We’ve got some exciting news – the launch of a brand-new website devoted to Axel Scheffler’s Pip and Posy characters.
There’s so much to do: at www.worldofpipandposy.com, you can play exclusive Pip and Posy games, learn more about the books, watch videos of Axel drawing the characters, print off and colour in Pip and Posy yourself, find out about upcoming events, and sign up for news.
As the days shorten, the nights get nippier and the leaves fall from the trees, we find ourselves turning to indoor pursuits, to cooking and craft… and to sharing scary stories. At Nosy Crow, we’ve noticed that toddlers love the thrill of a spooky tale as much as the rest of us – providing it’s not too frightening, of course.
In Axel Scheffler’s new Pip and Posy story, The Scary Monster, Posy is interrupted in her baking by a big, furry blue hand knocking at her window. At first, poor Posy is alarmed and rather scared but, with a little bit of courage and smart thinking, she soon realises that it’s not a monster, after all, but Pip in a silly costume. We hope it’s a gentle and funny way of allowing little children to join in with autumnal fun and games, without frightening the living daylights out of them!
Tom and I are just back from the Edinburgh International Book Festival, having carried the quite-light-but-hugely-bulky Pip and Posy costumes (as seen in previous blog posts ) there.
Our visit to the Book Festival over this weekend was fleeting, but Nikalas and Tim were there earlier this week for what was, by all accounts, a stonking Mega Mash-up event while the Nosy Crow staffers were cleaning the loos and unpacking crates in the new office.
On Sunday, though, we had three great events, thanks at least in part to the redoubtable Book Festival staff, Janet, Sian and Hannah. The first sell-out event was a Pip and Posy event with Axel Scheffler (pictured above, signing the flip-chart drawings he created at the event) attended by Sarah Brown, last seen and written about by Kate at Cybermummy 11, and her sons.
We then had a Dinosaur Dig event with Penny Dale – also a sell-out – which included a draw-your-own stegosaurus (on roller skates) session.
Here’s Penny’s stegosaurus:
And here is a stegosaurus from a talented member of the audience:
Lastly, I did a session on apps as reading experiences, impeccably chaired by Nosy Crow author, Simon Puttock.
And then we went out to dinner. Scotland is another country: they do things differently there (I should know: I am a Scot, though I have lived in London for a long, long time), and it is really interesting to see the connections between individuals in different parts of the vibrant and committed Scottish children’s book community.
Tom and I were back on the London-bound train as the early morning sun shone on the coast of East Lothian… and I’m writing this in a bit of a rush as I prepare to leave for Brazil tomorrow.
This weekend saw the launch of the Pop-Up Festival in London’s Coram’s Fields – a brand new festival of stories, aimed at children and young people of all ages. The festival is actually the grand finale of several weeks of events which link schools and academies in the London boroughs of Camden and Islington with top name illustrators and authors, including Anthony Browne, Emma Dodd, Alex T Smith and Jamila Gavin.
The artists work with classes on tailor-made projects, making stories in all sorts of forms, from poetry to sculpture. It is a fantastically effective way of getting a huge number of (around 3000) children interested in and inspired by both reading and writing – especially those for whom stories and reading is not an integral part of their home lives.
On Saturday and Sunday the festival was opened to the public (the organisers estimate that they had 6000 visitors) and it didn’t disappoint. Five gigantic tents offered a delectable and exciting range of events for every age and taste, from Peter Rabbit, Spot and Rastamouse to performance poets and stars from dub step and hip hop. Like two Victorian ringmasters, Michael Rosen and Philip Ardagh each curated a tent, and our own Axel Scheffler drew Pip and Posy for a packed audience and then signed copies of the books for nearly two hours.
For those of us that attended, there was a real feeling that Pop up lived up to its name – it was refreshing and rich, and burst confidently onto the festival scene. Look out for it next year, when it increases the number of schools involved and links up with Central St Martins on its new site at Kings Cross.
In the UK, one in six people struggles with literacy. The National Literacy Trust is an independent charity working to ensure that everyone has the literacy skills they need to lead a successful and happy life.
Last week, I was invited, as a member of the Trust’s Advisory Committee, to an inspiring event that was part of the Trust’s Young Readers Programme. The Young Readers Programme (formerly known as Reading Is Fundamental, which is the name the sister US programme continues to use) aims to bring reading for pleasure to 200 communities of children – children in schools, children in refuges, children in care – that need reading support. In the course of the programme, children are introduced to the skills they need to choose books (the children learn to “decode” a cover, to read a blurb, and to check inside to see if a book is at an appropriate reading level). The emphasis is entirely on reading for pleasure, and the programme is based on OECD research that suggests that reading for pleasure by the age of 15 is a powerful indicator of future life chances, even when parental socio-economic and education levels are taken into account. These skills are taught by specially-trained people within or familiar with the community, who are often, but not always, librarians. The children receive three free books in the course of the programme which lasts at least 12 weeks. Wherever possible, children meet authors or storytellers who bring their own passion to the storytelling and book-choosing process.
The event I went to was at the Barbican Library. Cressida Cowell (pictured above at the event) was reading and talking to children from a nearby school.
