Nosy Crow's Blog, page 49

Take a look inside Out of Nowhere

In May we’re very excited to be publishing Out of Nowhere – a beautiful, heart-warming new picture book from Chris Naylor-Ballesteros, illustrator of The Suitcase, which has recently been longlisted for the 2020 CILIP Carnegie and Kate Greenaway Awards. Out of Nowhere is a touching tale about friendship and the inevitability of change, filled with warmth, wit, and wonder.

And today you can take a look at this truly beautiful picture book!

Beetle and Caterpillar are best friends. Every day, they sit together on a big rock, sharing a picnic and looking out over the forest. But one day, Caterpillar goes missing and, try as he might, Beetle cannot find her. Just as he is about to give up hope, a very friendly (and rather familiar) butterfly appears out of nowhere. Can it be his friend? She might look different but she is still just the same and they are together again, at last.

Here’s a preview of the first few pages:

As mentioned at the top of this post, Chris’s earlier picture book, The Suitcase, has recently been longlisted for the 2020 CILIP Carnegie and Kate Greenaway Awards. You can watch him reading the book, below:

Buy the book.

You can pre-order Out of Nowhere from Waterstones here, The Hive here, or Amazon here. If you’d like to stay up-to-date with all of our book news, you can sign up to our books newsletter at this page, or with the form below, and you’ll never miss a thing.

NameEmail



Books


Apps
CommentsThis field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Two Nosy Crow books longlisted for the 2020 English 4-11 Picture Book Awards

We’re delighted to announce that two Nosy Crow books have been longlisted for the 2020 English 4-11 Picture Book Awards! Established in 1995, the awards are presented by the English Association to the best children’s picture books of the year.

The Suitcase, by Chris Naylor-Ballesteros, and This is a Dog, by Ross Collins, have both been longlisted in the Fiction 4 – 7 years category.

Written in response to the refugee crisis, The Suitcase is a touching, timely tale all about the importance of kindness, understanding and friendship. Take a look inside this heartfelt tale below:

Buy the book.

A delightfully silly picture book from award-winning author Ross Collins, This is a Dog combines comic misunderstanding with wonderful illustrations. Here’s a look inside:

Buy the book.

You can find out more about the English Picture Book Awards, and read the full longlist, here. The shortlist will be announced in April, and the overall winners will be announced in May.

Congratulations Chris and Ross!

Getting to Know Mabel – a guest post from Ruth Quayle

Earlier this month we published the first in a hilarious, one-of-a-kind new fiction series for young readers – Magnificent Mabel: The Rabbit Riot written by Ruth Quayle and illustrated by Julia Christians. And today we’re very excited to be sharing a piece from Ruth herself, on the inspiration behind Mabel…

____

Mabel Chase waltzed (well, stomped!) into my life a few years ago. She landed slap bang on the page, full of ideas and raring to go. She knew EXACTLY what was going to happen without being told and she was always one step ahead of me. There was just no stopping her!

No wonder I jotted down the first Mabel book really quickly. I wrote it in a local café because it was January and my house was freezing cold. When I told my children I was working in a café they were pleased. They assumed I meant REAL work, i.e. serving coffee and clearing plates. They almost cried when I told them I was writing stories on my laptop. “But, Mum,” they wailed. “Writing doesn’t count as work.”

They’re wrong of course – I’m the first to know that writing can be REALLY hard (especially picture books!). But they are also right because writing about Mabel didn’t feel like work. As Mabel herself might say, it was not even one bit hard. It was fun!

I think this is probably because, although Mabel Chase is a brand-new character, it feels like I have been getting to know her for a long time. Perhaps because I was once a bit of a Mabel myself.

Some people in my family would probably say that, like Mabel, I did more than my fair share of stomping when I was growing up. But SOME people in my family didn’t understand how hard it was not being the oldest OR the youngest and they didn’t have a clue how UNFAIR it was that I was the only person in my class who didn’t have a Dash tracksuit. Those parents of mine didn’t even get me an ACTUAL FAIRY for Christmas!

The ‘me’ version of Mabel lodged herself in my head when I was very small and she made herself pretty comfortable. She was there when I wrote letters to tooth fairies. She was there when my sisters and I made up games to play. She was there when I pretended (and believed!) I had a rabbit of my own. She was there when I stomped up to my room to read books.

