Nosy Crow's Blog, page 187

The Nosy Crow Reading Group verdict on Goth Girl and The Ghost of a Mouse

On Thursday last week, the Nosy Crow Reading Group discussed Goth Girl and the Ghost of a Mouse.

I am a huge Chris Riddell fan, myself, and was proud to acquire the Ottoline books when I was at Macmillan and to publish the Muddle Earth books, which Chris wrote with Paul Stewart. And so we are really delighted that he’s working on illustrations for Nosy Crow’s own Witchworld series.

All seventeen of us at this month’s Nosy Crow Reading Group loved the “amazing”, “beautiful”, “fantastic” illustrations in Goth Girl, and all but one of us loved the “astonishing” production values of the hardback book – the silver foiling, the shiny spot UV, the sparkling foiled edges, the quality of the paper and the printing, the tiny book at the end. The one dissenter felt it was maybe over-bling-y, but hers was a lone voice.

Many of us had a strong sense of the author’s immersion in the world he’d created, and his passion for it.

Whenever we look at books, a key question for the reading group is always, “who is it for”, and we struggled to come to a consensus on the answer for this book. Clearly, lots of the literary and other allusions and references, from Homer to Fight Club and Abercrombie and Fitch, and the presence of parodies of historical figures like Mary Shelley and Samuel Johnson, aren’t going to be picked up by child readers.

There was a divide in the group between those who felt that this wasn’t an issue – that the characters and the story were fun and compelling enough for children to simply skate over the stuff they didn’t “get” (but might remember and “get” later), and those who felt that the balance between the jokes with adult appeal on the one hand and the plot and characters with child-appeal on the other hand was weighted too much towards adults. Those who weren’t so keen felt that Ada was a little flat as a character, and the absence of an emotional journey for her meant that it was hard to engage with her. Some of us thought that the book was “self-indulgent”. Many of us thought that the ending was a little hurried, and that there were plot holes and loose ends. Several people commented on what appeared to be editorial glitches, mismatches between the text and the art (the text description of the image on page 137 refers to a man chasing a swan, but the picture shows a woman: Leda, I assume), for example.

This book won the Costa children’s book prize. The judges described it as “wonderful, charming, delightful and inventive.” And Josh Lacey, reviewing the book for The Guardian, says, “The actual plot is skimpy, but that doesn’t matter; the point of this lovely book is its oddball characters, witty details and literary references […] But it is Riddell’s artwork that really makes this book such a pleasure to hold and read. The text is peppered with all kinds of lovely illustrations, from sketches of the characters to a magnificent double-page spread of an elegant vampire duelling sabre-rattling pirates. There are loving nods to 18th-century pamphlets and magazines, the wallpaper and statuary that you’ll find tucked away in odd corners of stately homes, and, of course, Peake and Heath Robinson (Dr Cabbage looks very much like Professor Branestorm, even down to his habit of wearing several pairs of glasses). Goth Girl may be marketed at tween girls, but will undoubtedly find a very happy readership among adults.”

As a group, it’s fair to say that we loved the art, and the physical book itself, but felt that we’d enjoyed other examples of Chris Riddell’s writing more.

Nosy Crow is shortlisted for two Bookseller Industry Awards

Yesterday, we blogged about being shortlisted for the Bologna Book Fair prize for the Children’s Publisher of the Year. And today, we’ve just had the news that we are shortlisted in not one, but two categories of the Bookseller Industry Awards, in a cheering almost-reprise of last year.

Nosy Crow is shortlisted for the Children’s Publisher of the Year award and for the Independent Publisher of the Year award.

I have to admit, we need all the validating and motivating good news (and cake) that we can get: we are in the tense and hectic run-up to the Bologna Book Fair, just over a week away. Just before we’d got the news, we’d just schlepped 15 big cardboard boxes full of books, rights guides and tools for building the furniture for the Bologna Stand down our three-flight iron staircase; someone in the design team has just said, “Don’t worry: I’ve requested a rework of the dog from the illustrator – this time without the sick”; and there are discussions going on about who will be in when over this weekend.

