Nosy Crow's Blog, page 35

The Suitcase and What Will You Dream of Tonight? named two of the Best Children’s Books of 2020

We are hugely appreciative of all of the support that we receive, from the smallest indie to the biggest corporate. We are particularly grateful for this in 2020, when unprecedented circumstances have caused a lot of uncertainty for the future of the book industry, but the support we’ve received has left us feeling resilient and hopeful for the year to come.

And we were delighted to discover that Nosy Crow’s The Suitcase (written and illustrated by Chris Naylor-Ballesteros, for which we sold rights to US publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) and What Will You Dream of Tonight? (written by Frances Stickley and illustrated by Anuska Allepuz, for which we sold rights to Candlewick) have been listed amongst Amazon’s Best Children’s Books of 2020 in the US. This means that out of all of the children’s books published in the US, Amazon’s editors have selected the top 20 books of the year for readers of all ages (0-12), and, out of that 20 books, two were originated by Nosy Crow. We know that the editors putting together the Amazon selection have exposure to a huge range of books, and are informed by all the commercial savvy that having access to all of Amazon’s data at your fingertips would give you so for these two books to be recognised by such an enormous and influential retailer in the US with such an extraordinary strike rate, especially at a time when online selling is becoming ever more important, is an amazing accolade to have received.

It was interesting to see that, as far as we are aware, The Suitcase and What Will You Dream of Tonight? are the only two books that originate from the UK, with all other titles originating from the US. This is a great testament to Chris, Frances and Anuska’s ability to impress on both sides of the pond, and we are incredibly proud to be creating books with such international appeal.

Here’s what US reviewers have been saying about The Suitcase:

“A heartwarming lesson in empathy and kindness.”—Kirkus, STARRED review

“This picture book packs an emotional wallop for anyone who has sought a new life in a new land, delivering a powerful lesson on treating newcomers with kindness.”—Booklist

“Naylor’s designs truly bring life to the text, while the emotions of all the animals, especially the exhaustion of the stranger, is evident as they work through their feelings and come to understand one another. An accessible, beautiful story of trust and acceptance for every collection.”—School Library Journal

And here are the Amazon Editors’ comments on What Will You Dream of Tonight?:

“With all the hallmarks of a classic bedtime book… Stickley’s soothing text and Allepuz’s color palate pair perfectly for a reassuring story that can be read night after night.”—Amazon Editors

These books have struck a chord all over the world, and here are some excellent reviews for both titles within the UK:

The Suitcase

“A simple, powerful way to introduce the idea of kindness to strangers to young children” Axel Scheffler

“At a time when over 65 million people are forcibly displaced around the world, this beautifully illustrated and wise, gentle tale of tolerance and kindness for fellow humans resonates deeply. I hope all parents share The Suitcase with their children.” Khaled Hosseini

“One of the most empathetic children’s books on giving kindness to strangers ever published.” New Statesman

What Will You Dream of Tonight?

“A lulling, reassuring rhyming read magically unfolds as we explore dreams yet to be dreamt. Unlock a whole world of wonder just in time for bed.” – Baby Magazine

“Children, especially young children, spend about half their lives asleep. Reminding them that sleep is a magical and adventurous place is important and this rhyme is not only reassuring but also empowering. A fabulous text with beautiful illustrations”. – Book Murmuration

It’s also worth saying that We Love Dinosaurs (by Lucy Volpin, for which we sold rights to Candlewick) was selected in the category Baby – Age 2, which means that it made it into the top 100 best children’s books chosen by Amazon.com.

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Take a look inside The Wizard in the Wood

Next month we’re thrilled to be publishing The Wizard in the Wood – the funny, magical and action-packed third adventure in The Dragon in the Library series, by Louie Stowell. And today we’re sharing an early preview – you can read the first few chapters below!

Kit, Josh and Alita are heading back to school – and they’re excited to discover that they’re getting a brand new library, which also means getting their own wizard librarian… and a dragon! But when something VERY BAD happens at the new library, it’s up to Kit and her friends to save the world one more time.

Take a look inside the book:

The Wizard in the Wood will be published on January 14th – you can pre-order a copy of the book from Waterstones here, Amazon here, and Hive here.

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

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Take a look inside The Broken Leg of Doom – the brand new book from Pamela Butchart and Thomas Flintham

In January we’re very excited to be publishing The Broken Leg of Doom – a new addition to the hilarious Baby Aliens series, by the award-winning duo, Pamela Butchart and Thomas Flintham.

