bill Nighy, but I am doubtful that, these days, he’d be up for the drainpipe climb at the end of the book, myself). He was, we felt, the “perfect parent”, at least from the point of view of the 9-12 year-old target reader, encouraging independence, spirit and fearlessness in Sophie. Though some of the mums in the room voiced some concerns at the degree of freedom and secrecy that he allowed Sophie (“As long as you aren’t doing anything too extravagantly illegal I am happy for you to have secrets”), most of us were willing to accept this as part of a more general lack of naturalism in the novel. Sophie herself, now I think about it, came in for relatively little discussion. We did talk about her emotional journey – or lack of one. One of us said that her journey was to become more fully the person she had been pretty much from the beginning. Another felt that her journey was the validation of her memories of her mother. Some of us couldn’t quite feel the intensity of her longing for her mother, and at least one of us suggested that this was because the language, and in particular the way that characters expressed themselves in aphorisms, kept the reader at a kind of distance – though some of us admitted to crying at the end. One of us suggested that this was a rather English use of understatement and humour and drew parallels with Richard Curtis films, where emotional moments are undercut with humour. And this is a funny book: my own favourite Charles aphorism is, “I am an Englishman. I always have an umbrella. I would no more go out without my umbrella than I would leave the house without my small intestine.” There was quite a lively argument about what “lightning coloured hair” would look like, and questions were asked about eyes like candle flames. Other characters were, we felt, rather less rounded, including the Rooftoppers themselves, and some of us felt that we might have met them before in other books under other names. In fact, and this links to a plot point below, a few of us felt that the plot might have been enhanced by the death of one of them, and we thought that Safi was the most expendable.

Time and Place

We were all rather intrigued by the “no-time” setting of the novel. On the one hand, the book sets itself up as historical fiction – girls can’t wear trousers, orchestras play on cross-channel boats, people travel by horse and carriage. But Charles will say some very 21st century things, like, “Even your night-time peeing is accessorised”. As Tom said, it has something of the fin-de-siecle feel of Nights At The Circus. The timelessness of the novel prompted us to talk about the way that we, as lovers of children’s books, felt comfortable in it: it is a very traditional novel in many ways, and one that clearly positions itself in a tradition – particularly a British tradition – of children’s novels. We were reminded of Ballet Shoes (Charles is Gum, and Sophie a Fossil who didn’t make it back to the Cromwell Road but continued to travel with him), Stig of the Dump, I Capture The Castle and more modern books still operating within that tradition like Hugo Cabret and Ink Heart. There is something about the romance of the characters and the register of the language that gives the book something of a nostalgic, even old-fashioned, feel – in, we agreed, a good way… though I wondered if something about this tradition might be off-puttingly posh for some children. The teachers in the room, though, said that, having shared the book with children from a range of backgrounds, this wasn’t the case.

We also talked about place. We all loved the description of the London house, which felt the most real place to us. Some of us felt that Paris was evoked wonderfully well, while others felt that the novel’s sense of place rather drifted in Paris. The discussion about Paris, though, led us to talk about roofs as a setting. We talked about the way that the ceiling is a “magical boundary” between one world and another – a kind of high, horizontal wardrobe-back into the rooftop Narnia.

Plot and Structure

None of us found this book hard-going, and several of us commented on how much of a page-turner it was. In fact, some of us felt it was all a bit TOO pacey, and that the ending in particular was a bit rushed. Some of us wanted, simply, more – a more completely realised and detailed world, like, one of us suggested, Lyra’s Oxford – and those of us who specified what that more might be said they wanted more of an obstacle to the climactic encounter between Sophie and her mother – perhaps the police found them in the building when they were going through the files, perhaps there was more about the clash with the gariers. Some of us wanted more resolution to the mystery of the mother’s identity (and some of us wanted to know why she hadn’t sought out Sophie with the dedication that her daughter had sought out her) and the question of the insurance fraud. Some of us felt that “Charles should have been enough”, and that Sophie’s drive to find her mother, though often described, didn’t quite feel true. Others were comfortable with the plot devices – even Charles’s sudden revelation of climbing skills – that facilitated what was, for them, a moving culmination of Sophie’s quest. A couple pondered whether there might have been a different ending, in which Sophie didn’t find her mother, accepted her memory was a fantasy and that Charles was her true parent. Some of us drew parallels between what the reader was asked to believe was possible and the comments that Charles made about the importance of never discounting anything that might be possible.