It’s great to see lots of our retailer friends on shortlists too.

Anyway, here are the shortlists in full:

Independent Publisher of the Year sponsored by The Great British Bookshop

Canongate

Constable & Robinson

Granta Publications

Hesperus Press

Nosy Crow

Summersdale

Unbound

Top That! Publishing

Children’s Publisher of the Year sponsored by Booktrust

DK

Egmont

HarperCollins Children’s Books

Nosy Crow

Penguin Children’s

Scholastic

Simon & Schuster Children’s Books

Usborne Publishing

Walker Books

Academic, Educational and Professional Publisher of the Year sponsored by Bertrams

Bloomsbury Academic & Professional

Collins Learning

Oxford University Press

Palgrave Macmillan

SAGE

Book Retailer of the Year

Blackwell’s

Foyles

Sainsbury’s Supermarkets Ltd

Morrisons Supermarkets PLC

Children’s Bookseller of the Year sponsored by Macmillan Children’s Books

Barefoot Books

Sainsbury’s

Storytellers, Inc.

Winstone’s

Foyles

The Edinburgh Bookshop

Digital Strategy of the Year

Caffeine Nights Publishing

Faber & Faber

Hachette UK

HarperCollins

Head of Zeus

Hodder & Stoughton

Pan Macmillan

E-book Retailer of the Year

eBooks by Sainsbury’s

Kobo

RM Books

Totally Bound Publishing

Editor of the Year

Helen Conford; Penguin Press

Kirsty Dunseath; Orion Publishing Group

Mary Mount; Viking, Penguin

Rebecca Saunders; Sphere Fiction

Roddy Bloomfield; Hodder & Stoughton

Suzanne Baboneau; Simon & Schuster UK

Vineeta Gupta; Oxford University Press

HarperCollins Young Retailer of the Year, in honour of Sue Butterworth

Kate Double; Mr B’s Emporium of Reading Delights

Charlotte Staffer; Blackwell’s Bookshops

Edward Woods; Foyles

Melissa Cox; Waterstones

Rachael Wing; The Wallingford Bookshop

Rory Hill; The Book Hive

Imprint of the Year

Big Picture Press; Templar Publishing

Capstone Publishing; Wiley

Century; Random House

Jonathan Cape; Random House

Picador; Pan Macmillan

Sphere; Little, Brown Book Group

Weidenfeld & Nicolson; Orion Publishing Group

Independent Academic, Educational and Professional Publisher of the Year sponsored by Bertrams

Bright Red Publishing Ltd

Crown House Publishing

Edward Elgar Publishing

John Catt Educational

Jordan Publishing

Liverpool University Press

Independent Bookshop of the Year sponsored by Gardners

Dulwich Books

Booka Bookshop

Chorleywood Bookshop

The Blessington Bookstore

The Edinburgh Bookshop

White Rose Bookcafe

Winstone’s

Library of the Year

Dudley Libraries

Midlothian Library Service

Sandwell Library and Information Service

Surrey Libraries

The Hive (University of Worcester and Worcestershire County Council)

The Library of Birmingham

Literary Agent of the Year sponsored by Orion

Andrew Lownie; Andrew Lownie Literary Agency

Caroline Dawnay; United Agents

Jenny Brown; Jenny Brown Associates

Juliet Mushens; The Agency Group

Karolina Sutton; Curtis Brown

Peter Robinson; Rogers, Coleridge & White Ltd

Sarah Such; Sarah Such Literary Agency

Manager of the Year

David Dawkins; Pages of Hackney

Janette Cross; Foyles

Neil Crockett; Waterstones

Paul Thornton; Blackwell’s Bookshops

Vivian Bannerman; The Mainstreet Trading Company

Marketing Strategy of the Year sponsored by Nielsen, in association with the Book Marketing Society