She began the event by talking about a book she loved as a child: Peter Pan by J M Barrie. She read aloud the shockingly violent and very compelling first description of Captain Hook in which he eviscerates another pirate with his hook without taking the cigar from his mouth. She spoke about being a London-born child who longed for something extraordinary to happen – longed for the kind of adventure that the Darling children have in Peter Pan. In fact, for her, the real life childhood adventure was going on holiday year after year to the same small Scottish island: her own equivalent of Barrie’s Neverland. She said she used to sit at the top of the island, and imagine a Viking invasion. She described, too, the face she could see in the cliffs on the island’s beach, with two caves for eye-sockets. She said she used to imagine what might live in those caves: dragons, perhaps…
Peter Pan, islands, Vikings, dragons and caves, of course, all combine in her brilliant Hiccup books. She read – dropping her voice to a whisper at times, while the children held their breath – from the first novel in the series, How To Train Your Dragon about Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III’s journey with his friends into a cave used by dragons as a nursery (not, she said, unlike the left eye socket cave in the face in the cliffs on the island on which she’d spent her holidays) to catch his own dragon.
It was a stellar performance and one that really engaged the children. Here she is afterwards, surrounded by fans:
The National Literacy Trust campaigns for the recognition of the impact of literacy issues; runs projects and initiatives such as the Young Readers Programme; and is a the most fantastic source of information and research on literacy in the UK.
One is to participate in the auction
it’s recently set up (closing date for bids February 24 June), auctioning favourite books belonging to favourite authors. You could, for example, get a copy of Shrek by William Steig from Axel Scheffler’s bookcase:
The book has a message and a sketch from Axel inside it:
Young British illustrator Frann Preston-Gannon has said that new British illustration talent is being forced to go abroad in search of work as the UK picture book market becomes increasingly conservative.
Comments on The Bookseller article reporting Frann Preston-Gannon’s remarks point out that library cutbacks and the shrinking of the independent bookshop sector are a factor in this increased conservatism in the UK market, and I do think that both libraries and independent bookshops have, historically, been particularly strong and important supporters of more experimental illustration styles in the UK.
However, from the point of view of an independent children’s book pulbisher, I’d say a couple of things:
The first is that the UK has always looked outside the UK to launch new artists. Selling co-editions (i.e. co-ordinating a single printing of full-colour books in several different languages for different countries so that some of the costs of the printing are spread across many copies, and each country benefits from a sort of “bulk discount” with the printer) has been at the heart of the picture book’s financial viability for over two decades. If opportunities for artists exist outside the UK, even if the UK market itself might not be a big market for a particular artist, UK publishers are often keen to find them, and to support new talent with international sales. So a book originating in the UK may sell better abroad. At Nosy Crow, and at other UK publishers, the UK print-run can be just a tenth of the total print-run – the rest is made up of co-editions.
Second, there are many illustrators who, initially, frightened the UK retail horses at the early stages of their career, but who are now well and truly part of the illustration establishment. Axel Scheffler is a good example. When I first published Axel, I was told his work was looked “too continental European”; that the eyes were too goggly and the noses too big. The first UK print run of The Gruffalo was very small – perhaps 1,500 or 2,000 copies, I seem to remember, and, whatever it was, UK sales were smaller! We persisted (as did Axel, of course) and great, distinctive, witty illustration won through won through.
Third, at Nosy Crow, we’re always looking for new illustrators. We’ve a small picture book list, but over the next 18 months it will include, among other new illustrators:
Nadia Shireen who graduated in 2010, and whose art complements a dark and funny text (involving characters being eaten) called The Baby That Roared by Simon Puttock publishing in January 2012 (her first book, Good Little Wolf, published by Random House, is out now);
Nicola O’Byrne who graduates this summer and whose book, Open Very Carefully is a witty celebration of the printed book that publishes in autumn 2012.
Of course there are some publishers who play very safe, and there are others who are a bit more edgy. Not being part of their decision-making process, I can’t speak for them. But I can speak for Nosy Crow. We’re somewhere in the middle, I’d say. We need to feel that an artists work will appeal to a child (rather than appeal just to an adult), and that’s really our starting point. we have to feel that there’s a market for an illustrator’s work somewhere in the world, especially if we think that the UK market won’t rush to embrace a particular style. We don’t always agree: as in so many areas of publishing, we’re making subjective judgements based on a complicated mix of taste, experience and knowledge.
The book market – UK and international – doesn’t owe us (or any particular artist for that matter), a living: we have to publish books that are commercially viable, but, at Nosy Crow, we’re always looking for new talent, and we’re willing to take risks on it.
And we congratulate Frann Preston-Gannon and wish her the best of luck, wherever she publishes.
Julia writes fiction for older children (The Princess Mirror-belle books, The Giants and the Joneses and Dinosaur Diary) and has written a dark and challenging novel for teenagers (Running on the Cracks), but she is best known for her rhyming (though not always rhyming: The Smartest Giant doesn’t rhyme except at the end) picture book texts, of which the best known is The Gruffalo, illustrated by Axel Scheffler, who has been the illustrator of her most successful picture books.
I felt, vicariously, very proud: I’ve been responsible for publishing over twenty of Julia’s books over the years. I first got to know Julia’s work in the early 1990s. She sent the lyrics of a song to Methuen (which has been absorbed into Egmont) where I was working as a rights director. An editor there, Elke Lacey, liked it. I suggested that a friend, who I’d met when he was illustrating a couple of fiction titles for Faber and Faber when I was selling rights there, might be the man to do the pictures. He was Axel Scheffler. The book was A Squash and a Squeeze. Elke was a fiction editor, and hadn’t worked on picture books and she and I worked on A Squash and a Squeeze together. But then she got ill and died, ridiculously young, just before the book was published.