A lot of us spoke about being willing to suspend disbelief, and to enter into the romantic world of the book without asking too many questions. Though the book doesn’t conform to the magical realism genre, several of us drew comparisons with the way in which a reader accepts the bizarre in the context of magical realist fiction and accepts the bizarre here, as one of us said, “One bit of my brain was saying, this is ridiculous, but the other was accepting it all.”

Verdict

So, though we thought that the book was stronger on style (“magical and erudite”) than plot (one of the more arithmetically-minded of us said that the first 75% was perfect, the last 1% was perfect and the 24% in between was too compressed), though some of us admitted to envy of the author (clever, attractive, prize-winning) and having to overcome a contrary prejudice against a novel that everyone else was praising, pretty much all of us started the discussion by saying we loved Rooftoppers, and at the end agreed that our enjoyment of the novel had survived the unpicking of it that a critical discussion involves. Unlike many of the books we discussed, we were pretty confident children aged 8-12 would enjoy it, and that’s not something we can say of all the novels for that age-group that we’ve discussed. The teachers in the room said that their children had enjoyed it, several of them selecting it as their favourite book (though they had had the advantage of meeting the author, who’d visited the school). Many of us would reread it, and most would recommend it. I, for one, would have been proud to publish it, for the distinctiveness of the authorial voice alone.

The Booktrust Best Book Awards

The shortlists for the Booktrust Best Book Awards have been announced, and we’re incredibly pleased that two of our apps have been recognised!

Little Red Riding Hood and Axel Scheffler’s Flip Flap Farm are both nominated in the Best Tech Stuff category, and make up half of the four-strong shortlist, alongside Signed Stories: A Lark in the Ark by Peter Bently and Lynne Chapman, and The Slightly Annoying Elephant by David Walliams and Tony Ross.

The Best Tech award recognises digitally enhanced storytelling. It will reward apps, ebooks and other products that use sounds, visuals, and games in innovative ways to make the reading experience richer and more interactive.

And now that the shortlists have been announced, it’s up to schools, libraries, children’s centres and bookshops to decide the winners! You can find out more about the awards, including how to register to vote, on the Booktrust Best Book Awards website, here.

If you’ve not seen our apps before, here’s the trailer for Little Red Riding Hood:

And here’s the trailer for Axel Scheffler’s Flip Flap Farm:

If you’re taking part in the awards, have fun! The winners will be announced during Children’s Book Week this Summer – wish us luck.

Join in with this week's Rooftoppers reading group

Tomorrow the Nosy Crow Guardian Reading Group will be meeting to discuss the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize-winning Rooftoppers by Katherine Rundell – and we’d love for you to join in!

If you’d like to come along to the physical event, there are a still a few places left! We’ll be meeting here at the Crow’s Nest (10a Lant Street) – kicking off at 6.30pm (with time for a glass on wine afterwards). If you’d like to join us, send an email to tom@nosycrow.com. And if you can’t make it here, you can still join in online – either by leaving your comments underneath this blogpost, or sharing your thoughts about the book on Twitter with the #NCGKids hashtag.

We’ve prepared a few discussion points to get you thinking in advance – here’s some of what we might talk about:

1) How important do you think “plot” is in Rooftoppers?

2) To what extent is the book about orthodoxy versus rebellion?

3) Is this an “iceberg novel”? How many of the book’s ideas are present on the surface, and how many underneath metaphor or symbolism?

4) How well do you think Charles has prepared Sophie for the world around her?

5) What do you make of the ending?

If you’ve not read the book yet, you can buy Rooftoppers online here.

We hope you can join us!

Sharing Nuts in Space by Elys Dolan with my son: Nut Status - good!

So, the dust is settling after the crazy whirl that is Bologna, and we are just catching our breath again. Phew. There have been months and months of preparation and excitement, working with our amazing authors and artists to create the best sales material possible, and then, of course, there’s the fair itself with our rights team selling books across four days with 160 appointments, and the editors and designers running from one agent meeting to another. Blimey. Even just thinking about it is exhausting – it’s a tough time to be an editor! It’s also, if I may be honest, a tough time to be a working mum – my little chick at home often brings out the wobbly lower lip if I’m late. “Where HAVE you been?” he will say, in a dramatically forlorn fashion. Sigh. Luckily, in my line of work, there’s always an amazing book to come to the rescue . . .