BOOKS ARE MY BAG; The Booksellers Association

Caboodle from National Book Tokens

Dead Good; Penguin Random House

Faber & Faber Consumer Marketing Strategy; Faber & Faber

GONE GIRL; Orion Publishing Group

Minecraft Marketing Campaign; Egmont UK

S.Campaign; Canongate

The Happy Foodie; Penguin Random House

The Paper Dolls World Record Attempt; Pan Macmillan

Publicity Campaign of the Year sponsored by the PPC

The Examined Life by Stephen Grosz – Sue Amaradivakara PR, for Chatto & Windus

The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman – Sam Eades, Headline

My Autobiography by Alex Ferguson – Karen Geary & Rebecca Mundy, Hodder & Stoughton

The Silent Wife by A.S.A Harrison – Ben Willis, Headline

The Paper Dolls by Julia Donaldson – Lauren Ace, Macmillan Children’s Books

Stoner by John Williams – Clara Nelson, Vintage Classics

Publisher of the Year

Faber & Faber

HarperCollins

Hodder & Stoughton

Little, Brown Book Group

Orion Publishing Group

Pan Macmillan

Penguin

Transworld

Vintage

Rights Professional of the Year sponsored by Frankfurt Book Fair

Andrea Joyce; Canongate Books

Andrew Sharp; Hachette Children’s Books

Kate Hibbert; Little, Brown Book Group

Mary Thompson; HarperCollins

Rachel Mills; Peters, Fraser & Dunlop

Zosia Knopp; Penguin

Supply Chain Innovation Award sponsored by BIC

Supadu

NetGalley

ePubDirect

We've been shortlisted for the Best Children's Publisher of the year Bologna Prize!

The Nosy Crow stand at Bologna

Nosy Crow has been shortlisted for the Bologna Prize for the Best Children’s Publishers of the year! There are six prizes: one for each geographical area (Asia, Africa, Central-South America, Europe, North America, and Oceania), and we’re one of only two publishers from the UK nominated in the European category.

The prize, now in its second year (and inaugurated to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the Bologna Children’s Book Fair) exists to pay tribute to publishers “at the forefront of innovation in their activity for the creative nature of the editorial choices they have made”, and the eventual winners are decided by vote – every publishing house participating in the Bologna Children’s Book Fair is eligible to cast a ballot.

It’s an incredible honour to have been recognised in this way – not only for the association with the Bologna Fair (which is the most important event in our calendar) but particularly for a prize that is decided by our peers around the world.

We’re also very pleased to see our friends at Allen & Unwin recognised in the Oceania category. And, rather hearteningly, seeing the shortlists, and the names of the publishers recognised alongside Nosy Crow (not just in our category, but in every group) has prompted us to have a look at the websites of publishers we didn’t even know about, and be reminded of the wonderful diversity of children’s publishing around the world: it’s truly a privilege to be in this industry.

The winners of the prizes will be announced at the Book Fair at the end of this month – so wish us luck! And if you’re representing a publishing house who’ll be attending the fair, we’d be incredibly grateful for your vote! If you need guidance on how to vote, please do send an email to tom@nosycrow.com and we’d be very happy to send instructions to navigate the (somewhat interminable) Bologna Fair website.

Now – back to preparations for the fair itself…

Join in with our Goth Girl reading group tonight

Tonight the Nosy Crow Guardian Reading Group will be re-convening to discuss the Costa-winning Goth Girl by Chris Riddell – and we’d love for you to join in!

Although places for the physical event are all gone, if you’d like to take part you can follow our progress on Twitter with the #NCGKids hashtag, and by leaving your comments underneath this blogpost. You can read a review of the book by Josh Lacey on The Guardian website here, and as usual we’ve prepared a few discussion points to get you thinking in advance – here’s some of what we might talk about:

1) Who do you think Goth Girl is for?

2) How successfully does the book balance humour and plot?

