Nosy Crow's Blog, page 196

A first look inside Captain Beastlie's Pirate Party

Next February we’re publishing a fantastic new picture book – Captain Beastlie’s Pirate Party, an exciting and original collaboration from author Lucy Coats and illustrator Chris Mould.

And today we can give you the VERY FIRST look inside!

Captain Beastlie is a horror and embarrassment to his ship-shape crew – he is THE grubbiest pirate on the high seas. He’s eagerly counting down the days till his birthday – but what he doesn’t know is his crew has got a special secret lined up for the Big Event. His days of being the smelliest, dirtiest pirate ever are numbered, and when Captain Beastlie’s birthday finally comes, he’s in for a big surprise, as his crew plans to steal his filthy old clothes, pop him in the bath and give him a brand new set of pirate togs at his birthday feast.

So without further ado, here’s a preview of this very funny, VERY disgusting, fantastically illustrated story:

Captain Beastlie’s Pirate Party will be out in February, and is available to pre-order online here. If you’d like to stay up-to-date with all our book news, you can sign up to our monthly books newsletter here, and we’ll write to you about all of our upcoming titles, along with interviews with our authors and illustrators, information on upcoming events, and exclusive competitions and giveaways.

Two Nosy Crow books on the Greenaway nomination list!

Nominations for the 2014 CILIP Carnegie and Kate Greenaway Medals have been announced today, and very excitingly, two Nosy Crow titles have been recognised!

Both Weasels, by Elys Dolan, and Open Very Carefully, by Nicola O’Byrne and Nick Bromley, are amongst the titles nominated for the Greenaway Medal – one of the most prestigious awards in children’s literature, and given annually for an outstanding illustrated book for children and young people.

It’s the second recent nomination for Weasels, which is also on the shortlist for the Roald Dahl Funny Prize. Here’s a look inside the book:



Order Weasels online.

For more Weasels fun, here’s our Weasels Workplace Survival Guide – containing essential advice for any aspiring megalomaniac…

And it’s another great accolade for Open Very Carefully – an international triumph that’s sold in a dozen languages. Here’s a look inside the book:



Order Open Very Carefully online.

If you enjoy the book, you might like these Open Very Carefully activity sheets, with dot-to-dots, spot-the-differences, colouring-in, and more.

You can read the full list of titles nominated for the Greenaway Medal here. The winner won’t be announced until June of next year – so there’s plenty of time to read the nominated books beforehand.

Congratulations to Elys, Nicola and Nick – and good luck!

The Making of Radley's Twelve Days of Christmas - a guest post by illustrator Steven Lenton

Today’s guest post is by illustrator Steven Lenton, who has kindly allowed us to re-post this from his own blog, on the making of the Radley’s Twelve Days of Christmas book.

This summer my publisher Nosy Crow asked me if I would be up for taking on a little challenge – could I help them to create a 32 page picture book within a 6 week period? ABSOLUTELY I said in the meeting – lets do it! (GULP I said to myself on my tube journey home – what have I agreed to!?)

The book project was born largely from Nosy Crow’s collaboration with John Lewis on their 2012 ‘The Snowman’s Journey’ picture book based the christmas advert of the same name. For this, Nosy Crow had managed to design, print and deliver a beautiful picture book within a matter of days. Radley, being one of John Lewis’ concessions had heard about this amazing turnaround and approached Nosy Crow with the idea of creating an exclusive, stylishly charming christmas picture book within a short space of time. Kate Wilson suggested a new take on the classic christmas song ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’ and the creative teams of both Nosy Crow and Radley and myself got our heads together and worked out the look and feel of the book.

Below is a visual diary of the process we went through to design the finished book which publishes on this very day, 1st November 2013.

First came the character design for both protagonists, Radley the dog and the True Love (use the arrow to scroll):

Here are a few initial designs from my sketchbook. Radley the dog was fairly easy to grasp for two reasons. Firstly, he couldn’t stray too far away from the proportions of the Radley logo and secondly after drawing umpteen dogs in Shifty McGfity and Slippery Sam, I was well practiced in creating little Scottie dogs!