A little later, I moved to Macmillan as a publisher, and Alison Green came with me as editorial director of picture books. One day soon after we’d started, Julia sent Axel the text of The Gruffalo, and, we decided to publish it. It was the resumption of what became a truly astonishingly successful partnership, though Julia’s texts were also wonderfully illustrated by other illustrators including Nick Sharratt, Julia Monks and David Roberts. After ten years, Alison and I moved to Scholastic, and Axel and Julia’s new books were published under the Alison Green Books imprint there, though Julia continued to publish other picture books with Macmillan and has had some books published by other publishers too. The first of several Scholastic Julia-and-Axel books was Tiddler, and the most recent one, The Highway Rat, comes out this autumn.
Julia is many things. She has a command of the combination of rhyme and story that is unparalleled, and that she produces excellent book after excellent book is breathtaking. She’s passionate about her work and a true perfectionist. She’s an absolutely brilliant and indefatigable performer with as much of an affinity with music (she introduced me to this, which is one of the many reasons I am eternally grateful to her) and drama as she has with words. She’s honest, outspoken (even if it’s sometimes about subjects on which we don’t entirely agree!) and approachable. She is, quite properly, famous.
I think Julia will be a highly-visible and committed advocate for reading, for printed books and – at this time of real need – for libraries, and, I am sure, for other things too, as her Laureateship evolves. She’ll be great.
I went to Philip Ardagh’s event at the Hay Festival yesterday. He was talking mainly, but far from exclusively, about his latest Grubtown Tales book for Faber and Faber, When Bunnies Turn Bad.
Honestly, I’d have gone even if he hadn’t been a Nosy Crow author (we’re publishing the first in his new series, The Grunts, next year, with illustrations by Axel Scheffler). His events are masterclasses in high-energy, interactive, stand-up comedy and for a child-and-parent audience, that weave together the story of how Philip became an author with lots of great scatalogical and tongue-in-cheek self-aggrandising material that had the child one along from me actually falling off her chair she was laughing so much.
However professional and brilliantly prepared Philip is, he can’t predict everything, and a high-point of the event was him putting his foot (clad, as everyone in the audience knows, in size 16) through the set of one of Hay’s two swankiest event spaces:
Philip worked the incident into the event so brilliantly that even the technicians in charge of the venue were laughing in the aisles. Here he is with a triangle of broken stage after the event:
I, for one, can’t wait for the Philip–Axel The Grunts double-act.
Hello, everyone. Pip and Posy here, posting from the Hay-on-Wye festival. It’s fantastic here – there are millions of books, quite a few clever grown-up people talking about books, and loads of wet other people wearing wellies. We even saw a royal Duchess (Camilla – no crown, but no wellies either).
The first thing we did when we arrived was run down to Penny Dale’sDinosaur Dig! event. Here’s Penny reading the story:
It was brilliant fun. We didn’t have to sit still, or behave ourselves properly or anything. Penny showed us how she drew the pictures which was really interesting – how do you get a T-rex’s tail in a dumper truck cab? But the best bit was when she got us all to stamp and stomp, and to roar a lot, just like in the book!
We had such a good time that Pip very nearly had a little accident, but we got to the (really nice) toilets just in time, so it was ok.
After that it was time to meet up with Axel Scheffler, for our very own show. He and Kate were on a big stage, with bright lights and loads of people watching. They told our stories, Pip and Posy: The Little Puddle and Pip and Posy: The Super Scooter. Axel did lots of pictures of us doing funny things, and Kate made everyone laugh by talking about wee and sick and things.
Axel even drew a picture of us meeting the Gruffalo, because, of course, even though people were very pleased to meet us, they all love the Gruffalo:
At the very end, we were allowed to come in and say hello to all the children:
It was lovely because absolutely everyone wanted to give us a cuddle:
Afterward, in the bookshop, Axel signed and signed copies of our books. And then he signed and signed some more. He was signing for an hour!
Then we all went back to the house where we were staying for dinner cooked by Adrian. With gooseberry fool for pudding – Hooray!
Really, I think, because I was in Australia on publication date, we haven’t taken time this month to celebrate the distillations of children’s book goodness that are our May publications.
And May was a big month for us: for the first time, we were publishing more than one print “thing”.
Just to remind those of you who are interested in a kind of “previously on Nosy Crow” kind of way:
In January, we published Small Blue Thing, so the list launched with a single romantic fantasy novel.
Dinosaur Dig was inspired by Penny’s pre-school grandson Zachary’s love of all things mechanical. It’s a counting book with (very benign) dinosaurs, mechanical earth-moving equipment, a bit of suspense and a swimming pool finale. It caters quite shamelessly for the obsessions of many, many small boys. One of the things we thought that they would respond to is the carefully-realised detail of the dinosaurs and the diggers: you can see every claw and every piston. This was a book that came in to Nosy Crow from Penny’s agent just weeks after we’d started up. It was a book that we’d made an offer for within an hour of opening the envelope with Penny’s beautifully detailed sketches in it. Here’s a little flavour of what the book looks like inside:
And, to give you a sense of how Penny works, here’s a movie of Penny (re)drawing the cover artwork on an iPad:
She’s written about the process of creating the book for a boy audience in a guest post for the Book Trust blog.
We’re in the run-up to Easter (and Passover’s begun – any good childeren’s versions of the Haggadah, people?), so it seemed interesting to ask people for their Easter and, more generally, spring book recommendations.