3) What purpose do you think Ishmael serves?

4) How comfortably does Goth Girl sits within the Gothic tradition?

5) What do you make of the ending? Do you think the various narrative strands and relationships (particularly that between Ada and her father) are satisfactorily resolved?

You can buy Goth Girl online here – and you can also read an extract from the book online here.

We hope you can join us!

How we made Jack and the Beanstalk

Our 12th app, Jack and the Beanstalk, was released at the end of January, and I thought I’d share some of the design and art development of the project with you.

In the beginning

We had decided that Jack was going to be our next fairytale adventure. We’ve focused on fairytales for our biggest apps as they are well known and well loved stories and that gives us a little more exposure in the App Store, which is never a bad thing.

The first thing we did was churn through ideas. Noting down the ones we thought would fit into the story and most importantly be fun. That’s another thing about using traditional stories; they can take a certain amount of alteration and tweaking without breaking and it’s very important to us that the gaming elements we have become part of the story and are not just bolted on for the sake of it.

As the pages of post-its grew bigger, I started to filter them; things that were directly to do with the story and stuff that was more “engine level”, like adding shadows on characters.

We wanted Jack to have a element of non-linearity in it, so depending on how a child read/played you’d get a slightly different story. We looked at what locations we could have inside the castle and what activities would be fun and what features of the devices we could make use of. Having lots of characters to meet was also important to push the story forward.

Direct Interaction

Something we had learned from the previous fairytale app (Little Red Riding Hood) was that direct interaction with the story resonated with children interacting with the world inside the iPad rather than acting through a character; we wanted you to chop down the beanstalk at the end!

Keep it simple, stupid

Another part of this design process was to always trying to simplify things. Which is easier said than done. I try to look at it like you should be able to explain, in a single sentence how something is going to work. If you can’t do that then it might still be too complicated, or you don’t understand it yourself. So … for us, the plan with the castle was to have Jack earn keys by helping other characters he meets. For every two characters you help, you get to unlock one of the giant’s treasure rooms and get a chance to steal the treasure back. If you wake him, then it’s a chase back down the beanstalk. The end of the story changes depending on the amount treasure you managed to get back.

Lesson – Simplify! At the beginning of a project you never think you’ve got enough, then at the end you look back on this massive thing you’ve made.

Prototyping

I made good use of an app called POP-Prototyping on Paper which lets you take photos on your iPod then link them using hot boxes. It’s easy to use and you’re able to get a feel of how the story fits together before any code or art assets were started.

Lesson – Understand how you think the thing is going to work then try and find the problems early. You can’t plan everything, but you need somewhere to start.

Illustrating away

My usual way of working is to doodle on paper, then bring those into Photoshop and cut and paste the bits I like and redraw the parts I don’t until I get the look I’m after. Then, I colour it all in.

I take my sketches and understanding of how the games are going to work and fit the background art to that. Something I’ve learned is to let the design of the game dictate what’s needed rather than draw something wonderful that fails to leave room for the characters, or has so much going on in the background that it’s hard to see what’s what.

I put all the artwork together so you get a sense of how everything fits as a whole, and to ensure it’s all looks consistent. When I was happy with the flat art, I took it all to pieces and arranged it onto textures ready to use in the building of the 3D environments.

Lesson – don’t overwork the art. If I spend too long trying to make things perfect, I end up losing the special something that was in the original sketches.

3D or not 3D

The environments where the story takes place have always had this depth to them, like theatre sets in many ways, built from layered meshes. Something we wanted to try with Jack was to introduce more 3D into the scenes. The reasons for this were two-fold. Firstly we wanted to show that we could have more 3D without compromising the picture-book-like illustration look of the story. Secondly, having proper 3D meshes rather than the pseudo-3D billboards makes moving characters around the scenes and drawing them more robust. Both of these things are important if we want to continue to develop the kind of play ideas we want to do in the stories.

