Nosy Crow's Blog, page 28

Orion Lost has been shortlisted for the 2021 Waterstones Children’s Book Prize

Today the shortlists for the 2021 Waterstones Children’s Book Prize have been announced, and I am absolutely delighted that Orion Lost, the debut novel by Alastair Chisholm, has been recognised in the Younger Readers category.

It is an incredible prize for any book to be shortlisted for – and never more so than now, after a year of bookshops being closed, with all of the challenges around visibility that this has created for debut novels like Orion Lost (which published in January of last year – just a few months before the start of the first lockdown).

But I’m also especially happy that Orion Lost in particular has been shortlisted, for other, non pandemic-related reasons, too.

There is a sort of received wisdom in children’s publishing that science fiction can be a bit of a tough sell – that there isn’t as much of a market for it as there is for other genres; that it’s too niche. If you subject this idea to any sort of scrutiny it doesn’t really make an enormous amount of sense: why shouldn’t sci fi sell, given its enormous successes in other areas of our culture like film and television? Why does it face such a different fate to, for instance, fantasy – a perennially popular (and hugely competitive) genre of children’s fiction? I suspect, to be honest, that it has become a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Before I acquired Orion Lost, though, I was as guilty as anyone else of believing this myth. When I received it on submission from Alastair’s agent, Caroline, I was initially hesitant – I read the pitch and found myself asking ‘Will this sell?’ and ‘Who is its audience?’ But any skepticism I might have had for the subject matter was immediately overcome as soon as I started reading the story – and once I’d started, I simply could not (please forgive the awfully overused cliche) put it down.

It is an unbelievably gripping, fast-paced, and exciting story, and while it has all of the ingredients of classic science fiction – spaceships, aliens, A.I., light-speed travel – it’s told in a way that feels completely contemporary, hugely accessible, and with genuinely broad appeal. And at its heart it is absolutely a human story. One of the things that Alastair does brilliantly, I think, is to use all of the elements and conventions of the genre as a vehicle to explore big ideas and tell stories that are fundamentally about people and human nature. I remember being struck by something Nosy Crow’s senior sales manager, Frances, said to me after she’d read it: that if you stripped out all of the science fiction elements (the space travel, the aliens), it would still work as a story, because the human element – the story of the relationships between the characters and the journey they go on – is so compelling.

And the other thing that I usually tell people when I recommend Orion Lost is that it has what are – and I say this with no hyperbole – some of the best twists I have ever read in a submission. And not just one twist! There are *multiple* moments in the story that come as such brilliant, unexpected surprises that (apologies for a second overused cliche) when I first read them I did actual gasps-out-loud. They are the sort of brilliantly devised, rug-pulling reveals that as a reader you’d normally be delighted to find once in a book – and Alastair delivers at least three of them.

So, this is the book that made me a convert to middle grade science fiction. And I knew, when I was working on it with Alastair and after it had been published, that we might still have something of an uphill battle in front of us: that convincing people to pick up this book and take a chance on something different might be a challenge (and that was before the pandemic…). But the thing I was even more certain of was that as soon as people did pick it up, they’d be sold, just like I was – that if we could just get it in front of readers, then Alastair’s brilliant story would do the rest. It’s a book that I knew would rely on word-of-mouth recommendation – and from booksellers in particular.

Very gratifyingly, thanks to Nosy Crow’s brilliant sales, marketing and publicity teams, that’s exactly what we started to see once the book was out in the world – in all of the reviews for the book, on social media, from booksellers, bloggers, teachers and librarians, and in The Times, where it was named Children’s Book of the Week. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve read some version of, “This isn’t the sort of thing I’d usually pick up, but I loved it.” And then, of course, Covid hit, and bookshops closed, and suddenly, opportunities to get debut novels like Orion Lost in front of readers – books that would normally rely so heavily on the passion and knowledge and enthusiasm of informed booksellers – shrank dramatically.

And that is why I am so delighted that the book has now been shortlisted for this prize: because it means that Waterstones booksellers up and down the country will be recommending it to more and more readers, giving those readers the opportunity to discover something completely new, and allowing Orion Lost to find the audience that I have always hoped for it.

