Nosy Crow's Blog, page 193

The Best Apps of 2013

Our Little Red Riding Hood app has been named one of the App Store’s Best of 2013!

This accolade celebrates the most remarkable, innovative, and entertaining apps of 2013 – and Little Red Riding Hood has been recognised as one of five Innovative Kids Apps for the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India and Turkey.

And that’s not all for Little Red Riding Hood – over the weekend, the app was also named as one of The Observer’s 50 Best Apps of the Year! For the list, Stuart Dredge writes:

“Another fairytale, beautifully realised by British publisher Nosy Crow, which has done similar tricks for Cinderella and The Three Little Pigs. The twist here is that children decide what items the heroine picks up en route to grandma’s to help her defeat the wolf.”

It’s been a remarkable year for Little Red Riding Hood, and this is a truly wonderful way to end 2013. And if, somehow, after MONTHS of reading about it on this blog, you’ve still not tried the app, you can watch the trailer below:

Here’s Little Red Riding Hood on the App Store.

And you can explore the full selection of the Best of 2013 on the App Store here.

Thank you to everyone who’s had fun using our apps this year – here’s to a fantastic 2014!

Make your own party pom poms!

Last week we mentioned the pom pom decorations that adorned the office for our Christmas party – and today we thought we’d show you how to make them yourself! If you’d like to make your own giant pom-poms, here are step-by-step instructions (with photographic aids) – click each picture to enlarge.

You will need:

- Sheets of tissue paper (50 ×75 cm, though any size works, it will just change the size of the final pom pom)

- Scissors or scalpel

- Stapler

- Thread or string (we used invisible thread)

How to make them:

1. Lay 10 sheets of tissue paper on top of one another. We used white, but you can use a range of colour for different effects. Concertina fold (like an accordion) the sheets along the length of the paper, at roughly 6 cm (2.5 inch) intervals till you have one long strip.

2. Staple this strip in the middle. Wind and tie your thread around the middle, leaving enough length free to hang your pom-pom up with. (As we used invisible thread we stuck a bit of masking tape on the end so we could spot it easily.)

3. On each end of the strip, cut a curve to the top to create a soft edge for your pom-pom.

4. Then fan out your strip into a lovely sun shape.

5. Now for the fluffing: take the top layer of the tissue paper on one side and gently pull it up.

6. Do the same on the alternative side.

7. Repeat on alternative sides until you are half way through your layers (5 sheets of tissue paper). Flip your pom pom over and do the same on this side until you have fluffed all the layers and have one lovely pom pom.

8. Tada!

9. Now repeat 65 times.

10. Then ask the lovely Tom to help hang them all, in the final few hours before your Christmas party. Enjoy!

Festive celebrations and three years of publishing at Nosy Crow

This Tuesday at the Crow’s Nest normal proceedings were momentarily cast aside in favour of an evening of festive drinks and home-made canapés – and it was tremendous fun to celebrate our third year of publishing with so many friends: authors, illustrators, agents, booksellers, journalists, librarians, designers, and many more. The picture at the top of this post gives an idea of what the Crow’s Nest looked like on the night – decorated with fairy lights and dozens of home-made pom-poms (another stroke of decorative genius by our design team – a blog post with instructions to make your own may be forthcoming) – and here, by popular demand, are some of the photos taken on on the night:

Illustrator Axel Scheffler and author Philip Ardagh, creators of The Grunts series.

Giancarlo Gemin, author of Cowgirl, with Dear Scarlett author Fleur Hitchcock.

Elys Dolans, creator of Weasels, with Kate.

Books Always Everywhere author Jane Blatt and illustrator Sarah Massini.

Bizzy Bear illustrator Benji Davies with agent Vicki Wilden-Lebrecht.

Steven Lenton, illustrator for Shifty McGifty and Slippery Sam, with Ola, Zoe and Kristina.

Small Blue Thing author S.C. Ransom with Kate and Helen Peters, author of The Secret Hen House Theatre.

A full album of photos will be posted on our Facebook page later today. And from all of us at Nosy Crow, merry Christmas!

Art for Ark's Sake

This Saturday, The Original Gallery at Hornsey Library will play host to a one-off charity art exhibition in aid of Noah’s Ark Children’s Hospice.

And as well as offering up work by (non-artist) celebrities including Tim Minchin, Damian Lewis, Raphael Nadal and Sean Bean, the auction will also feature pieces by several Nosy Crow illustrators! You could win work by Pip and Posy illustrator Axel Scheffler, Weaselsr creator Elys Dolan, Hubble Bubble, Granny Trouble illustrator Joe Berger, Troll Swap creator Leigh Hodgkinson, or Shifty McGifty and Slippery Sam illustrator Steven Lenton.