The biggest scene where 3D was going to be used more was the castle halls where Jack explores and unlocks doors to the different parts of the story. Early on I did a test model to show that using the artwork in this way would look okay and also iron out any problems that working like this highlighted.

Something else I wanted to do this time round was to use some computer generated art in the story. Luckily Jack is a story that has high cloud potential, so I got to work with Maya’s fluid rendering tech and made some really, rather nice, clouds.

And the beanstalk itself was a good candidate for a bit of 3D-ness too.I kept the meshes very simple and you end up with something that looks a bit like you’ve built it from folded card.

I think one worry of using the solid meshes is that they would look odd against the illustrated art, but I think that once it’s all together it looks fine. And when you add the rendered clouds, you get a very nice looking finished scene.

Most of the other 3D sets are quite primitive really, though places like the kitchen and the well room had a bit more 3D than others; the pot of stew on the stove needed to be solid enough so you could stir it nicely with the spoon.

And in the well room, you’re fishing for the frog prince’s lost golden ball, so the scene needed to be deep enough to have a dark dingy bottom to the well.

To save memory and keep our apps compatible with as many older devices as possible, we try and reuse textures where we can, for example some of the outside scenes have the same background elements used again and again and vertex colour is applied quite a bit too, to add some variety. We even managed to get some ambient occlusion in the main castle hall.

Lesson – Find ways to make repetitive tasks go away. We do a lot of this, especially in Maya. Things like model exporting, shader creation and automatic UV mapping are all things that can be sped up using scripts. AJ does the bulk of this and tends to use python now.

Characters and Animation

When the 2D character illustration was ready, it’s split up onto textures and brought into Maya so it can be mapped onto meshes and then be animated. We have quite a simple animation rig, nothing too complicated; IK on arms and a bit of stretchy IK on the legs and lots of driven keys. Sometimes we use dynamic curves; for example, on the beanstalk, to make the leaves shake when you chop it down.

Once each animation is done, they are baked to TRAX clips and imported into the character model, and we end up with a single asset that has the model and all it’s animation together that is exported to the app.

We use different mouth meshes for when the characters are talking. Typically each character has happy, sad, E, O and M shapes. Sometimes more is required, like with the Giant; he had a lot of joints in his mouth so I could animate his mouth properly when he wasn’t talking.

Iteration, Iteration, Iteration

One great thing about making Jack was the amount of time spent iterating. Nothing beats having something, however rough, that you can play around with and make improvements to over time. It’s not easy, especially with only one engineer, and you have to balance actually getting the thing finished at the same time, but it gives you the freedom to refine and adjust rather than attempt to design it all on paper first and hope it all works okay in the end. Another positive outcome is that often we had ideas whilst prototyping and iterating, like the button game in the dungeon (originally you were going to feed the dragon the right foods to get him to give you the magic key). It’s the best way to work.

Lesson – You can’t design everything at the start. Iterate and improve!

User Testing

We’d been putting the app in front of children whilst building Jack to see how they reacted. I’m an advocate of the let-them-play-and-watch-what-happens kind of user testing. See what players struggle with and watch how they do things. Usually, it’s not how you thought! We fined tuned things like the hits on the axe (kids kept dropping it by swinging it too fast), took out the giant being woken by too much noise (kids make too much noise) and added a tap gesture to making Jack jump (we liked the swipe-to-jump, but most children just kept trying to tap).

The biggest thing we changed was swapping the dragon-in-the-dungeon scene around so the dragon was on the left, because we found that too many children would rest their right hand on the tablet, thus hiding the cell bars and the dragon so they couldn’t see what effect the buttons in the wall were having.

Lesson – Get real players playing as soon as you can. Now, more than ever I want to watch and learn about how kids use the apps we make. Even though I think it’s important you have a good idea at the start about how you think something should be, you have be ready to revise that thinking if all your feedback tells you otherwise.

Bug fixing.