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

When a session of extreme dancing leaves Maisie in hospital with a broken leg, things take a turn for the weird! Strange noises in the ward at night, missing cuddly toys and a sandwich trolley that only ever has TUNA sandwiches. Could Maisie’s leg be CURSED? If it is, and it DEFINITELY IS, then everything is DOOMED!

Read an extract below:

The Broken Leg of Doom is out in January – you can pre-order a copy from Waterstones here, Amazon here, and Hive here. If you’d like to stay up-to-date with all of our book news, you can sign up to our newsletter here and you’ll never miss a thing.

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Reflections on Coronavirus: A Book for Children about Covid 19

Today a big parcel arrived. It was a perfectly wrapped award – our FutureBook 2020 Best of Lockdown: Book award, which we won for Coronavirus: A Book for Children about Covid 19.

Nosy Crow published the first edition of this free digital book for children on April 6 2020 under a creative commons licence – a first, we think, for trade publishing – which means that anyone can share and re-upload it, as long as they don’t alter it. It’s been viewed and downloaded 1.5 million times from the Nosy Crow website, but is hosted on countless other sites, so we don’t actually know how often it’s been read.

It’s been translated into 63 languages, including 3 different sign languages – our only conditions were that no edition should make a profit for the publisher, and that it would be translated faithfully, and any alterations to reflect local conditions and restrictions would be cleared with us.

It was updated – with new information and illustrations to reflect changes in understanding and regulations (so, for example, we have more people wearing masks in it now) – on July 23, when Nosy Crow also published a not-for-profit £1.99 print version, with £1 from each copy going to the NHS. So far, we’ve sold 45,000 print copies.

The idea of the book was conceived on March 17, just 3 weeks before publication, after I had a conversation with a friend who is a London head teacher, who spoke of confusion and distress among the children in her primary school. We wanted to make a book that would inform and, as far as possible, reassure, as many children as possible. The book was written in-house by Elizabeth Jenner, Nia Roberts and me at weekends and in the evenings, because we were also managing the transition of the business to working from home – now something so automatic that it is hard to remember how challenging and traumatic it was at first!

Axel Scheffler agreed to illustrate it within minutes of being asked at 8.22am on March 18. I Googled the email address of Professor Graham Medley at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, who I’d heard interviewed on the BBC, and, after a nail-biting silence, he agreed to act as scientific consultant. Two head teachers and a deputy head acted as educational consultants, and Dr Sarah Carman, of the Evangelina Hospital attached to St Thomas’s, acted as consultant from a child psychology perspective: we wanted to be sure not only that the science was right, but that we got the balance between reassurance and a recognition of an unhappy set of realities right, too.

We persuaded a leading newswire service to publicise the book for free, and Axel and I were widely interviewed by online and traditional press, regional and national UK TV and radio, and by Australian and US news channels including ABC.

The response from users (look at Amazon) and the many critics who have drawn attention to the book has been unanimously positive. School Library Journal gave the book a starred review:

“A diverse cast, a global stage, practical and expert advice, along with friendly, accessible illustrations by Scheffler make this free digital download a must-have in the home or collection of everyone on the planet. In an NHS-endorsed project, Jenner, Wilson, and Roberts start with what we know right now about this virus, why it matters, how it is spread, what children can do, and how they can help. This part is a revelation, with everything from being kind to siblings also stuck at home, understanding that parents may not be available if they are working from home, that isolation is necessary, and that it may come with sadness and worry. Then the authors offer advice for what a child can do with this fear. This is a generous, straightforward, and necessary text; by showing people of all races, every age, all abilities or challenges, Scheffler’s cartoons, replete with asides in speech bubbles, smooth the facts and underscore the message that we can get through this.

An elegant, effective work. Download this now, read it immediately, share it with everyone you know. An educated citizenry is our best hope.”

The bottom line is that we are proud of many things we’ve done during the coronavirus crisis (and I wrote about some of them here), but the most tangible thing we are proud of is this book.

As Professor Graham Medley tweeted: “TFW you spend a few hours discussing draft manuscripts and it turns out to be, perhaps, the most significant thing you ever did. Thank you @NosyCrow for giving me the opportunity to contribute.”

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FloodWorld shortlisted for the Brilliant Book Awards

We’re delighted that FloodWorld, by Tom Huddleston, has been shortlisted for the Brilliant Book Awards!

Managed by Nottinghamshire Education Library Service and The Bookcase, the Brilliant Book Award is an annual award voted for by Key Stage 3 students schools across the county. The award aims to promote reading for pleasure, raise awareness of children’s literature, and recognise excellence as well as popularity.