The True Love character was trickier to get just right, as human characters often are. It was very important that the young lady in the book had a sense of style in-keeping with the Radley aesthetic whilst maintaining an appealing children’s book character. It took time, but we got her in the end:

Her clothes we key and the teams at Nosy Crow and Radley sent me many mood boards and fashion ideas to help create the perfect ‘Radley Girl’:

Eventually we got the balance between character, clothes and pose just right – and here she is!

With the characters, style and overall feel of the book decided upon, it was time to start laying out the pages. In an early meeting, Camilla Reid, the Editorial Director from Nosy Crow, had created some rough but perfectly formed layouts which I took my (dog) lead from.

It was a help that the text was incredibly solid – The Twelve Days of Christmas is a great, fun song full of repetition and rhythm – the only problem that faced us (well – faced Stephanie Amster, lead designer at Nosy Crow) was the increasing amount of words on each page. As you can see below – the text grows and grows along with the amount of gifts the True Love receives!

Then once everything had been agreed by both teams over numerous bottles of water, packets of biscuits and handbag discussion (can you spot how many Radley bags are in the book…) it was time for me to scan in my drawings and start tweaking, adding details and COLOUR – all during the hottest days of the summer!

Using Photoshop I built up layers of pastel-styled colour until I was happy. We all decided the palette in this book was really important – a slightly muted, stylish range of colour and textures was the order of the day…and here are two of the finished pieces:

So just a few weeks later we had a full set – 32 coloured pages, title pages, end papers and eventually a cover – beautifully put together by Steph, who is the MASTER of the beautiful book spine!

£2 from the sale of every book is donated to the Kids Company children’s charity which I am really thrilled about as this charity does so much for children in need of help and support – especially at Christmas time.

Special mention has to go to the wondrously talented Yasmeen Ismail who created the beautiful ribbon-styled text for the cover.

A huge thank you to everybody involved – it really was a pleasure to work on and I think we all relished the challenge of the incredibly tight deadline – the quality of the book certainly hasn’t suffered as a result! Oooh and did I mention it has spot UV on the cover to give it that special Christmas magic!

That wasn’t the end though – then it was marketing time! With my background in animation and my directional relationship with Picasso Pictures (where I am currently directing the Holland & Barrett commercials plug, plug) everyone agreed that it would be lovely if we could create a couple of book trailers. So it was literally back to the drawing board to create some simple storyboards…

Once the boards were signed off, I created an animatic (the filmed version of the animatic with a few moving bits and pieces, camera moves etc) for each trailer. I then passed this over to Melissa Venet, senior producer at Picasso Pictures and Linda Kalcov who created the beautiful animation of Radley – Linda really brought him to life!

Here is a screen grab from part of the animation process – adding the texture in After FX:

Take a look at the first trailer HERE and the second trailer HERE!

And now the book has been published and is available online and in-store at radley.co.uk. Here are some photos of the beautiful stores in Covent Garden, Bath, Cambridge and Cheltenham – it’s so exciting to see our characters and ideas in actual windows in actual shops in actual cities!

WAIT – don’t go yet!!!! One more thing I nearly forgot to tell you. There is a little Robin hidden somewhere on each double page of the book – happy Robin spotting!

And finally a special thank you to my parents who put up with me working throughout our Cotswold holiday in the intense heat of the hottest days of the year – love you lots x

Thank you, Steven, for your incredible work! Radley’s The Twelve Days of Christmas is on sale now in Radley stores or from www.radley.co.uk.

Nosy Crow partners with Radley to create the company’s first book

We’re very pleased to announce that Nosy Crow has worked alongside Radley to create Radley’s Twelve Days of Christmas – a picture book featuring Radley, the loveable Scottie dog long-associated with the brand, and illustrated by Steven Lenton.

Radley’s Twelve Days of Christmas takes the reader on a story through the well-loved Christmas carol, The Twelve Days of Christmas, and its collaborative origins mirror the creation of The Snowman’s Journey – the picture book created by Nosy Crow from last year’s John Lewis Christmas advert, The Journey. The book is available exclusively in Radley stores and online at www.radley.co.uk with £2 from each book sold being donated to Kids Company, the charity founded by Camilla Batmanghelidjh to provide practical, emotional and educational support to vulnerable inner-city children.