EASTER-SPECIFICTITLES
It seems that the most impressive – to me – children’s book telling the story of Easter, Jan Pienkowski’s Easter, is out of print. It combines King James Bible words with Jan’s trademark silhouettes against a marbled background.
@dredgewood suggested The Story of Easter by Christopher Doyle.
Tom, who’s interning here, and whose photography skills I’ve already roundly mocked, suggested that the great Easter children’s book is The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by CS Lewis. I looked puzzled. “But it’s about a world where it’s always winter and never Christmas,” I said. He reminded me of the Christian allegory of Aslan’s self-sacrifice for Edmund’s betrayal. Ahem. He is right, of course… though, as ever, I tend to see children’s books through the lens through which a child might look at it, and I don’t think that many 10 year olds will clock that allegory.
SPRINGTITLESMOREGENERALLY
Widening the search beyond Easter-specific titles, I asked Twitter followers about spring and chick ‘n’ bunny books.
There were a few generally spring-like suggestions.
@sarah_hilary proposed The Secret Garden, which is, after all, about a physical and metaphorical, transition from winter to early summer.
And, if we’re going general – and as maybe I’m thinking about it because of the current almost-full moon – what about The Very Hungry Caterpillar?
BOOKSWITHCHICKS, EGGSETC
I had the following suggestions that were poultry-based:
@prestonrutt suggested Ed Vere’s Chick.
@Discover_Story suggested The Odd Egg by Emily Gravett.
@AliB68 reminded me of The Spring Song in Tales from Moominvalley by Tove Jansson.
And I’d add a personal favourite, Ruby Flew Too by Jonathen Emmett and Rebecca Harry – read it as a parent and blub.
BOOKSWITHBUNNIES
There were some fine bunny-based suggestions too:
Camilla suggested Guess How Much I Love You (the office copy of which she’s just taken home to read aloud).
@prestonrutt suggested Emily Gravett’s The Rabbit Problem.
@dredgewood suggested The Country Bunny & The Gold Shoes by Du Bose Heyward.
Not a rabbit, but a hamster (so here because displaying impeccable rodent credentials and also because it has Easter in the title), was remembered fondly by @amandapollard, whose Haffertee’s First Easter by Janet and John Perkins was a Sunday School gift, “and undoubtedly the highlight of 8 years endured”.
@sarah_hilary suggested The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Wiliams (again, I think of this, in my literal-minded way as a Christmas book more than an Easter book) and it got two other votes too, so it made the list, on condition that no other edition than the William Nicholson illustrated edition is given house room, and I do love it.
Kate Burns suggested You’re a Hero, Daley B by Jon Blake, which was one of the first books that Axel Scheffler illustrated.
My own list would include:
Axel Scheffler’sPip and Posy and The Super Scooter (of course!), which not only features a very fine rabbit (Pip) but also feels very spring-like. As Julia Eccleshare says of this book in her round-up of new children’s books for this Easter in The Guardian, “Scheffler’s illustrations are full of comfort and gentle humour”.
Little Rabbit Foo Foo by Michael Rosen and Arthur Robins (just typing it makes me smile).
Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter (and @publishingmum mentioned Peter Rabbit too)
ACTIVITYBOOKS
There’s lots of spring/Easter activity stuff out there.
The very fine website, Parents in Touch, has done a post on spring and Easter activity books here
Also on the activity books theme, when I asked on Twitter for Easter book recommendations, Usborne amusingly simply sent me a link to their homepage and therefore all of their books. However, it is true that they have an awful lot of Easter titles here. When pressed, their tweeter selected First Activities: Easter Fun as their favourite Usborne Easter book.
A RELUCTANTAFTERTHOUGHT
And finally, I am, with a stone in my stomach, forced, too, to acknowledge that several people pointed out that the weekend following the Easter weekend is the Royal Wedding weekend (maybe this is just sour grapes: I will be flying to Australia). The Perfectly Pretty Royal Wedding Book was suggested by Scholastic, which I’d have ignored (sorry, Alyx), except that @librarymice said she was giving it to her daughter as part of her Easter book bundle. So here it is, included with a bit of a sigh.
So what’s missing from this list? Do let us know by sending us a comment.
This is a picture by Axel Scheffler, which he donated and which was sold to an anonymous buyer in aid of the National Literacy Trust. It shows the Gruffalo (and Mouse) with Pip and Posy going to the London Book Fair.
The London Book Fair, which has less of a rights focus and more of an export focus and is a general (as opposed to a children’s books) book fair, is very much secondary in importance to the Bologna Book Fair for Nosy Crow. It was particularly tough to focus on it this year as it came so hard on the heels of the Bologna Book Fair. It’s a fair at which, this year and last, we haven’t taken a stand, though I think we may have to rethink that for next year, given the number of messages left for us with the kind people of the Independent Publishers Guild stand.
On Monday, Deb presented our The Three Little Pigs app to a crowd of people in the children’s innovation space.
On Tuesday and on Wednesday (when Axel was, with Julia Donaldson, combined “author of the day”), Kate had a series of rights appointments. Some were with publishers who, for one reason or another, we were unable to see at Bologna, and some were follow-ups to Bologna apointments. We also had the chance to meet up with a few UK bookshop and other buyers.