Here’s what people have said about FloodWorld:

“This fast-paced futuristic adventure story set in a sunken, post-climate change London feels like a blockbuster movie in waiting.” – TimeOut

“An action-packed, edge-of-the-seat thriller.” – BookTrust

“Beautifully written, fantastically timely, and utterly addictive. We cannot recommend this one highly enough.” – Read it Daddy! (blog)

Kara and Joe spend their days navigating the perilous waterways of a sunken city, scratching out a living in the ruins. But when they come into possession of a mysterious map, they find themselves in a world of trouble. Suddenly everyone’s after them: gangsters, cops and ruthless Mariner pirates in their hi-tech submarines. The two children must find a way to fight back before FloodWorld’s walls come tumbling down…

Read the first chapter:



Buy a copy.

You listen to a preview of the audiobook here:

You can find out more about the Brilliant Book Awards, and see the full shortlist, here. The winners will be announced in March, shortly after students vote.

Congratulations, Tom!

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The Suitcase has won a 2020 English 4-11 Picture Book Award

The winners of the 2020 English 4-11 Picture Book Awards were announced yesterday – and we’re delighted that The Suitcase, by Chris Naylor-Ballesteros has won in the Fiction 4 – 7 years category!

Established in 1995, the awards are presented by the English Association to the best children’s picture books of the year. Awards are given in fiction and non-fiction categories across various age groups, judged by a panel of teachers, primary school children and Primary specialists. It’s an honour to have this book recognised!

The judges said: “This gentle and genuinely moving picture book is a story of new beginnings… It is about opening both our hearts and our minds… This is a powerful and important book which, due to its apparent simplicity and synchronicity of text and illustration, is accessible to all.”

Written in response to the refugee crisis, The Suitcase is a touching tale about the importance of kindness, understanding and friendship. When a strange-looking animal arrives pulling a big suitcase, the other animals are curious. What on earth could be inside that suitcase? A teacup? Maybe. A table and chair? Perhaps. A whole home and hillside with trees? But when the animals break into the suitcase and discover a very special photograph, they begin to understand what the strange creature has been through…

Take a look inside the book:



Buy the book.

And watch Chris reading the book below:

You can find out more about the English Picture Book Awards winners, and read the full review of The Suitcase, here.

Congratulations Chris!

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Two Nosy Crow books recognised at the 2020 Creative Play Awards!

We’re thrilled to announce that two Nosy Crow books have been recognised at this year’s Creative Play Awards! National Trust: Getting Ready for Spring, by Kathryn Selbert, has won the Children’s Book 0-5 category, and Building a Home, written by Polly Faber and illustrated by Klas Fahlén, is the Highly Commended entry in the same category.

Now in their thirteenth year, the awards are run by Creative Steps magazine to recognise the best creative play products and resources. Entries are independently tested by parents, early years professionals and teachers – so we’re delighted that Natalie’s book has been judged as a winner in the Children’s Book category.

Published in collaboration with the National Trust, Getting Ready for Spring is a beautiful springtime sticker book to keep children busy during the countdown to Easter! With over 130 stickers, 11 scenes and a checklist at the end for spotting extra details in each scene, this is the perfect springtime activity book.

Buy the book.

Building a Home is a beautifully illustrated guide to exactly how an old building can become a new home. Find out about all the people, machines, processes, and tools that are involved in breathing new life into an old building.

Buy the book.

Last year, Incredible Jobs You’ve (Probably) Never Heard Of, by Natalie Labarre, won the Children’s Book category at the awards last year – so we’re delighted that two more books have been recognised this year.

You can find out more about the awards, here. Congratulations Kathryn, Polly and Klas!

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Murmuration – a guest post by S.E. Durrant, author of Talking to the Moon

Earlier this year we published Talking to the Moon, by S.E. Durrant – a beautifully-told and heartfelt story of a grandmother with dementia and a secret from the past that begins to unfold, told from the granddaughter’s perspective.

And today we’re very pleased to share a piece from Sue, on the inspirations behind the book…

—

I always hear the murmuration before I see it. For such small birds, starlings make a lot of noise. I watch from my kitchen window as they swamp the tree at the bottom of my small garden, a shimmering, twittering rush of wings; a sound like squeaky wheels rolling down a bumpy road. And there they stay until a seagull, perhaps, or a neighbour interrupts them and with a cartoonish whoosh of air they burst out of the tree, soar over the rooftops and are gone.