This exciting fundraising project is the brainchild of two local Crouch End mums, Ellie Northam and Bex Davies, who want to raise both awareness and vital funds for Noah’s Ark. The money will help the charity continue its incredible work supporting life-limited and life-threatened children, their brothers, sisters and families living in the communities of North London.

As well as the auction, which will begin at 8pm on Saturday December 14, the library will also be open during the day for a special family afternoon with (cakes and face painting) from 1pm – 5pm.

You can find out more about the exhibition and auction here, and read more about the fantastic work that Noah’s Ark do here. So if you’re around Crouch End on Saturday, help support this very worthy cause!

Take a look inside The Black Crow Conspiracy

Next month we’ll be publishing The Black Crow Conspiracy by Christopher Edge – the thrilling final volume in the acclaimed Twelve Minutes to Midnight trilogy.

And today you can find out how the conclusion to this fantastically gripping, wonderfully atmospheric series begins – we’ve posted the first chapter!

An absolutely brilliant set of books for 10+ readers who like suspense, mystery and intrigue, the Twelve Minutes to Midnight trilogy is the recipient of a Stockport School’s Book Award (for the first volume), a shortlisting for the Lambeth Phoenix Book Award, and inclusion in the Reading Agency’s Summer Reading Challenge and Bookbuzz Programme. The Telegraph described the second book in the series, Shadows of the Silver Screen, as “a serious (and playful) intelligent historical thriller for children.”

In this final episode, Penny receives a story for the magazine about a strange and supernaturally-tinged crime, she’s instantly gripped. However, when the story is published, she’s shocked to discover that it describes a recent crime. More stories follow from the anonymous author containing further sinister crimes and hinting at more to come. With the police perplexed, and all of London living in fear, Penny faces a race against time to track the elusive author down. Can she find him and put a stop to his terrible crimes before his story reaches its chilling conclusion?

… And without further ado, here’s chapter one!

The Black Crow Conspiracy won’t be available in shops until January 9, but you can pre-order it online from Waterstones here. And if you’re new to this fantastic trilogy, you can find out how all it begins below with the first chapter for Twelve Minutes to Midnight:

Order Twelve Minutes to Midnight online.

The Insider: an interview with Kate by The Bright Agency

Today’s a bit of a chaotic sort of day in the Crow’s Nest: lots of us have just left for the Roald Dahl Funny Prize, where we have THREE shortlisted titles in the running – Weasels by Elys Dolan, Troll Swap by Leigh Hodgkinson, and The Grunts all at Sea by Philip Ardagh and Axel Scheffler – and the rest of us are busy preparing for tonight’s Christmas party (I am using the opportunity to write this to take a break from hanging fairy lights…), and the unhappy consequence is that the blog has been rather neglected, I am afraid to say.

So today, rather than write anything terribly interesting or witty ourselves, I thought I’d direct you to the excellent blog of the Bright Group, home of illustrators including Benji Davies, Nicola O’Byrne, and Sebastien Braun, which features an in-depth interview with Kate as part of the Insider Series.

You can read the full interview, in which Kate talks about 25 years in the publishing industry, the digital revolution, what she’s looking for in an illustrator, and some of her all-time favourite picture books, here. And normal service will resume here shortly!

"Don't spill your coffee on this!": a class of six year olds read the Hubble Bubble books

One of the absolute best and most satisfying experiences for a publisher is to hear from our readers – and last week we really hit the jackpot. A Year Two class at our local primary school had all been reading the Hubble Bubble, Granny Trouble books by Tracey Corderoy and Joe Berger – both the picture books and the new young fiction series, which began in October with Hubble Bubble: The Glorious Granny Bake-Off – and they enjoyed the books so much that they wrote and delivered some absolutely brilliant letters to us.

Feedback like this isn’t just very heart-gladdening: it’s also an invaluable way for us to learn what parts of our books children respond to the most. In the case of the Hubble Bubble books, these six-year-olds particularly liked the humour (“very funny” came up a lot), the illustrations, and, in the case of The Glorious Granny Bake-Off, the length – which is carefully designed for a newly independent reader (“I enjoyed the book because it is long” and “I like to read chapter books” both came up).

And even better still, the letters were all fantastically illustrated – you can click each of the images below to enlarge.

There were lots of grannies:

The giant rabbit (and carrot) in The Glorious Granny Bake-Off was also very popular:

And there were even some Nosy Crows!