Nosy Crow had been invited to participate in a Publishers Association presentation of key titles for the second half of the year to independent booksellers. We were the last of 12 publishers, and, the session was, perhaps inevitably, a bit of a “death-by-powerpoint” kind of thing, so we entirely abandoned our powerpoint, and spoke about just four things we’re publishing in the second half of this year, which I felt (on the hoof) gave some sense of the age-range and kind of books we cover: Pip and Posy: The Scary Monster ; Mega Mash-ups: Pirates and Ancient Egyptians in a Haunted Museum ; Olivia Flies High ; and our Christmas picture book, Just Right. Realistically, after seeing 70-odd titles, I thought that there wasn’t a chance of anyone remembering much about individual books, but I hoped that, by taking the less conventional approach, the independent booksellers would remember Nosy Crow, so that, when their Bounce! rep came calling, they’d feel positively disposed towards the books.
I also did a talk as part of the Oxford Brookes University “Publishing Round The World” series, with an editor from Samokat and a founder of Milly Molly. Here’s me expounding Nosy Crow’s digital marketing thinking:
The photo above, which is as unflattering as it is grainy, was taken by Tom Bonnick, who’s interning with us. We wanted to check that his standards of photography are on the same level as our own if he is to continue to intern for us, and I am happy to say that they are! He did just take it with a phone, though, and from a long way away.
Lots of interviewers wanted to talk to him about his best-known books, The Gruffalo, which he illustrated and Julia Donaldson wrote and which I published at Macmillan perhaps almost 12 years ago. The book is regularly described as a modern classic and is the basis of an Oscar-nominated short film, not to mention a merchandising phenomenon, so this isn’t terribly surprising.
The Pip and Posy books are about a boy rabbit called Pip and a girl mouse called Posy. They all explore a bad thing that happens, that makes either Pip and Posy very sad, or angry or scared, and then the books show how they resolve those problems. So in Pip and Posy: The Super Scooter, Posy takes Pip’s scooter without asking and then she falls off it. Even though Pip was furious with Posy, he gives her a hug, and, though Posy’s hurt her knee, she cheers up and they both go and play in the sand pit. Though the stories are short, Axel wanted to communicate in the illustrations how angry Pip is and how sad and sorry Posy is. In Pip and Posy: The Little Puddle, Pip has an accident and does a wee on the floor. He’s really embarrassed, but Posy makes it all OK. He borrows some clothes, and the next time he has to do a wee, he does one in the potty. So every story has an low point – and “oh, dear” moment – and then, at the end, a high point – a “hooray” moment.
Axel’s ability to capture, for example, the expression on the face of a male rabbit asked to choose between two alternative dresses to wear after a puddle-on-the-floor accident is one of the reasons we think he’s utterly brilliant!
Here’s Axel talking to BBC radio Humberside:
The interview, together with interviews on BBC Humberside, BBC Ulster, BBC Bristol, BBC Wiltshire and BBC Cumbria, will be broadcast today, with others following over the next few days.
Kate’s been describing the books – rather tongue-in-cheek, of course – as “when bad things happen to good toddlers”. In each story, a bad thing happens – whether it’s that Pip forgets he needs a wee, and wets his trousers, or Posy snatches Pip’s scooter without asking and then falls off – but between them, Pip and Posy are able to sort things out and, together, go on to do something nice and happy. So they very much reflect the roller-coaster of pre-schoolers’ emotional lives.
Pip and Posy’s first outing was, in fact, at the Discover Centre in Stratford East and you can read about it here, but now they’re properly published. Axel nipped into Waterstone’s flagship store in Piccadilly to draw on their blackboards to celebrate and will be talking about Pip and Posy at Stratford, Hay, Edinburgh and Bath Literary Festivals this year.
We’ve sold rights to the USA/Canada, France, Germany, Sweden, Finland, Norway and Holland already, with many more languages to follow.
We’re proud of all of the books and apps we publish and of all of our authors, but it is the case that we were unusually and particularly lucky as a new independent publishing company to be able to persuade Axel to illustrate for us, and we’re hugely grateful to him for his leap of faith.
We’re marking the release of Pip and Posy with a competition to win a signed set of books.
So to be in with a chance of winning, please post a comment on our Facebook page or in the Comments field below telling us why you love Axel’s artwork. The winner will be picked at random. The closing date is Friday 15 April.
This is a series of four books by award-winning author Philip Ardagh. The books, which feature the eponymous and disgusting Grunt family, will be illustrated in black and white by Axel Scheffler and the first book, The Grunts in Trouble, will be published in May 2012.
Philip makes me laugh – as a person and as an author. Always has done, always will. His combination of professionalism and irreverence make him the perfect Nosy Crow author, and we are pleased and flattered that he’s chosen to publish with us. Pairing him with Axel Scheffler is going to make this an utterly irresistible series for children of 7 and up.
Philip says:
“I’m delighted that The Grunts, my latest series of (very silly) novels, is to be published by Nosy Crow with the crow so fresh from the egg, and still slightly yolky. For Axel Scheffler to have agreed to illustrate it — without my having to resort to threats of any kind — is the real icing on the metaphorical cake. I very much look forward to working with him, Kate Wilson, and the rest of the Nosy Crow team on what I hope will be some of my most outrageous books to date. These are exciting times! FUN just doesn’t express it.
And Axel says:
“It’s been several years since I’ve illustrated fiction, but there was an anarchy and humour in the outrageous Grunt characters that really appealed to me, and I look forward to working with Philip on his series with Nosy Crow.”