You can find out more about the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize, and read all of the shortlists, here – and you can take a look inside Orion Lost below:

And you can also listen to a preview of the audiobook edition of Orion Lost here:

You can buy Orion Lost from Waterstones here.

The winners of the prize will be announced on Thursday, July 1 – congratulations, Alastair, and good luck!

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Early praise for Otherland

Earlier this month we published Otherland – a darkly funny, action-packed new fantasy adventure, from the highly acclaimed author of The Dragon in the Library series, Louie Stowell, with cover art by George Ermos.

And we’ve been thrilled by the responses to the book so far – here’s what some people have said about Otherland:

“It’s funny, it’s kind, it’s warm, it’s adventurous, it’s brilliantly written!” – Maz Evans, author of the Who Let the Gods Out series

“Otherland is fizzing. Jokes and gods and lashings of wicked multi-coloured magic.” – Hilary McKay, author of The Skylarks’ War

“This book is fantastic and anyone who reads it will be whizzed away on an amazing adventure!” – Katherine Webber Tsang, author of Dragon Mountain

“Entirely fresh and funny, and all so cleverly woven and written. I flew through it and giggled a lot…” – Nicola Penfold, author of Where the World Turns Wild

“Otherland is a hugely uplifting and fun story, with two adorably different protagonists from diverse backgrounds and fairies as you’ve never met them before; absolutely badass and hilarious.” – A. M. Dassu, author of Boy, Everywhere

“It feels retro and nostalgic, with an edge of something unsettling – like a weird dream, in the best possible way!” – Lauren Ellen Anderson, author of the Amelia Fang series

“I absolutely adored this book by. So funny & pacey & knowing and the storyline is absolutely WILD – felt like a modern-day Lewis Carroll. Highly recommend for readers age 8+.” – Nicola Skinner, author of Bloom

If you haven’t discovered Otherland, you can read the opening chapters of the book below:

Otherland is available now – you can order a copy from Waterstones here, Bookshop.org, a local independent bookshop supporter here, and from Amazon here.

And here’s a preview of the audiobook edition:

Buy the audiobook.

If you’d like to stay up-to-date with all of our latest book news, including early previews, giveaways and more, you can sign up for our books newsletter here.

 

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Take a look inside A Monster Ate My Packed Lunch – a brand new book in the Baby Aliens series by Pamela Butchart

This July we’re very excited to be publishing A Monster Ate My Packed Lunch – a brand new book in the hilarious Baby Aliens series, from Blue Peter Award winners, Pamela Butchart and Thomas Flintham.

And today we’re sharing an early preview of the book – you can read the first few chapters below!

Izzy and her friends are on a school trip to a big lake. Gary Petrie is excited because the lodges where they’re staying have ROBES AND SLIPPERS! The lake is dark and deep and a bit scary. But it’s when they open their packed lunches that they know! There’s a MONSTER in the lake and it’s coming for their CRISPS!

Take a look inside:

A Monster Ate My Packed Lunch will be out July 1st – you can pre-order a copy from Waterstones here, Bookshop.org here, or from Amazon here. If you haven’t picked up the brilliant Baby Aliens series yet, you can discover the books here.

Don’t forget to sign up to our books newsletter here for our latest news, awards, exclusive previews, giveaways and more.

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Nosy Crow is awarded BIC Excellence Award for 2021-22

We are tremendously happy to announce that we have gained a BIC Excellence Award for 2021-2022! This means that our customers all over the world, whether they are online or traditional brick-and-mortar stores, can rest assured that the information we are providing about all of our books is of an extremely high standard.

BIC (Book Industry Communication) are the organisation that create and regulate dependable standards across the publishing industry and ensure that all publishers are providing clear, data-rich, timely information across the supply chain.

One vital aspect of this process is the regulation of metadata; the bibliographic data we provide about all of our books to Nielsen Book Data and our retailers. From publication date and price, to cover images and synopses, all are vital pieces of information for both our retailers and the end consumer.

But what is metadata, you may well ask? Essentially it means data about data. It might not sound as exciting as editing a book or designing a front cover but without this basic information about our books – how much they cost, when they are published or whether they are hardback or paperback – retailers wouldn’t have the information they need to be able to sell our books and consumers wouldn’t be able to make considered purchasing decisions.