The week before Bologna, I was heading home late and knew there would be just enough time for a quick bedtime kiss for the chick. I suspected the wobbly lip might make an appearance, so, as I ran out of the Crow’s nest, I popped Nuts In Space by Elys Dolan in my bag. “Aha!” I thought. “I am the PERFECT mother!” (If only.) But no, actually it is Elys who is the perfect one around here because NUTS IN SPACE was totally transformative. It saved my bacon. It was 9pm by the time I got home and the chick was still awake, and the lip was a-wobbling. Like a magician, I flourished Nuts In Space . . . and it was if the wobble had never been. “Is that by the lady who wrote Weasels?” he demanded, springing out of bed and launching himself at me. I was hoping for a hug but… no. I was merely side-swiped as he grabbed the book and settled into his favourite reading position – lying on the rug on his stomach, propped up by his elbows. And so it was for the next hour. He pored over every single detail, he read it aloud, he laughed out-loud, he picked up his copy of Weasels to compare notes, he commented on every single Star Wars reference (he is a BIG fan), hollered to his dad to come and look, shifted his position and then started all over again.

It was 10pm by the time I managed to persuade him into bed. He had read the book five times, inside out and back to front (there is a LOT going on) and, even then, I noticed that he had sneaked his light back in for one more read. It was a school night but what the heck – look what a book can do!

The final triumphant accolade came on Sunday. There had been much concentrated effort in the creation of a not-so-secret Mother’s Day card but the sign off nearly made me cry. After the 38 kisses at the bottom of the card (he thoughtfully does one for each year of my age . . . nice) he paid brilliant homage to Nuts in Space. On the opening spread, there is a glorious prologue (designed like the opening sequence in Star Wars . . . in a galaxy far far away etc etc) and, at the bottom of the page, are two green aliens. One comments, “Oh look, floating words.” and his neighbour replies, “That’s different.” (click below to see an enlarged version). At the bottom of my Mother’s Day card, Rafe drew two aliens. One comments, “Oh look, floating kisses.” And the neighbour replies, “That is definitely different.”

I love picture books. And thank you, Elys, for making one lip-wibbly boy extremely happy.

Nuts in Space is out now! You can buy the book online here, and take a look inside below.

Open Very Carefully Wins the Picture Book Category of the Waterstones Children's Book Prize

`

Where I Work: Olivia Tuffin

This is the latest instalment in an occasional series of blogposts, in which some of our authors and illustrators share their favourite writing spots. Today Olivia Tuffin, whose debut series will launch in June with The Palomino Pony Comes Home, shows us around her family farm…

Living in a small, but perfectly formed house on my husband’s family farm, I’ve learnt to be fairly creative when it comes to where I write. I have turned a small corner of our bedroom into my writing space, where I keep an old family desk. I have a pin board next to it where I thought I could put up notes and ideas, but it seems to be just full of pictures of my ponies, and some of my favorite rosettes, as good as inspiration as anything I suppose. If I slide my chair back, and look out of the window, I can see our four horses in the paddock at the end of the garden. They like to doze under the tree that borders their field.

I love writing at my desk in the winter, with a mug of earl grey, and I equally love writing in the summer, when the sun has finally gone down, and my husband is out harvesting, late into the evening. I like the way the tractor lights whirl round the room as he passes the house at regular intervals, hauling grain. Last summer most of my writing was done at this time, when the house was quiet, and the air was still warm, only broken up by the odd trip into the farm yard with a flask of coffee. Farmers, like writers, have no set hours!

I write in other places as well. In the height of summer, I have a picnic table in the ponies’ tack/feed room which I can take my tablet out to. The tack room sounds a funny place to write but when it is full of new baled hay, it’s the best place on the farm! It’s cool and shady, and I am often joined by our Shetland who wanders in and out. I mostly write straight onto my tablet, but I carry a notepad in my bag, just in case. However I tend to keep most ideas just in my head, and think them over and over, rather than writing them down. Once I have thought a story through, I just start, and see where it takes me. So my favorite place to work is not even at a desk, it is out hacking on my Exmoor pony, Mossy. Sometimes I ride out with my husband on his big chestnut horse, but he likes to go much faster than me. So when I ride alone, wandering around Dorset, at Mossy’s preferred speed of ‘steady’ I am able to imagine stories, characters and ponies, over and over and over. Most of my ideas have come from my ‘mobile desk!’ There is no better place to be for a writer who never outgrew the pony mad stage!