We use good old pen and paper and Bughost to log and track bugs and we typically find and fix about 600 bugs per app. Luckily for us all our apps share the same code base so over the last three years the stability of the apps has got better and better.

For Jack, I think we had forgotten how many bugs you can get when you let the player move around an environment. Up until now this hadn’t really been a problem, but with Jack, you could walk him around, move the camera, and have him run up and down stairs. All this happening at once resulted in Jack sometimes getting stuck on the stairs or the camera freezing; two bugs that took a while to repro, then fix.

Lesson – it’s time consuming but vital and you’ve got to do it on multiple devices and you’ve got to try and play in a way that tries to break things; is too easy to go through the game in a predictable way. Find outside testers; we used our children for this job!

The End

One of the last things we did was shoot the trailer for Jack. This time round we wanted something short and snappy. We ended up on AJ’s kitchen worktop, with a length of lining paper and his Dad’s fancy camera.

I think we did a good job, though you can’t underestimate how long it takes to get half-decent video; either the reflections are too visible, or you forget to take your watch off, or the iPad would fall over. We spent a couple of mornings getting what we hoped was enough footage, then I cut the trailer together in iMovie. Cheap and cheerful!

Lesson – Use the best camera you can get your hands on, find somewhere with loads of natural light and use a retina iPad. Shoot more than you think you need and just double check everything’s in focus and framed properly!

The End

And I think that’s covers about everything. We had a few last minute requests from Apple for artwork for the App Store (which is always nice) and Jack went on sale on the 30th January and it’s onto our next story…

Jack and the Beanstalk is available on the App Store now – if you enjoy the app, please consider leaving a review! If you’d like to stay up-to-date with all our upcoming apps, you can sign up to our Apps Mailing List here.

A Sunny World Book Day

Today’s guest blog is by Alice Jenkins, who dressed as her favourite character from The Grunts, the series by Philip Ardagh and Axel Scheffler, for World Book Day.

OooooOoo! I LOVE The Grunts!!!

I chose Sunny as my World Book Day character mostly because I like him as a person. I was also inspired by going to the Imagine festival, where I enjoyed a talk with ‘that bearded guy’ about the Grunts.

Sunny’s features are not just-a-normal-boy-who-walks-down-the-street-in-football-clothing sort of looks, but with some sewing and a bit of hairspray I thought I could nail that.

We started to make my costume last Sunday. First we brought down one of my light blue dresses (one that was slightly too small for me, I’m not too sure that Mrs Grunt would mind about things that are too small for people) and got out some white felt left over from my brother Freddie’s WBD costume. Then my Mummy had the ingenious idea of pressing the felt onto wet tea-bags, so they looked very Grunt-like. After that, we sewed on the felt patches with some black thread we found at the back of my Mummy’s sewing box. Later, I discovered a black belt that had once been part of a cow-girl outfit I used to dress up in. We added that to my costume. I also made a currant bun for Fingers out of felt and beads.

The morning of WBD I got up as early as possible so I could eat my breakfast before I started to get dressed. My Mummy took me out into the garden so she could hairspray my hair to make it stick up like Sunny’s, then I went upstairs to put on my costume. My Mummy also used one of her make-up pencils to draw on freckles.

I go to Rokesly Junior School. There, every year, usually on the Friday, we have a WBD dressing up assembly. The school sits down in two halves, one on each side of the room, so a catwalk is formed in the centre. Class by class, we walk down the aisle, as our teachers call out our names and which character and book we have come as. You see many different characters.

So goodbye you old earwig, and thank you for reading my blog!

Alice, age 9 (very nearly ten!)

Thank you, Alice, for being such an excellent Sunny, and for telling us all about your World Book Day! If you’re new to The Grunts, you can read the first chapter of The Grunts all in Trouble, the first book in the series, below:



Buy the book online.