This is the starling season. The birds arrive in the autumn, clouds of black darts drifting across Brighton’s skies, perching on chimneys and trees. At dusk they fly down to the sea, appearing in small clusters at first then merging together – thousands of birds rolling across the sky in perfect synchrony, transforming from one shape to another before settling on the remains of the West Pier.

I always knew Talking To The Moon would feature the murmuration. I’ve only lived in Brighton for eight years but in that time so much has happened. My children are young adults, the world around me has changed drastically and of course we are now in a global pandemic. Throughout everything, the good and the bad, the starlings keep coming, a constant when everything else feels uncertain.

In Talking To The Moon, ten-year-old Iris’s life is confusing and complicated. She adores her grandmother Mimi yet, although their relationship is full of love, there is also tension as they struggle with Mimi’s loss of memory. Iris is unsettled and embarrassed by Mimi’s odd behaviour. The jam on scrambled egg, the clothes worn inside out, the frozen peas tipped into the cake mix are disconcerting. She wants more than anything to keep Mimi close and that means holding on to Mimi’s memories. She is sure that she and Mimi would have been friends had they been children together. Only time is keeping them apart.

For Mimi too the changes are disturbing. Behind the scenes she sticks notes on family photographs and writes herself instructions to help navigate her day. Yet throughout all this the birds keep coming. There may not be as many starlings as when Mimi was a child but as she and Iris huddle together on the beach, watching them loop above the West Pier, the world feels close to how it should be.

The West Pier opened in 1866 as a promenade so visitors could take in the sea, and in time a bandstand, pavilion and concert hall were added. There was a tea room and a restaurant, there were pantomimes, plays and fairground rides, a changing station and a diving board. Stormy weather and two fires have reduced it to an eerie metal skeleton rising out of the sea, and this is where the starlings roost.

Many people have stories about the West Pier: first kisses, boys catching mackerel, the escapologist wrapped in chains plunging into flaming water. In Talking To The Moon, Mimi remembers playing on the pier while her mother worked in the restaurant and, as a young woman, bumping into her future husband as he came out of the fortune-tellers. She tells Iris these stories and Iris holds on to them tightly. If she could physically pull herself into Mimi’s past she would.

As Mimi becomes increasingly forgetful a mystery emerges. A photograph of a small child called Coral sits on Mimi’s mantelpiece; Mimi calls her the lost girl. With a ten-year-old’s certainty that solutions can be found, Iris determines to find out what happened to Coral, in the hope that filling in the missing parts of her story might be the key to unlocking Mimi’s memories.

I loved writing Talking To The Moon, setting it in the place I now call home. Stretching it out across different eras and timelines enabled me to see place as a regenerating thing where the past, present and future aren’t so very distinct but overlap and inform each other.

I’m fortunate that during this second lockdown I can walk down to the beach, stand in front of the West Pier and hope to see the starlings. There are always people there, silhouetted against the sea, watching the sun sink beneath the horizon. The starlings don’t always appear, but when they do they are beautiful – thousands of black darts wheeling against the sky. Shape shifters.

—

Thank you for that beautiful piece, Sue! Talking to the Moon is available now, here. And you can take a look inside the book below:

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Coronavirus: A Book for Children about Covid-19 has won the Best of Lockdown FutureBook Award

The winners of the 2020 FutureBook Awards, hosted by The Bookseller, have been announced – and we’re delighted that Coronavirus: A Book for Children about Covid-19 has won the Best of Lockdown book award!

The FutureBook Awards celebrate companies and individuals who are playing a key role in driving the publishing industry forward through outstanding creativity and innovation. This year, the categories focused on the best of publishing during lockdown across five categories – Book, Retail, Event, Campaign and Startup.

Written by an in-house team, and illustrated by Axel Scheffler, with expert advice from Professor Graham Medley at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Coronavirus: A Book for Children about Covid-19 is an accessible and timely book explains the pandemic to children – both from a health perspective and the impact it has on a family’s day-to-day life.

Editor of The Bookseller, Philip Jones, said: “Here speed was key, but also versatility and publishing excellence: this was a book that was needed for now, and Kate Wilson and her team made sure it met that need, but in a thoughtful and well-executed manner.”

Since publishing the free digital book in early April, it has been viewed or downloaded from the Nosy Crow website 1.4m times and translated in 62 languages, including 3 different sign languages.

We updated the book in July, publishing a not-for-profit £1.99 print version, with £1 from each copy going to NHS Charities Together. The print edition sold 23.5k copies in two months.