Books were great because they introduced me to lots of other versions of Mabel. I read all sorts of books (as many as I could get my hands on) but my favourite characters were the ones who weren’t necessarily good. For instance, I didn’t have much time for Charlie in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (I preferred Willy Wonka) and I wasn’t mad about Wendy in Peter Pan but I adored Pippi Longstocking, William Brown, Ramona Quimby, Petrova Fossil and Toad in Wind in the Willows. These characters were often quite naughty and they were sometimes rude and grumpy but they weren’t BAD. They were occasionally quite GOOD. Importantly they were a bit of a mix – and all the more interesting for it. They were also funny. So I popped them in my head and there they stayed, slowly evolving as the years went by.

I’ve never stopped reading but I have stopped stomping – well, most of the time! And although I’ve mostly forgotten how to disappear effortlessly into an imaginary world of play I’m lucky enough to have three children of my own who, along with their cousins and friends, remind me what it is like to be a small child with a big imagination – a bit like Mabel. They’ve given me NEW versions of Mabel. I love seeing them magic themselves into invented characters and I always take seriously their fear of the tooth fairy.

And of course, there is the stomping. Always the stomping. For example, when my then-six-year-old caught me reading a book called How to Talk So Kids Will Listen, he looked at me crossly and said: “I’m not going to fall for any of those tricks”. And once, on the first day of the school holidays, when we’d made hot-cross buns, ridden the new scooter AND done some gardening, he said: “But when are you going to give me loads of attention?” It was maddening but it was also really funny. It was another version of Mabel.

Right now my daughter and niece are at a wonderfully imaginative stage. I love listening to them chat and play. In some ways they are Mabel, and in some ways, they aren’t. They are versions of her. And like all the other versions I’ve met along the way (in real life and in books) they have played their part in helping me create Mabel Chase.

In other words, even though I wrote the book really quickly, Mabel herself has been a long time in the making. She has, in fact, been in my head all this time, impatiently waiting to burst out, land slap bang on a page and star, magnificently, in a book of her own.

_____

Thanks, Ruth!

You can take a look inside Magnificent Mabel below:

Buy the book.

No Ballet Shoes in Syria has been shortlisted for a Sheffield Children’s Book Award

The shortlists for the 2020 Sheffield Children’s Book Awards have been announced, and we are delighted that No Ballet Shoes in Syria by Catherine Bruton has been shortlisted in the Longer Novels category!

A captivating story, filled with warmth and heart, with wonderfully authentic ballet writing and an important message championing the rights of refugees, No Ballet Shoes in Syria tells the story of Aya – eleven years old and newly arrived in Britain with her mum and baby brother, seeking asylum from war in Syria. When Aya stumbles across a local ballet class, the formidable dance teacher spots her exceptional talent and believes that Aya has the potential to earn a prestigious ballet scholarship. But at the same time, Aya and her family must fight to be allowed to remain in the country, to make a home for themselves and to find Aya’s father – separated from the rest of the family during the journey from Syria.

You can take a look inside No Ballet Shoes in Syria below:

Buy the book.

And you can listen a preview of the audiobook edition here:

Buy the audiobook.

The winners of the awards will be announced at a special ceremony in November – congratulations, Catherine, and good luck!

Take a look inside Talking to the Moon!

In March we’re very excited to be publishing Talking to the Moon, by S.E. Durrant – a moving story of a grandmother with dementia told from her granddaughter’s perspective. From the author of Little Bits of Sky and Running on Empty, the latter of which was nominated for the 2019 CILIP Carnegie Medal, this new book is equally thought-provoking and heart-warming. And today you can read the first two chapters!

Iris’s grandmother, Mimi, has started to put jam on her scrambled eggs and tie blue ribbons around her fingers to remind her of stuff. Her house, always full of things, is becoming harder and harder to navigate, and when Iris goes to stay, she feels as if a whole life is becoming muddled up. As her grandmother’s memory fades, a mystery is uncovered. Who is Coral, and what happened to her?

Read the first two chapters below:

Talking to the Moon will be in bookshops on March 5th! You can pre-order your copy from Waterstones here, from The Hive here, or from our website here.