When most people think about the publishing process, metadata is probably not always at the forefront of their minds. However, as we move into an increasingly digital marketplace (of which the current pandemic has only accelerated) having enhanced metadata has become even more vital than ever.

Here at the Crow’s Nest, we are committed to providing the highest standard of data to all our customers into 2022 and beyond. And we think that’s very exciting.

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Take a look inside Make Tracks: Building Site

Earlier this month we published Make Tracks: Building Site, the second book in this interactive board book series for toddlers, illustrated by Johnny Dyrander!

In this new book, little ones can discover five different building site vehicles, from cranes to diggers, learn the vocabulary then move the vehicles along the tracks. With simple first words, clear diagrams and helpful text prompts, this book is perfect for encouraging discussion and learn while having fun!

You can watch a video preview of the book below:

Make Tracks: Building Site is out now – you can buy a copy from Waterstones here, Bookshop.org here, or Amazon here. You can find out more about the first book in the series, Make Tracks: Farm, here.

If you’d like to stay up-to-date with all of our latest book news, including early previews, giveaway and more, you can sign up to our newsletter here.

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Early praise for The Life and Time of Lonny Quicke

This month we published The Life and Time of Lonny Quicke – a brilliant new novel about family, secrets and terrible power, from the highly-acclaimed author of TrooFriend and The Middler, Kirsty Applebaum.

And today we’re very pleased to share these outstanding early reviews!

Lonny is a lifeling. He has the power to heal any living creature and bring it back from the dead. But he pays a price for this gift – by lengthening the creature’s life, he shortens his own. So Lonny has to be careful, has to stay hidden in the forest. Because if people knew what he could do, Lonny would be left with no life at all…

A gripping, atmospheric and heartfelt new story for readers aged 9-12, The Life and Time of Lonny Quicke is perfect for fans of Malorie Blackman, Meg Rosoff, and Frances Hardinge.

“A modern-day fairytale with a unique voice and fantastic folkloric premise.” – Peter Bunzl, author of Cogheart

“I declare it, it’s a masterpiece!…Genius idea, beautifully, wonderfully told. I couldn’t have enjoyed it any more.” –Nicola Penfold, author of Where the World Turns Wild

“Tense and twisty, The Life and Time of Lonny Quicke is masterfully written. A page-turner with a unique and intriguing premise… This is going on my ‘keep forever’ shelves.” – Julie Pike, author of The Last Spell Breather

Read the first few chapters below:

The Life and Time of Lonny Quicke is out now – you can order a copy form Waterstones here, Amazon here, or from the Nosy Crow website here.

Don’t forget to sign up to our newsletter here to be the first to know about our new books, early previews, giveaways and much more.

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Nosy Crow wins two Nibbies at the 2021 British Book Awards

Last night Nosy Crow won two Nibbies – two British Book Awards, which get their nickname from the trophies given to winners that are in the shape of golden nibs.

We won one for Export (for companies with an export sales value of under £10 million). It’s the second time we’ve won this award – we won it last year too. It’s another validation, though, honestly, none is needed, of our successful building of an export department led by Catherine Stokes, Nosy Crow’s head of sales and marketing, over the last few years. I hope that Catherine won’t mind me saying that, before we moved export in-house (previously, we’d used a couple of external agencies) she had had no direct experience of export (though a lot of experience of UK selling), but she couldn’t have thrown herself into her new responsibility with greater vigour or commitment, travelling the world – when such things were possible! – to learn markets and build relationships. That intensive work stood us in such good stead in the course of the last year, while meeting face-to-face with our customers has been impossible. We are so grateful for their support and enthusiasm for the books we make. We are also particularly grateful for the hard work and advice of Peter Newsom, an export sales consultant, to whom we hung on for as long as we could, though we now have an in-house specialist, Damon Greeney, as our export manager, who started at the beginning of 2021. Maddie Price has been an invaluable support throughout too.

The Bookseller reports that Nosy Crow “won the prize for Export (under £10m) for the second time in a row ‘after another exceptional year of exports’, judges said. The indie’s decision to switch to direct management of exports paid off significantly in 2020, its 10th anniversary year. It added more than £1m to overseas sales despite the massive disruption of the Covid-19 pandemic”.