Our favourite World Book Day costumes

As every parent, teacher, bookseller and librarian reading this blog will undoubtedly know, yesterday was World Book Day – and it was truly wonderful to see so many outfits inspired by characters from Nosy Crow books! Here are some of our favourites, posted on Twitter:

Here’s a SPLENDID Sunny from The Grunts books by Philip Ardagh and Axel Scheffler:

This young lady is dressed as Sunny from THE GRUNTS with a bun for Fingers the elephant! Via rosamundjenkins</a>: <a href="http://t.co/pu6JZoeg3K">pic.twitter.com/pu6JZoeg3K</a></p>&mdash; Philip Ardagh (PhilipArdagh) March 7, 2014

You can read the first chapter of The Grunts all at Sea, the second book in the series, here:



Buy the book online.

Here are two marvellous costumes-in-waiting for Shifty McGifty and Slippery Sam, from the picture book by Tracey Corderoy and Steven Lenton:

Happy world book day, my girls costumes ready for their dress up day tom 2dScrumptious</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/TraceyCorderoy">TraceyCorderoy NosyCrow</a> <a href="http://t.co/mz2n0R1eAD">pic.twitter.com/mz2n0R1eAD</a></p>&mdash; Jo Byatt (JoanneByatt1) March 6, 2014

Take a look inside:



Buy the book online.

Here’s a simply brilliant Princess Lily-Rose May, from The Princess and the Peas by Caryl Hart and Sarah Warburton:

Splendid #WorldBookDay costume! (cc carylhart1</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/SarahWarbie">sarahwarbie) RT</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/BrixtonBeck">BrixtonBeck: Princess and the Peas NosyCrowBooks</a> <a href="http://t.co/p3Ce2JNV10">pic.twitter.com/p3Ce2JNV10</a></p>&mdash; Nosy Crow Books (NosyCrowBooks) March 6, 2014

Take a look inside:



Buy the book online.

Here’s a swashbucklingly-good Captain Beastlie, from Captain Beastlie’s Pirate Party by Lucy Coats and Chris Mould:

An AMAZING Captain Beastlie #WorldBookDay costume! RT TeriSmyth</a>: <a href="https://twitter.com/lucycoats">lucycoats chrismouldink</a> tada! <a href="http://t.co/Jz3TZk4I4B">pic.twitter.com/Jz3TZk4I4B</a></p>&mdash; Nosy Crow Books (NosyCrowBooks) March 6, 2014

Take a look inside:



Buy the book online.

And here are the author and illustrator themselves! First, Chris Mould:

Gerrup out o' yer beds yer scurvy shipmates. It's World Book Day and it's Pirate O' Clock. #wishIhadaproperjob pic.twitter.com/jodpy5HnVC

— Chris Mould (@chrismouldink) March 6, 2014

And here’s Lucy Coats – a very convincing pirate, I think you’ll agree:

Here I am in full Pirate Queen Lucy kit for #WorldBookDayUK Let me hear you say AHOY, me hearties! Also AHARR! pic.twitter.com/ALdVRs4vEA

— Lucy Coats (@lucycoats) March 6, 2014

Please do share your World Book Day costumes with us (especially if they’re from one of our own books!) – we love seeing them!

It's March Publication Day - AND World Book Day!

Today’s an extra-special publication day – it’s also World Book Day! We’d love to see your World Book Day costumes – send photos to us on Twitter (@NosyCrowBooks) and we’ll send some prizes to the best ones! And if you’re stuck for books to buy and read, look no further – we have some TRULY splendid titles out today.

The board book edition of Guinea Pig Party by Holly Surplice is out today – based on a familiar childhood counting rhyme and combining birthday fun, counting and cute fluffy animals, this is the perfect birthday gift for pre-school children everywhere. Here’s a look inside:



Buy the book online.

It’s publication day for the PHENOMENAL The Princess and the Presents, by Caryl Hart and Sarah Warburton – the follow-up to last year’s equally brilliant The Princess and the Peas.