Don’t forget to sign up to our books newsletter to stay up-to-date with all of our books news at this page, or with the form below, and you’ll never miss a thing.

NameEmail



Books


Apps
PhoneThis field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

The Suitcase longlisted for the 2020 CILIP Carnegie and Kate Greenaway Awards

The longlist for the 2020 CILIP Carnegie and Kate Greenaway Awards has just been announced – and we’re thrilled that The Suitcase, the beautiful, moving picture book by Chris Naylor-Ballesteros, has been longlisted!

The CILIP Carnegie and Kate Greenaway Medals are the UK’s oldest children’s book awards, judged solely by librarians. The CILIP Carnegie Medal is awarded for an outstanding book written in English for children and young people, and the CILIP Kate Greenaway Medal is awarded for outstanding illustration for children and young people.

And we’re so proud that The Suitcase has been recognised this year!

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? This stranger must be fibbing! 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, and together they create a very special welcome present . . .

Take a look inside the book:

You can watch the trailer below:

And here’s Chris, reading from the book:

Buy the book.

The shortlist will be announced in March, with the winners announced in June. You can read more about the award and view the full longlist, here.

Congratulations Chris and to all those involved!

We Live in a World of Weird – a guest post by Dashe Roberts

We’re thrilled to have recently published Sticky Pines: The Bigwoof Conspiracy, the first in a new spooky series by Dashe Roberts, featuring a huge hairy creature, a thirteen-year-old stranger named Milo Fisher, a deep-rooted secret. And today we’re excited to be sharing a piece from Dashe herself, on the inspiration behind her new book.

____

If there’s one thing I’ve learned while writing Sticky Pines, it’s that the world we live in is so much weirder than I’d previously imagined. When I first started this story, I, like many writers, looked to the familiar for inspiration. But what most surprised me is just how much I’ve been inspired by what I DON’T know. The protagonist of The Bigwoof Conspiracy, Lucy Sladan, believes in the unknown and is desperate to change the world by being the first to uncover something truly extraordinary. She’s certain that there are things out there – strange, supernatural, cryptozoological things that defy common sense and understanding – just waiting to be discovered. In the book, Lucy is almost entirely alone in this belief, but I, for one, have come to realise that she’s really onto something!

As Lucy can attest, the things that the human race doesn’t know or has forgotten could fill more books than have ever been written. This was something I found quite surprising. I was raised at a time when the prevailing sentiment seemed to be that humans already knew everything worth knowing. We had medicine and computers and physics and e-books and cars and styrofoam and chicken nuggets and cable TV.

As a kid growing up in America in the 1990s, the general feeling was that we had reached the end of history. We’d cracked the code of existence! Nothing big would change ever again! What else was there to do but pat ourselves on the back and wait for Virtual Reality Utopia to take effect. And then came THE INTERNET. All of humanity’s common knowledge was laid out on the world wide web, available at the press of a few buttons, for free! It was the Age of Information, and boy what a lot of information there was. It seemed that the breadth of our wisdom was infinite. How could there possibly be anything left to be discovered? And yet…

They say the more you know, the more you realise you don’t know. (Who are “They”? I don’t know!) In conducting research for Lucy’s character, I quickly learned just how ignorant I was about how much of the world, let alone the universe, is still beyond human understanding. For example, there have been incredible advancements in the field of medicine over the last couple of centuries – we’ve discovered DNA and psychology, created bionic limbs and treatments for cancer – and yet we still don’t know some pretty basic things. Like, why do animals need to sleep? Every single person, mouse and hummingbird who’s ever lived has fallen unconscious for a significant portion of every single day. Sleep is one of the most essential parts of being alive, but though scientists are discovering new things about sleep all the time, we still don’t know why people need to do it, and what exactly is happening in the brain when we do. What are dreams? Do they mean anything, or are they just random bursts of electricity? Do sharks dream? Do trees? We don’t know!

There is so much about the natural world that we are still learning, and so much we may never know. Have you heard of the mimic octopus? It’s a cephalopod that can change its shape, texture and colouring instantly to match anything from jagged purple rocks to black-and-white striped sea snakes to flamboyant lionfish. How about the newly discovered decoy spider, a tiny arachnid which builds a big spider suit in its web out of leaf bits and other debris to scare off predators? It plucks at strands of silk to make its giant disguise look like it’s moving, a disguise which, I might add, often has exactly eight legs. That’s right. Spiders can count. Who knew?