…And here’s the envelope it all arrived in (with some sage advice – they’ve got my number):

Thank you very, very much to all the pupils at the Charles Dickens Primary School for these wonderful letters!

If you’re new to the Hubble Bubble books, you can look inside the first picture book, Hubble Bubble, Granny Trouble, below:



Order the book online.

And here’s a look inside The Glorious Granny Bake-Off:



“(new-window)Order the book online.”:

http://www.waterstones.com/waterstone...

Christmas with Shifty McGifty

December is upon us, boxes of Christmas decorations are coming down from the attic… and we’ve got one to share with you! Shifty McGifty and Slippery Sam illustrator Steven Lenton has designed a MARVELLOUS holiday decoration, featuring the one and only Shifty – and you can make it yourself at home!

Click the image below to download a high-resolution version, print it out (on card if possible) and follow Steven’s simple instructions for a delightful Shifty decoration that’ll be the envy of your friends and relations:

Perch it atop your tree! Hang it above your door! Balance it on your mantlepiece! The possibilities are practically endless. There’s a little bit of Using Scissors involved, so some adult supervision may be required. And in true Blue Peter fashion, Here’s One I Made Earlier (click the arrrows to see a step-by-step photographic guide):

You can take a look inside Shifty McGifty and Slippery Sam below – and if you’d like to get into a true holiday spirit and give the book as a gift, you can buy it online here.

For more great Shifty McGifty stuff, have a look at Steven’s blog. And if you have a go at making the decoration, tweet us a picture – we’d love to see them!

Parties can cause headaches (a guest post by Philip Ardagh)

Today’s guest blog post is by Philip Ardagh, author of The Grunts books, previous winner of The Roald Dahl Funny Prize (for Grubtown Tales: Stinking Rich and Just Plain Stinky, in 2009), and known trouble-maker.

The Nosy Crow Christmas party is going to be a tricky one for Nosy Crow this year. Why? Because Nosy Crow is a victim of its own success. The party is being held on the same day that the winners of the Roald Dahl Funny Prize are announced.

There are two categories: six and under, and seven to fourteen. With two Nosy Crow books in the six-and-under category — Weasels by Elys Dolan and Troll Swap by Leigh Hodgkinson — at least one of them has to lose.

Nosy Crow also has a book in the older category, The Grunts all at Sea, written by me and illustrated by Axel Scheffler.

Now, imagine the possible scenarios:

1. All three books lose, resulting much glumness all round but the opportunity to mutter “We was robbed!” and “What do they know anyway?” and to pull together with the Dunkirk spirit.

2. One book wins, and the other two lose. Great for the winner and for Nosy Crow, and the creators of the two losing books can get roaring drunk, link arms and sing ‘It Should Have Been Me’.

3. Two books win and one loses, which would be the least likely but best-case scenario for Nosy Crow as a company… and the worst case scenario for the loser. Think of solitary sobbing in the stationery cupboard.

What a party this is going to turn out to be.

Thank you, Philip “Cassandra the Prophet” Ardagh, for these entirely helpful, and not-at-all panic-inducing, projections. The winners of The Roald Dahl Funny Prize 2013 will be announced at The Cambridge Theatre, London, home to the musical version of Roald Dahl’s Matilda, on 10th December – wish us (and all of our authors and illustrators) luck!

Little Red Riding Hood is a top 10 app of 2013!

Our Little Red Riding Hood app has been named as one of School Library Journal’s Top 10 Apps of 2013!

The app has taken the number two slot (beaten only by the collected works of fellow British developer and all-round good eggs Touch Press) on the list, selected “to represent the range and variety of materials available for children and teens reviewed by School Library Journal since late 2012.”

Here’s what SLJ have to say about Little Red Riding Hood in their review:

“A classic fairy tale receives an invigorating update in Nosy Crow’s splendid Little Red Riding Hood. Along with its playful nonlinear storytelling, a winsome narration, and vibrant artwork filled with humorous—and wacky—touches, this flawlessly interactive app includes games and activities that propel the story forward and send this big bad wolf on his way.”

If you’ve tried Little Red Riding Hood, or one of our other apps, in a school, we’d really love to hear from you! If you’d like to share your experience of using technology and apps in the classroom, please do send an email or get in touch on Twitter or Facebook. And if you’re interested in purchasing multiple copies of the app for an educational institution, don’t forget, you may be eligible for Apple’s Volume Purchase Programme.

You can watch our trailer for Little Red Riding Hood here:

And you can find it on the App Store for $5.99/ £3.99 here.

Many thanks to School Library Journal – and we hope you all continue to enjoy Little Red Riding Hood in 2014!