Behind the scenes of Jonathan Emmett’s newest release, Number Train illustrated by Ingela P Arrhenius – author blog

Number Train is the newest release from Nosy Crow and the amazing duo behind Alphabet Street and Christmas Street, Jonathan Emmett and Ingela P Arrhenius! We wanted to share a little bit from Jonathan about his experience with this fun new title! Read all about Jonathan’s inspiration behind creating this book and his journey writing this detailed and intricate new title. All aboard the Number Train!

Jonathan’s Blog

The idea of Number Train was originally suggested to me in 2017 by author-editor Camilla Reid who was then my editor at Nosy Crow. Alphabet Street, my first novelty book with Nosy Crow and Ingela P Arrhenius, had yet to be published, but initial feedback was enthusiastic, so Camila wrote in an email, “I am starting, cautiously, to think about a follow-up. Number Train? Might that work?” I thought it would work very well and subsequently sent Camilla a rhyming counting book text for a concertina, lift-the-flap format similar to Alphabet Street.

After some consideration, Nosy Crow decided we would do another street book – Christmas Street – as the follow-up. However, I felt Number Train had legs (or wheels!) and a few years later, I returned to it to see if I could think of a way to improve it. One of the things that made the two concertina street books I’d done with Nosy Crow so appealing was the big panorama illustrations Ingela created for the reverse sides. This idea must have come from Ingela or someone at Nosy Crow as I’d left the reverse side of my original Alphabet Street prototype blank.

I decided that the reverse side of Number Train would give readers another look at the locomotive and carriage interiors that were shown beneath the flaps on the front side.

To demonstrate the concept, I made a prototype dummy of the book using photos of real animals. In ordinary circumstances I would have sent this prototype to my agent Caroline Walsh, who would have shown it to potential publishers in person.

Although Nosy Crow had turned the book down previously, they were still my first choice of publisher, so we sent the video to Victoria England, who’d taken over from Camilla as my editor there, first. I’m glad to say that the new idea for using the reverse side won them over and this time Nosy Crow accepted the book! 

The reverse side of carriage 8

My favourite is Carriage 8, which contains a band of eight penguins playing musical instruments (as shown in the “See Inside” section above). Here’s how the same carriage looks on the reverse side, where the penguin pianist remains, but the other instruments are played by other animals.

And Nosy Crow made the finished book even more appealing by adding wheels to the front and back cover, which turn as it’s pushed along!

Want more of Jonathan and Ingela?

View our curated list of concertina titles and see more of Jonathan’s work, read his full blog and view his upcoming projects, all on his website!

Number Train is out and available for purchase, find it here at Waterstones, here for Amazon, here for Bookshop.org and here from our website!

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