This is the most high-profile of several recent great fiction acquisitions, including a series of four titles by best-seller Holly Webb, that make it clear how serious Nosy Crow is about fiction publishing as well as full-colour publishing. We’ve got world rights in all languages for all of them, so there’ll be lots to talk about at the Bologna Book Fair next week.
Today, as well as announcing this acquisition, we have added our 2012 titles to the Books section of our website. We will publish 25 new titles this year, and at least 35 next year. This year we’ll launch 5 apps for iPad, iPhone and iPod touch and we’re planning to make at least 8 new apps in 2012.
About 100 people squashed into a room that had felt full when Neal from “Winged Chariot” and I had done an event about apps for 50 people on Thursday evening.
Discover Centre story-teller Rebecca took an audience of two to five year olds for a ride on the small-but-intense emotional roller-coaster of the first two Pip and Posy stories. Children shouted out in recognition of the puddle of wee on the floor that appears after Pip gets so involved in playing at being a lion that he forgets he needs to go to the loo in Pip and Posy: The Little Puddle. And they knew exactly how Posy felt when she scraped her knee after snatching Pip’s scooter in Pip and Posy: The Super Scooter.
Axel showed children and parents how he drew the world of Pip and Posy… and was interrupted by the arrival of Pip and Posy themselves – we’d picked up the costumes the previous day. Only two (very little) children cried, which is a bit of a result where costumes are concerned. There was a lot of shaking hands with Pip and Posy and much cuddling of them.
Here’s a really terrible photograph of Pip and Posy’s first encounter with small children.
Axel signed for well over an hour, drawing a little drawing in every book, whether it was a Pip and Posy book or a well-worn copy of The Gruffalo.
We’ve got very cheering videos of a pair of two year-olds reading each of the books in the “extras” tab for each book.
These books have simple rhyming texts and really sturdy mechanisms and are really great for children from 18 months to 3.
We’ve got some to send to reviewers and bloggers. So, if toddler books float your boat, let us know: contact us on hello@nosycrow.com with the subject line, Reviewing Bizzy Bear.
And if you are in East London today (4 March), you could come to our Bizzy Bear event at 11.30am for 45 minutes of songs, stories and colouring at the Discover Centre’sBig Write festival, where we’re doing other events, too:
I’ve written about it about it for The Bookseller online, but you can read about it here too:
I’m dating the start of the company from our announcement of our existence, which we sent to the trade press and others on 22 February 2010. In some ways, we didn’t feel quite ready to announce, but our hand was forced by two things. The first was that I had been asked to judge the British Book Awards and had given my job title as “MD of Nosy Crow” for an announcement of the make-up of the judging panels that came out in the week of 22 February 2010. The second was that I’d been messing around with Facebook on the evening of 21 February, working out how to set up a fan page and invite people to it, when I inadvertently sent out a message to my entire address book for a profile that referred to Nosy Crow.
We had, from memory, just three projects signed at the time we announced, and a stated intention to acquire from established talent and from newcomers. We also clearly stated that we intended to create apps from scratch. There were four of us – me, co-founders Camilla Reid and Adrian Soar, and Imogen Blundell – in a single room in an office complex in a Victorian school building.
One year on…
We have three print titles published. In mid-January, we published Small Blue Thing, a debut romantic fantasy that was written by the colleague of the headhunter I consulted when I was thinking I’d get the hell out of the industry. In mid-February, we published Mega Mash-up: Romans v Dinosaurs on MarsMega Mash-up: Robots v Gorillas in the Desert, innovative two-colour combinations of fiction and doodle-book drawing on popular boy themes by a team who came to us because I’d worked with one of them at Scholastic when he was a designer there.
This year, we will publish 23 print titles for children from 0 to 14, most acquired since February 22 2010. True to our original vision, these are books that children will really enjoy reading: when we acquire a book, we do so with a strong sense of who it’s for. Our books are by established names like Axel Scheffler and Penny Dale and from newer exciting talents. The list – and we’ll be announcing the first six months of 2012 before Bologna – will grow in 2012.
We have one e-book published. Small Blue Thing is our only black-and-white book so far and was the first ebook we created with the support of Faber Factory. I decided that we’d focus our digital aspirations on illustrated publishing and apps.
This year, we will publish 5 straight ebooks.
We have one app published. Last week, we published a cutting-edge story book app, The Three Little Pigs, to quite remarkable reviews (including one from FutureBook, The Bookseller’s digital publishing blog).
This year, we will publish at least 5 highly-interactive, cutting-edge, multimedia apps.
From the beginning, we were interested in using websites and social media to communicate with potential consumers – mainly parents in our case – as well as with potential suppliers in the form of authors and illustrators and customers. We launched with a lively website that has evolved over time but remains true to our original plan. We wanted to create something with real personality, that was professional but also warm, honest and informal… and that was updated constantly: we blog several times a week to provide a window into what we do. In our first year, we’ve had a over a quarter of a million page-views from over 20,000 visitors in 129 countries, and, since we’ve had books and apps on the market, visitor numbers have risen sharply. Thank you very much for visiting us.
We’ve sold in our first list via Bounce! and have promotions with Sainsbury’s, Tesco, ELC/Mothercare, WH Smith, WH Smith Travel, Waterstones and Foyles. Our books are in shops from museum giftshops to Toys ‘R’ Us.
We’ve been active internationally too. In May, Allen and Unwin begins distributing our books in Australia and New Zealand. So far, we’ve sold rights in our books to Germany, France, Holland, Norway, Finland, Sweden, China, Korea and Israel with more good news lined up for announcement over the next few weeks.