Camila Batmanghelidjh, founder and Chief Executive of Kids Company, said: “I am extremely touched that the team at Radley has created such a beautiful book to help support our children. Sadly, for many children Christmas is not a time of joy but one of fear and loneliness. Every year at Kids Company we hold a party for over 4000 exceptionally vulnerable young people, providing them with a gift, a hot meal and the chance to have some festive fun. By buying this book you are giving the gift of a Christmas to remember to children who deserve to know we care.”

Xavier Simonet, CEO at Radley, comments: “We are delighted to announce the launch of our first ever book published in partnership with Nosy Crow, and are proud to be once again supporting the inspirational charity, Kids Company”

Kate says: “It’s been a real pleasure to work with Radley, taking them through the various stages of making a book for the first time. Radley contacted us because they’d heard about The Snowman’s Journey, the book we devised and published based on the 2012 John Lewis Christmas advertisement, and the idea of a contemporary twist on The Twelve Days of Christmas came to me in the course of our first telephone conversation. But it took Nosy Crow’s editorial director, Camilla Reid and head of design, Stephanie Amster, to give it proper shape. For the final illustrations, we were very happy to be able to commission dynamic new illustrator, Steven Lenton, whose first picture book, Shifty McGifty and Slippery Sam, we published earlier this year, on the basis of his combination of wit, charm and sophistication, and his love of dogs!”

Radley’s The Twelve Days of Christmas is on sale now in Radley stores or from www.radley.co.uk. You can watch a trailer for the book at the top of this post – and here’s the full cover and an “outtake” video:

Happy Hallowe'en!

We’ve posted lists of Hallowe’en reading in the past (here and here), but every year some great new books come along, and so we couldn’t resist the opportunity to share some more seasonal titles – here are our spookiest books from 2013…

We’ve published a third fantastic picture book in the Hubble Bubble series by Tracey Corderoy and Joe Berger – Spells-a-Popping, Granny’s Shopping. A trip to the supermarket is anything but ordinary for the little girl and her Granny, who may just be – whisper it – a witch. Granny just loves to magic everything along, and soon there are fish fingers flying everywhere! But when Pandora spots a couple of robbers up to no good, an extra-ordinary Granny is exactly what’s needed. Here’s a look inside:

AND we’ve also launched a young fiction series featuring the stars of the picture books, Pandora and her Granny. Perfect for newly independent readers, these heavily illustrated chapter books are full of fun, charm, excitement… and, of course, magic! Here’s chapter one of Hubble Bubble: The Glorious Granny Bake-Off, the first volume in the series, featuring three brand new stories:

This year we’ve also published the first paperback edition of Pip and Posy: The Scary Monster by Axel Scheffler. When Pip comes to Posy’s house wearing a scary monster mask, he gives Posy a bit of a fright. But when she works out it’s only Pip, she feels much better, and they share the biscuits she’s made. Hooray! Here’s a look inside:

And in 2013 we released the second volume in Christopher Edge’s phenomenal (and award-winning!) Twelve Minutes to Midnight trilogy – Shadows of the Silver Screen. A mysterious filmmaker approaches The Penny Dreadful with a proposal to turn Montgomery Flinch’s sinister stories into motion pictures. With Monty installed as the star of his production, filming begins but is plagued by a series of strange and frightening events. As Monty pleads with Penny to help him, she is drawn into the mystery, but soon finds herself trapped in a nightmare penned by her own hand. Can Penny uncover the filmmaker’s dark secret before it’s too late? Here’s the first chapter:

And there’s lots more great Hallowe’en reading in last year’s list, here, and 2011’s, here! If you’d like to stay up-to-date with all our book news (and be sure not to miss any of our themed recommendation lists), you can sign up to our monthly books newsletter here, and we’ll write to you about all of our upcoming titles, along with interviews with our authors and illustrators, information on upcoming events, and exclusive competitions and giveaways.

Happy Hallowe’en!

Twelve Minutes to Midnight is a Stockport School's Book Award winner!

I’m writing this, content and full of cooked breakfast, in my hotel room – just adjacent to the tea and coffee making facilities.