History is filled with examples of humans believing they knew all there was to be known – and then being rudely disabused of this presumption. From declaring that the Earth was at the centre of our celestial sphere, to the belief that diseases were caused by evil spirits, to the misconception that tigers, giant squid and whales were merely the stuff of legend, it turns out that humans are routinely getting it wrong. It takes remarkable people, those who are brave enough to be called crazy by the rest of society, to break through the veneer of misplaced certainty. People like Lucy Sladan.

_____

Thanks, Dashe, for that fascinating read!

You can take a look inside Sticky Pines: The Bigwoof Conspiracy below:

Buy the book.

Earth Heroes Video Competition Winner!

Last October, we launched a school video competition celebrating the release of Earth Heroes, by Lily Dyu – an inspiring collection of twenty inspiring stories about people saving our world. We challenged UK primary schools to tell us what they were doing to help the environment… and we were completely blown away by the response!

We had just under 50 wonderful videos submitted from pupils across the country telling us why they were Earth Heroes – and what we can all be doing to make the world a better place. Here are some of those entries:

After a lot of deliberation and so many brilliant videos to choose from, we are delighted to announce that Wilbury Primary School is the winner of our #IAmAnEarthHero video competition!

We admired all the incredible eco-efforts Wilbury Primary has made. Earth Heroes author Lily Dyu explains how we finally managed to pick a winner:

“Wilbury were chosen as the winner because their video just fizzed with action, energy and enthusiasm. Greta Thunberg has said of the climate crisis, “The one thing we need more than hope is action. Once we start to act, hope is everywhere”, and from litter-picking and second-hand book sales, to ‘unplugging’ and planting bee-friendly flower beds, Wilbury School’s Earth Heroes project exemplified this attitude perfectly.”

And here’s what Wilbury Primary school had to say:

“All the pupils that took part feel a real sense of achievement and are now even more determined to spread the message of how to be an Earth Hero. We have all been inspired by Lily Dyu’s wonderful words and can’t wait to meet her and to share the copies of her book with our the rest of the school!”

We want to say a big thank you to all the schools who took part in our video competition. Keep saving the world, Earth Heroes!

Take a look inside DustRoad!

Next month we’re delighted to be publishing DustRoad – the thrilling sequel to Floodworld, by Tom Huddleston. And today you can take a very first look inside the book – you can read the opening chapter of DustRoad below.

Picking up where FloodWorld left off, DustRoad tells the story of Kara and Joe’s adventures in the US, as they travel with a band of ideological outlaws, hell-bent on destroying the Mariners and stealing their world. Can the kids come up with a plan to stop the seemingly inevitable destruction?

Here’s a look inside the book:

You can pre-order DustRoad here – and if you’d like to stay up-to-date with all of our book news, you can sign up to our books newsletter at this page, or with the form below, and you’ll never miss a thing.

NameEmail



Books


Apps
NameThis field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Orion Lost is now available as an audiobook

Today we’re delighted to share a brand new audiobook edition of Orion Lost, the thrilling debut novel by Alastair Chisholm – and you can listen to the first chapter of the new audiobook edition here!

Hugely gripping, with incredible twists and a fast-paced, action-packed story, Orion Lost is an unputdownable science fiction adventure – perfect for fans of Star Wars. The Times named it their Children’s Book of the Week – in her review, Alex O’Connell writes: “Strap on your spacesuits and prepare for narrative G-force! This science-fiction novel for 9- to 12-year-olds has a thrilling plot, catapulting the reader through a cosmic adventure that owes as much to Lord of the Flies as to Lost in Space ... There is a fabulous twist that I really couldn’t have predicted.”

Brilliantly narrated by Saffron Coomber, you can buy the audiobook of Orion Lost from Audible, Amazon, Apple, and CloudAloud now, and you can listen to a preview of the audiobook below – here’s the opening chapter.

Buy the audiobook.

You can also read the opening of the book below:

And you can buy the print edition of Orion Lost from Waterstones here, from Amazon here, and directly from Nosy Crow here.