There are 11 of us now. We’ve been able to attract the most extraordinary talent to work with us, from games coding genius, Will Bryan, to picture book supremo, Kate Burns. Most of us are parents; several of us work part-time; and several of us work from home and only come into our (slightly bigger) open-plan office occasionally.
There have been challenges and disappointments, and there will undoubtedly be more ahead! There has been constant, grinding, sometimes dull hard work.
We worry – of course we do – about the book market and our place in the print and digital future that is unfolding. But it’s been fun.
It’s been a good year!
Things we haven’t loved so much about this year:
Queuing at the post-office.
Being responsible for all the boring stuff like printer maintenance.
Cold-calling people without a big name behind us.
Things we’ve loved:
Being able to buy great books from authors and illustrators we want to work with as they develop.
Being able to act quickly and decisively.
Selling our books!
The conversations that have opened up online between us and readers, parents, creators and sellers.
Working with great colleagues in a relaxed and fun environment fuelled by cake.
In this case, we had planned the book, but when the roughs were done and the text in place, we felt that the pacing wasn’t spot-on. The pacing of a picture book, particularly what is revealed when you turn a page (as opposed to what you can see already see on the right-hand side of a page when you are reading the left-hand side of a page), is tremendously important, and one of those things that makes creating a really good picture book such a challenge and a skill.
Anyway, we got to work with photocopies of Axel’s rough sketches, bits of paper with the text on it, a pencil and some really big scissors to redesign how the book worked. I know it’s not hi-tech, but for us, it’s the best way.
Here’s Camilla, hand sketching so fast that the camera couldn’t catch it, at work.
The reworked roughs went back to Axel, who redrew some of the images, and we’ll have a full book of art to take to the Bologna Book Fair at the end of March.
Yesterday, Kate met up with Neal Hoskins (pictured) of Winged Chariot in the Crow’s Nest to talk about the opportunities for collaboration amongst apps publishers, and, specifically, children’s apps publishers. For all of us involved in apps publishing, the challenge is how people – parents in our case – find good apps among the ever-growing sea of apps on the store.
They also talked about the Bologna Tools of Change Conference 2011, which Neal is heavily involved in, and at which Kate will be a keynote speaker.
Then Kate and Imogen left for the Bounce! Marketing sales conference for April to August titles in Islington, wrapping fizzy wine in the back of the car to give to the Bounce! reps so they could drink to Nosy Crow’s first book (Small Blue Thing) being published on 13 January 2011. Kate presented to an enthusiastic audience of 18, and it was great to see how many of the reps had already read many of the titles: Bizzy Bear and Pip and Posy were being enthusiastically read by one sales manager’s two year-old. The six year-old “reluctant artist” son of one of the reps had loved completing his first Mega Mash-up book. And one of the reps told everyone how much she’d LOVEDOlivia’s First Term.
After a meeting at the Publisher’s Association about World Book Day 2012 (which’ll be the subject of another post), Kate met up with Imogen and Kirsty at Bounce!‘s Christmas Party, and Kirsty and Kate had to be asked to leave as the pub was closing. A fine time was had by all.
Since the beginning of October, Kate has been to Germany three times (OK, once it was for the Frankfurt Book Fair, but still…), has been to France and Holland once each and has been round the world in 11 days, flying from London to the East Coast of America and then on to Sydney (a trip that involved two 21 hour flights in 3 days).
The purpose of all this travel? She’s trying to find homes for Nosy Crow’s titles in different countries and languages. There’s lots of interest from lots of people in lots of things. Kate (with Adrian) saw 120 people in Frankfurt and 30+ publishers or imprints of publishers in the USA over 5 days (it was like speed-dating, really: her most remarkable day involved 11 appointments in 14 hours).
We’re following all the expressions of interest up diligently,and will have more to announce soon, but one important big deal has come out of all the travelling so far: we’ve appointed our Australian distributor, Allen and Unwin. As well as being Australia’s biggest and best Australian publisher (they’ve won the Publisher of the Year award nine times), they’re independent and… very nice, being enthusiastic and easy to deal with. And they’re based in Crows Nest, which is a bit of Sydney. How good an omen is that?
As well as distributing Nosy Crow, they distribute a handful of important UK publishers like Faber, Profile and Bloomsbury. It is, really, a privilege to have been added to their portfolio, because they don’t say “yes” to just anyone.
As Robert Corman, who is the CEO of Allen and Unwin, said in a press release:
“At Allen and Unwin we love partnering with clever independent publishers. That is why we are delighted to be representing Nosy Crow in Australia and New Zealand. We greatly look forward to helping them grow their business in the ANZ market.”
And Liz Bray, Children’s Book Director of Allen and Unwin, says:
“We’ve been following Nosy Crow’s activities with great interest since they announced their establishment in the UK earlier this year and admired the energy, savvy and passion of their team as well as the books they’re producing. We’re thrilled to have the opportunity to work with them in Australia and New Zealand on books from much-loved creators like Axel Scheffler as well as new stars including S.C. Ransom. Nosy Crow’s innovative, child-focused books have great potential in our markets and will be a fantastic complement to our own publishing and the wonderful children’s lists we distribute.”
So that’s another important part of Nosy Crow’s jigsaw in place, and we are very chuffed.
Axel Scheffler and his family spent the weekend with Kate and Adrian and their family on the border of England and Wales.