Christopher Edge has had a cooked breakfast, too – but he has an extra reason to feel content today… last night he won the Stockport School’s Book Award Key Stage 2 category with Twelve Minutes to Midnight!

The dress code was ‘Glamour’ – a bit of a push for me after 4 days without any post-storm power, but effortlessly carried off by Chris, who looked exceedingly dapper. And the venue was the Plaza Theatre, Stockport. And WHAT a venue. Recently completely restored – and staffed by – volunteers, it was every bit as glamorous as the beautifully dressed audience and organisers.

Winning authors were presented with artwork inspired by their books and all the shortlisted titles were presented perfectly and considerately by children.

Chris was obviously delighted with his award – and fantastic artwork – and in his speech told everyone about the first award he ever won – not 10 miles away from where we were sitting… and almost 30years ago. It was a prize for the most library books read – very fitting!

The key notes of Chris’s award acceptance speech, though, was the importance of reading for children and what it could do for them…where it would take them… the endless possibilities every book – and every reader – held. AND how pleased he was that the children themselves had voted for this award. A prize from children shows an author more clearly than anything that they’re doing something right – that all those children who pick up that book, wanting to be entertained/ scared/ excited/ made to laugh ARE. As indicated by Chris’s HUGE signing queue after the ceremony, where Shadows of The Silver Screen sold out.

It was such a fun evening – a brilliant blend of occasion and HEART – and many, many thanks and profound admiration go to Rachel Hodgson, Kay Olgivie and Wendy Griffths – and everyone at Stockport Schools Library Service.

Congratulations, Chris! If you’re new to the Twelve Minutes to Midnight trilogy, you can read chapter one of the first book below – the final book in the series, The Black Crow Conspiracy, will be published in January and is available to pre-order now.



Buy Twelve Minutes to Midnight online.

A brand new novelty series for 2014!

We’re launching a fantastic new novelty series in January – the Can You Say It Too? books, illustrated by Sebastien Braun.

As all parents know, little children LOVE making animal sounds. So a flap book in which they can spot an animal’s tail, lift the flap to reveal the complete creature, and then make its noise is guaranteed to be a winner!

The first two volumes (pictured above) will be Can You Say It Too? Moo! Moo! and Can You Say It Too? Woof! Woof! – both published in January.

Here’s a look at the first two spreads of Moo! Moo! (use the arrow to scroll):

And here’s the brilliant final spread, with an ingenious DOUBLE flap (use the arrow to scroll):

Pre-order Moo! Moo! online.

Here’s a look at the first two spreads of Woof! Woof!

And here’s the final spread, complete with another brilliant double flap:

Pre-order Woof! Woof! online.

With charming, friendly artwork, sturdy flaps, and simple texts, these are fantastic first books – great for sharing with children who are just starting to talk.

The Paper Watch Project

Today’s guest post is by Benji Davies, illustrator for the Bizzy Bear books.

This is The Mousaraja, riding atop his trunk-faced steed. He is an important, busy mouse and keeping good time is essential to his travels (tours of duty and so forth) to ensure that a cheese break is never missed. He is also part of my design for Templar Publishing’s Paper Watch Project.

The project, conceived and curated by Templar’s Emma O’Donovan, calls on the pencil pushing, scissor wielding skills of over 80 artists who were invited to create a watch design based on a simple customisable paper watch. Over the next week these hand-crafted and illustrated pieces are being auctioned online via ebay to raise money for Breast Cancer Care.

Here’s Emma explaination for how it came about:

In the past 12 months two incredibly inspirational members of the Templar Publishing team were diagnosed with breast cancer. Both of these incredible women are responding well to treatment so in recognition of their recovery we have decided to raise money for Breast Cancer Care.

As publishers of an array of award-winning children’s books, we decided what better way to raise some funds in a creative and exciting way but to call on volunteers from a wealth of illustrative contacts. We decided that blank paper watches would be a great platform to showcase the amazing talent of some of the countries most well loved illustrators – The elaborately designed watches will be auctioned on-line to help us achieve our goal of raising £5000.

There are over eighty one-off designs to bid on, each one an original and unique piece of art, that respond to the brief’s call to ‘be creative and have fun’. A diverse array of talents and styles are on show, including Emma Lewis’ witty analogue time-piece, Leilah Skelton’s cleverly accessorised knitted alien and the dizzy heights of, no less, an impromptu Shaun Tan doodle.