You can read the first chapter of The Palomino Pony Comes Home below, or pre-order the book online here.

Previously in the series: Helen Peters, Caryl Hart, Elys Dolan, G. R. Gemin

It's April Publication Day!

Our April titles are out now, and it’s a particularly brilliant selection – this month’s books are a triumph. Here’s what you can find in shops today:

There are two new Bizzy Bear books by Benji Davies out today – Zoo Ranger and Knight’s Castle.

Here’s my favourite spread from Knight’s Castle (I particularly like the knowing glances between Bizzy Bear and the damsel in distress):

Buy the book online.

And here’s a great scene from Zoo Ranger: (I love the rather worried-looking expression of the rabbit whose glasses appear to have fallen into the penguin pool on the right hand page – thankfully, he gets them back by the final spread):

Buy the book online.

Perfect for toddlers, these books are packed with lots of wonderful detail, visual humour, and a very gentle rhyme… and all on a pleasingly sturdy board.

Pip and Posy: Look and Say by Axel Scheffler is out now – with fun, busy scenes and lots to talk about, this delightful first book is perfect for sharing with an inquisitive toddler. A ‘Can you find these things?’ panel on each spread adds an ‘I-spy’ game element for extra fun – look for the objects along the bottom of each page, spot them in the scenes and then say the words. It’s great for speech development and an ideal book for parent and child to share. Here’s a look inside:



Buy the book online.

It’s publication day for Nuts in Space by Elys Dolan – a brand new picture book from the creator of the phenomenally successful Weasels.

An elite crew of furry animals have found the Lost Nuts of Legend, a mythical snack rumoured to give the bearer unimaginable blessings such as teeth that never need brushing, rooms that never need cleaning and underwear that never needs changing. Now all they have to do is go home, but everyone is starving, the Star Nav is broken, and it was a REALLY bad idea to stop at the Death Banana. Will the crew ever find their way home? And, most importantly, will they get there before someone EATS the Lost Nuts of Legend? Full of humour and packed with detail on every page, this is a truly stellar (and very funny) story in an EXTRA-large, glorious hardback format . Here’s a look inside:



Buy the book online.

And finally, Hubble Bubble: The Pesky Pirate Prank by Tracey Corderoy and Joe Berger is out today – three more stories of magical mayhem in one beautifully produced book, from the creators of the brilliant Hubble Bubble picture books!

Granny decides to liven things up during the school play and turns Noah’s Ark into Noah’s Pirate Ship, before making it rain in the school hall! When Pandora’s parents decide to build a new bedroom for her over the garage, Granny decides to lend a hand. Why build a boring extension when you can build a fairytale castle? But it’s during an outbreak of nits at Pandora’s cousin’s wedding that Granny truly comes into her own… The perfect next step after picture books, these are ideal stories for newly independent readers. Here’s a look inside:



Buy the book online.

Congratulations to all of today’s authors and illustrators!

K M Peyton for a new generation - introducing The Palomino Pony

This Summer we’re launching a fantastic new series by debut author Olivia Tuffin that’s absolutely PERFECT for pony-mad 9+ year olds.

Shot through with action, adventure, and a genuine love of horses, The Palomino Pony is an exciting sequence of soon-to-be-classic pony books by an authentic new voice in equestrian writing.

The series begins in June with The Palomino Pony Comes Home. All Georgia ever wants to do is spend time with the gorgeous horses at Redgrove Farm stables. The week she spends away from them in Wales is almost unbearable, until she finds a beautiful but mistreated palomino pony on a windswept mountainside. Georgia feels an instant bond with Lily and knows she must help her escape from her cruel owner, whatever the cost…

Here are the first three chapters:

And the series will continue with The Palomino Pony Rides Out in August and The Palomino Pony Wins Through in October – if you’d like to be kept-up-to date, you can sign up to our Books Newsletter here and you’ll never miss a new Nosy Crow title.

You can pre-order The Palomino Pony Comes Home here. This is a pony book with all the classic ingredients – K M Peyton for a new generation.

Fe Fi Fo Fum... I smell a set of stylish postcards to be won!

Last month we ran a competition to win some of the exclusive Jack and the Beanstalk postcards that we’ve had made to celebrate the launch of our recent fairytale app… and they were so popular that we’ve decided to give some more away!

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

To win, all you have to do 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.

Here’s the trailer for Jack and the Beanstalk:

And you can download it from the App Store here.

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