We won another Nibbie for Rights Team of the Year. For the first time, the judges split the rights professional of the year prize between an individual winner and a team. That we won as a team is a reflection of the way that so many of Nosy Crow’s sales are made. A lot of our books are full-colour books – baby board books, picture books and illustrated non-fiction – and the way that they become financially viable is for us to be able to put together print runs and reprint runs from all over the world, so a co-ordinated approach is critical: it’s no good to sell a book to a German publisher for delivery in May and to the Netherlands in July – you have to get both publishers to compromise on a June delivery and you’ve got to work together with your rights colleagues to reach that compromise.

The Bookseller reports that “the Nosy Crow rights team of Michela Pea, Erin Murgatroyd and Núria Martí Pampalona and Lucy Dunnet enjoyed ‘another stellar year of international trading’ and were dubbed ‘a rights machine’ by judges. A Covid strategy of focusing on core customers and co-edition deals and exploiting the backlist was successful, also establishing several dozen new partnerships. Judges noted that the award also belongs to Nosy Crow’s rights manager Ola Gotkowska.”

We are very proud that Camilla Reid was again shortlisted for Editor of the Year, particularly given that the pre-school books that she creates with illustrators were such drivers of the success of the export and rights teams, and so contributed hugely to those wins. We are also proud that, as a company, Nosy Crow was shortlisted for Children’s Publisher of the Year, an award we won in both 2017 and 2019.

While it wasn’t an evening of control underwear and pinchy-toed high-heels at the Dorchester, we felt we have much to celebrate in our 10th birthday year, and we hope that we’ll be able to do so in the coming months.

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The Life and Time of Lonny Quicke is now available as an audiobook

Today we’re delighted to share a brand new audiobook edition of The Life and Time of Lonny Quicke – the brilliant new novel from Kirsty Applebaum, author of The Middler, about family, secrets and a terrible power.

And today you can listen to a preview of the new audiobook edition, beautifully read by David Dawson.

Lonny is a lifeling. He has the power to heal any living creature and bring it back from the dead. But he pays a price for this gift – by lengthening the creature’s life, he shortens his own. So Lonny has to be careful, has to stay hidden in the forest. Because if people knew what he could do, Lonny would be left with no life at all…

You can buy the audiobook of The Life and Time of Lonny Quicke from Audible, Amazon, and Apple now – and you can listen to a preview of the audiobook below:

Buy the audiobook.

And you can also read the opening of the book below:

You can buy the print edition of The Life and Time of Lonny Quicke from Blackwells (where the book is currently Children’s Book of the Month) here, from Waterstones here, and from Amazon here.

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How Lonny Quicke came to be – A guest post by Kirsty Applebaum

This month we’re delighted to have published The Life and Time of Lonny Quicke – a gripping new novel of secrets, family and terrible power, from the acclaimed author of The Middler and TrooFriend, Kirsty Applebaum.

And today we’re very pleased to share a guest post by Kirsty on where this new story came from, which you can read below.

—

The Life and Time of Lonny Quicke tells the story of a boy faced with an incredibly difficult situation. There are no simple answers, no straightforward solutions. He just has to keep moving forward, taking the decisions that seem best to him at the time.

The story began as an entry for a competition back in 2014, to write the opening of a children’s book. I had recently read Blake Snyder’s screenwriting guide Save the Cat, which recommends having a scene early on in your story showing the protagonist performing an act of kindness, to get the audience on-side. I decided to try it. Instead of saving a cat though, my protagonist saved a dying rabbit – with just a touch of his hand.

I’m happy to say my entry won first prize, but at that point, I had no idea whether it could grow into a full-length story. I let it sit in the back of my mind for three years while I completed my MA and wrote my first children’s novel, The Middler.

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When The Middler was complete, I returned to my magical, rabbit-saving boy. And it turned out my mind had performed that astounding trick the subconscious can sometimes do, given the seed of a creative idea and a little bit of time: it had woven a network of themes, images and concepts that might just possibly come together to create a story.

It was clear, for example, that life was a central theme. This led me to investigate May festivals – celebrations of life’s renewal in springtime – and to consider imagining a whole new festival of my own.