They ate cake and chatted and walked in the Brecon Beacons National Park and jumped into the Wye from a seven-metre cliff (well, some of them did).
But what this image shows is that you can’t keep a good illustrator down. Without his normal artistic accoutrements, and armed only with a few pebbles and twigs, Axel made this picture of a pirate and his dog, which made us smile and which we share with you.
Camilla, Adrian and Kate went to Axel Scheffler’s exhibition and sale of art at glorious independent book shop, Daunt Books, in Marylebone High Street (Axel signing, pictured).
Brilliant paper engineer, Nick Denchfield was there with illustrators Ant Parker and Helen Cowcher. Lots of old publishing friends were there including Ian Craig (ex Random House, now the wilds of Scotland), Alison Green (Alison Green Books, Scholastic), Lisa Edwards (Scholastic) and Louise Bolongaro (Penguin) together with journalists and literary agents and scouts.
It was, as always, a huge pleasure to see gruffalos, witches, ducks, rabbits and geese in all their original artwork glory.
A bunch of us went out for pizza afterwards – and Axel’s daughter, Adelie (two and a half) – joined us, and, frankly, was less tired than the rest of us by the end of the evening.
Today, Kate was interviewed by Anja Steig of Buchreport, Germany’s book industry magazine: it’s great to think that she chose Nosy Crow as one of the people she wanted to talk to while she was here: tomorrow, she’s interviewing Dominic Myers, MD of Waterstones.
Waterstones will be important to Nosy Crow when we start selling books next year, but here’s an interesting and not altogether cheering US book industry statistic reported by Jane Friedman (@JaneFriedman) from BEA (Book Expo America) today: 7% of books published generate 87% of sales and 93% of all published books sell less than 1,000 copies each.
Children’s publisher Nosy Crow has made three new additions to its fledgling list in the run-up to Bologna, including two books with illustrator Axel Scheffler.
“I’ve really noticed that once children have got the hang of walking and made a start on talking, they begin to get bored with simple board books and become interested in longer stories. Their concentration levels increase and they are able to understand plot as well as starting to relate to character more and more.
“And as toddlers, children begin to encounter all sorts of new situations and experiences, not all of which are positive! Whether they are losing a treasured balloon, falling off a scooter or having an ice cream, a toddler’s world quickly becomes much more complex – and their emotional spectrum broader. From delight, to frustration, to jealousy, to fury, and back to joy, a two year-old can experience a whole range of feelings – often in the course of a single hour!”
Pip and Posy books explore the high drama of toddler life.
Axel is, of course, one of the illustrators in our Who’s your favourite children’s book illustrator survey, and your last chance to take the survey is at before 6.00pm today, when voting will close. We’ll announce the winner in our Monday post.
We’ve received two illustrations to mark the launch of Nosy Crow. The first we received was this one, from one of our favourite illustrators, Axel Scheffler.
Thanks to those of you who suggested favourite illustrators in public comments to the web, and to those of you who wrote in directly, after yesterday’s House of Illustration post.
We said we’d do a Who’s your favourite children’s book illustrator survey, so click on the link to let us know what you think. The illustrators listed are all ones that appeared in the original post, or that you’ve suggested to us subsequently. Of course, we think all the illustrators we’re working with are great, but we felt that it wouldn’t be entirely democratic if our own choices were over-represented. We’ll tell you who your top five are next week.
Kate went to the hilariously-named Society of Bookmen dinner last night with that nice Carly Cook from Headline. The debate was, “We (or this house, or something formal like that) believe that celebrity publishing is good for the booktrade.” Carly knows her celebrity onions and no mistake. It’s a funny old society, and Kate was told that she can’t tell you the result of the debate, or she’ll have to kill you. She thought that the speakers – Mark Booth for and Liz Thompson against – seemed to hold views that were pretty similar, actually … but, of course, she’s bound by the rules of the society to conceal from you exactly what those views were. In fact, what with the secrecy thing, it all turns out to be less good post-fodder than she’d hoped …!
Yesterday evening Kate went to the Quayle Munro party, a champagney affair at the Reform Club. This necessitated a stop-off at home to change into a serious dress and real heels – very unlike what she wears to work these days. She talked briefly to her hosts including the spectacularly chic and charming Kit van Tulleken and to various familiar and cheerful people who wave the flag of independence like Andrea Carr of Rising Stars and Klaus Flugge of Andersen Press.
They all welcomed Nosy Crow to the independent fold. Though she didn’t have a clue who most of the suited men in the room were, she found out that Nigel Newton, head honcho at Bloomsbury, is very impressively learning Arabic – not at the party, obviously, but in what passes for spare time in Publishing Land. Brilliant ex-colleague and chum Denise Cripps from Scholastic was there and so was Peter Mayer (on whom Kate has always had a bit of a crush since he helped her carry her own weight in children’s book dummies at a Bologna book fair about 25 years ago), but he was so surrounded by devotees that she didn’t have a chance to get at him.
Then on, on a bit late and through the rain and wind in silly shoes to the lovely Osokool Gallery in Blackheath, above the Handmade Food Cafe and Deli which is run by Ferg and Vicki (that’s Vicki with Axel in the picture), for the opening of an exhibition of Axel’s Hand Made Food Drawings which runs from February 25 to March 27. Lots of art featuring food by Axel, most of it for sale and all proceeds to one of several charities (you get to chose which one). What are you waiting for?