For my own design I utilised the paper watches die-cut shape to form a starting point, an elephants trunk, and took this idea for a walk as I progressed up the blank canvas of the rest of the watch – I did this all in my sketchbook first. I am no stranger to real paper and paint but I do work almost exclusively digitally for my children’s book illustration. So it was pressurising to work under the constraints of a one-off piece, on paper that I wasn’t familiar with and only had one attempt to get it right. Its always a surprise when you lay down paint and then want to tweak the colours but find that you’re already committed, or when the ink pen you’re using bleeds into the grain of the paper, that no amount of blotting with a screwed up tissue is going to pull it back! So the process was not without its challenges but to behold a tangible three-dimensional piece of artwork is nonetheless rewarding. The fact that I was able to create it in service of the project’s charitable aims, even more so.

You can read about the whole project, including a gallery of the full auction line up, here, and on Twitter with the #paperwatchproject hashtag. The auction includes work from Alex T Smith, Steven Lenton, Holly Surplice, Tor Freeman, Katharine McEwen, Chris Mould, Mark Chambers and many, many more. I ask you to make yourself a cuppa and take a couple of minutes out of your morning to peruse the spectrum of brilliant work on show – and maybe make a bid – for this very worthy cause.

Picture This: Children's Illustrated Classics

Currently on at the British Library in the Folio Society Gallery, the Picture This: Children’s Illustrated Classics exhibition is a compact but wonderful exhibition about children’s book illustration. It covers ten children’s classics from the 20th century and displays various illustrated publications of each of the ten titles. It includes The Hobbit, The Wind in the Willows, The Secret Garden and Paddington Bear. There’s a selection of original artwork, reproductions, books and as well as several video interviews with some of the illustrators involved.

Some of my personal highlights were the original woodblock and a print of Andrew Davidson’s cover for ‘The Iron Man’ by Ted Hughes, a few Paddington Bears side by side and a beautiful piece by David Roberts from a fairly recent edition of The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame (below). He is one of the illustrators talking on film in the exhibition, in which he explains more about his approach to illustrating such a well-known classic, and Gustav’s Klimt’s influence on the stunning patterned wallpapers in the artwork for the book.

I always find it fascinating to see how and what each illustrator chooses to interpret or highlight in a text, and this exhibition allows the audience to compare a range of approaches to very familiar tales. There are the inevitable recurring images across editions, though each approach feels unique and exciting. Highly recommended if you get the chance!

The Picture This: Children’s Illustrated Classics exhibition runs until January 26th at the British Library, and entry is free.

The Mega Mash-Up books have grown!

Earlier this year we wrote about a big new format for our Magical Mix-Ups series – fantastic combinations of fiction and doodle books, with real stories, great characters, and lots of drawing involved.

And we were so pleased with the extra-large format that we’ve extended it to our Mega Mash-Up books – the equally brilliant books that were the inspiration for the sister series – as well!

In January we’ll be publishing Mega Mash-Up: Romans v Dinosaurs on Mars by Nikalas Catlow and Tim Wesson, the first of the Mega Mash-Up books, in this brilliant A4 format – and copies have just arrived in the office! The picture at the top of this post gives you an idea of the scale comparison with the existing Mega Mash-Up books.

In Romans v Dinosaurs on Mars, Romans and Dinosaurs live together in a huge glass dome called Romasauria. They race their rocket chariots and feast on Moon-Cow and chips… until life on Mars is threatened by a Giant Asteroid. Will a wooden catapult and some Dinosaur poo save the day? You’ll have to finish the illustrations to find out:

Packed with humour, great stories, and AMAZING mash-ups of perenially popular topics, these books are perfect for keeping young children (and especially boys) busy on journeys, during the holidays, on a rainy day, or over a weekend. So let your creativity run wild in this new extra-large edition, and help save life on Mars!

Here’s a video of Nikalas and Tim drawing Maximus Victorious, one of the stars of the book:

Mega Mash-Up: Romans v Dinosaurs on Mars is available to pre-order now.