Princess Ruby really is a horrid child – the most spoilt princess you could ever meet. And when it’s her birthday, there are so many presents the palace literally bulges at the seams. Was there ever a more selfish princess? But when the palace and the gifts finally collapse under the poor king, the tiny tyrant realises that she has overlooked the most precious thing of all. And, luckily for Ruby, it’s never too late to make amends. A fantastic rhyming story and simply stunning artwork make this a truly exceptional picture book – here’s a look inside:



Buy the book online.

Today we’re publishing Littleland All Day Long by Marion Billet, the paperback edition of Littleland. Designed to stimulate speech and build vocabulary, this busy book is full of familiar scenes and fascinating detail. With a ‘Can you see?’ feature on every spread and a simple, chatty narrative, Littleland mimics the daily conversations between mother and child and makes the perfect next step up from board books. Here’s a look inside:



Buy the book online.

The Rescue Princesses: The Rainbow Opal by Paula Harrison is out today – the eleventh volume in the fantastic Rescue Princesses series. When a young koala cub becomes ill in the kingdom of Mirrania, the Rescue Princesses must find a cure, even if it means going into the bush in the middle of the night. They just hope the magical Rainbow Opal can keep them safe… Here’s the first chapter:



Buy the book online.

And finally, today we’re publishing an truly extraordinary debut: Cowgirl by G. R. Gemin – a funny, moving story for 9+ year olds, with strong female characters and big-hearted social realism (think Michael Morpurgo meets Jacqueline Wilson), by an outstanding new writer. Here are the first three chapters:



Buy the book online.

Congratulations to all of today’s authors and illustrators – and Happy World Book Day to all!

A brand new Flip Flap book from Axel Scheffler - what crazy creatures will you meet?

One of my absolute favourite Nosy Crow books from last year (I know that, like parents, we’re not supposed to have favourites, but in this case I do, and I cannot help myself) was Axel Scheffler’s Flip Flap Farm. It’s an absolutely perfect example of a simple concept, elegantly executed, with wonderful illustrations by Axel and a funny, silly text: it’s like the Platonic Ideal of flip-flap books. The sturdy board split-pages and spiral binding are perfect for young hands, and with 121 animal combinations, little readers will return to this book again and again. And it’s appeal goes FAR beyond children: last week, I gave a talk to the Publishing MA class at UCL – a room of very bright twenty-something-year-olds – and mentioned Flip Flap Farm as an example of digital and print publishing blurring into each other (there’s also an app of the book). At the end of my lecture I asked if anyone had any questions. One hand immediately shot up. “Can we see what a squurkey looks like?”

Here, for posterity, is the animal in question:

Needless to say, I’ve been incredibly impatient for the follow-up to Flip Flap Farm. And finally, the day has arrived: we have some marvellous proof copies of Axel Scheffler’s Flip Flap Safari! I think the book might be – dare I say it – EVEN better than Flip Flap Farm: it’s simply impossible to pick up a copy without smiling. There are eleven new animals, 121 new combinations, and lots more funny rhymes and silly names. Here, for instance, is an Elephingo (click the picture to enlarge):

Here’s a Zebodile:

And here’s a Cheetelope:

Words cannot express how much I love the Flip Flap series. They are a FLAWLESS books – perfect for any two or three year old.

Flip Flap Safari won’t be out until August, but if you sign up to our monthly books newsletter, we’ll let you know when it’s available – and you can buy Flip Flap Farm online and in shops now.

Win Jack and the Beanstalk postcards!

To celebrate our recent Jack and the Beanstalk fairytale app, we’ve had some beautiful books of postcards produced, featuring twenty unique pieces of artwork from the app – and we’re giving some away! You can win one of these stunning, limited-edition sets of postcards simply by subscribing to our apps mailing list.

Here’s just some of the artwork featured in the postcard sets:

There are twenty different postcards in each pack – they’re A6-size and come in a rather fetching, Nosy Crow-red card wallet. 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 at the end of the week. Good luck!