The magical, folkish feel of the original scene had cemented itself in my mind. It connected with memories of much-loved fairy tales from my childhood and enchanting real-life locations, including my own home town of Winchester with its rich history and ancient gated walls.

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The mixture of fantasy and contemporary life in the original scene triggered memories of the Cottingley fairy photographs – beautiful, faked pictures created by two Victorian girls, depicting themselves with fairies in their garden.

As a young teenager, I’d not only loved the pictures, I’d also been gripped by the idea that some people had really believed in them – which led me to wonder what it might be like to really have a magical, fairy-tale power? Would it be a gift or a curse?

My rabbit-saving boy idea also fused itself to something else in my mind – my desire to write a book involving stories within stories. Some of my favourite novels have used this technique – including Holes by Louis Sachar and my favourite childhood book, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar by Roald Dahl.

I wanted to do this myself – embed shorter stories in a longer text, creating connections and anticipation in the reader’s mind as they progress through the novel.

I also wanted to write a book in which the circumstances were the true cause of the protagonist’s problems, rather than evil or wicked adversary. I felt strongly that this might be the right story for that concept. Yes, I wanted to put all of these things into my new book – no problem, right?

In the meantime, the brilliant Nosy Crow had bought The Middler as part of a two-book deal and they wanted my unwritten book about the rabbit-saving boy for my second novel. Hurrah! I set to work.

I researched. I wrote. I decided it was all rubbish and started again.
I researched. I wrote. I decided it was all rubbish and started again.
I researched. I wrote. I decided it was all rubbish and started again.
It became clear that I’d got myself into an incredibly difficult situation.
My publisher had bought the book.
But the book was completely unwritable.
Arrrrrrgh.
ARRRRRRRRRRRRGH.

I became a total expert at occupying myself with absolutely anything other than the story I was supposed to be writing. Peak displacement activity was reached when I wrote a whole different book instead: TrooFriend. It was about a robot. Not a rabbit-saving boy insight.

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Happily, Nosy Crow loved TrooFriend. They decided to publish it as my second novel and gave me an extra year in which to complete The Life and Time of Lonny Quicke. So I got back to work. There was nowhere to run this time. Like Lonny, I just had to keep moving forward. There were no simple answers; no straightforward solutions. The story could go in a thousand different directions – I just had to find a way that worked for me.

And – eventually – I did manage to grow a story from that original scene. I built a world inspired by spring festivals, fairy tales and the ancient walled city I grew up in. I created my own folk stories and embedded them into the book. I put Lonny into a horrendous situation, instead of confronting him with an evil adversary. Finally, I’d found my way through.

And this, at its heart, is what The Life and Time of Lonny Quicke is all about. Sometimes life throws us problems that have no single, straightforward solution. We just have to find a path through that works for us. That’s what I did while writing this book, and that’s what Lonny does too. Faced with an incredibly difficult situation, he just keeps moving forward, taking the decisions that seem best to him at the time. And – eventually – he finds his way through.

—

Thank you, Kirsty!

The Life and Time of Lonny Quicke, currently Blackwell’s Children’s Book of the Month, is available now – you can order a copy from Blackwell’s here, Waterstones here, or Amazon here.

Read the first few chapters below:

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Watch the trailer for The Secret Detectives by Ella Risbridger

Next month we’re very excited to be publishing The Secret Detectives by Ella Risbridger – a hugely gripping historical mystery, inspired by The Secret Garden and the golden age of crime writing, from an incredible new voice in children’s fiction.

And today we’re sharing the official trailer for the book!

When Isobel Petty is orphaned, she finds herself being taken away from her home in India and sent to live with a distant uncle in England. Onboard the S.S. Mariana, she witnesses a shocking act – somebody being thrown overboard in the middle in the night. But when the ship’s captain insists that nobody is missing, Isobel and her two new reluctant friends must solve two mysteries – the identities of both the murderer and the victim – before they reach England and the culprit has the chance to escape.

Read the first chapter of the book here:

The Secret Detectives will be in bookshops, and available online, in June – you can order a copy from Waterstones here, Bookshop.org here, or Amazon here.

If you’d like to stay up-to-date with all of our book news, including early previews, award news, giveaways and more, you can sign up here.

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