You can take a look inside the free digital edition of the book below, and purchase a physical copy, here.

You can read more about the winners of the FutureBook Awards, here.

Congratulations to everyone involved, including Kate Wilson, Elizabeth Jenner, Nia Roberts, Axel Scheffler, Professor Graham Medley, and anyone else who helped make this book possible. We are thrilled to have this book acknowledged by the FutureBook Awards!

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Watch our Christmas books video!

Last week we launched our Christmas gift guide, featuring the best books to give to children this Christmas – you can read the blog post, here. And today we’re very excited to be sharing the video below!

Give the gift of reading this Christmas with these children’s books! From festive board books to beautiful Christmas stories and books for the whole family to treasure, discover the best books to give to children this Christmas.

Here’s a thread of all the books included in our gift guide….

Jingle Bells, by @nicolaslater: https://t.co/dwsjKnGv5r pic.twitter.com/GFlOyFgbSm

— Nosy Crow Books (@NosyCrowBooks) November 16, 2020

Where’s Santa Claus, by Ingela P Arrhenius: https://t.co/DIzV5aNSQq pic.twitter.com/HyryX2quDY

— Nosy Crow Books (@NosyCrowBooks) November 16, 2020

Pip and Posy: The Christmas Tree, by Axel Scheffler: https://t.co/UEvlvOHKec pic.twitter.com/Dzkn2kmVLP

— Nosy Crow Books (@NosyCrowBooks) November 16, 2020

What Are Little Girls Made of, by Jeanne Willis and @IsabelleFollath: https://t.co/c3W9eoW9NW pic.twitter.com/T8YPCvk1Z7

— Nosy Crow Books (@NosyCrowBooks) November 16, 2020

A Treasury of Nursery Rhymes, by @FrannPG: https://t.co/HBW03zp9pr pic.twitter.com/7ITCzJwsIl

— Nosy Crow Books (@NosyCrowBooks) November 16, 2020

A House for Christmas Mouse, by Rebecca Harry: https://t.co/VD7h9k9fqR pic.twitter.com/LAbgRL22OX

— Nosy Crow Books (@NosyCrowBooks) November 16, 2020

A Donkey Called Mistletoe, by @farmgirlwriter: https://t.co/Z0Kw0fhDda pic.twitter.com/rbXYRzMiga

— Nosy Crow Books (@NosyCrowBooks) November 16, 2020

.@nationaltrust: 2021 Nature Month-By-Month: A Children’s Almanac, by @acwilsonwriter and Elly Jahnz: https://t.co/wQzKjUzpc1 pic.twitter.com/lYHB3zehKk

— Nosy Crow Books (@NosyCrowBooks) November 16, 2020

Magnificent Mabel and the Christmas Elf, by @RuthQuayle and Julia Christians: https://t.co/1WbIRUUcYX pic.twitter.com/Cz5qXx0DFj

— Nosy Crow Books (@NosyCrowBooks) November 16, 2020

YouthQuake, by Tom Adams and Sarah Walsh: https://t.co/s085OPUThE pic.twitter.com/zVqXyMHypZ

— Nosy Crow Books (@NosyCrowBooks) November 16, 2020

Earth Heroes, by @LilyDyu and @amyjpeg: https://t.co/gqtLrN4wvG pic.twitter.com/slbnX75hrF

— Nosy Crow Books (@NosyCrowBooks) November 16, 2020

Another Twist In the Tale, by @catherinebruton: https://t.co/0Tnk9pdWDL pic.twitter.com/p01FJHDSv2

— Nosy Crow Books (@NosyCrowBooks) November 16, 2020

A Christmas In Time, by @Sally_Nicholls, @IsabelleFollath and @rachaeldeanwork: https://t.co/l3FBu9qaBX pic.twitter.com/kRaPX5hy6P

— Nosy Crow Books (@NosyCrowBooks) November 16, 2020

Tiger, Tiger, Burning Bright, by Fiona Waters and @Bteckentrup and published with @NationalTrust: https://t.co/HwLjyjNgAi pic.twitter.com/rrfZ19vp6n

— Nosy Crow Books (@NosyCrowBooks) November 16, 2020

We will also be giving away these wonderful books in five fantastic bundles over the next few weeks on Instagram, here – so curl up with a book by the fire and stay tuned.

In the meantime, if you’d like to stay up-to-date with all our latest book news, you can sign up to our books newsletter here, and you’ll never miss a thing.

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