Nosy Crow tag

Julia Donaldson: Waterstone's Children's Laureate

Posted by Kate on Jun 10, 2011

On Tuesday it was announced that Julia Donaldson is the UK’s new Children’s Laureate.

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.

Tagged with axel scheffler, best books for children, book trust, childr, children's authors, children's books, children's illustrators, children's publishers, children and reading, digital publishing, ebooks, illustrators, julia donaldson, pip and posy, waterstones

Pre-launch lunch for Nosy Crow

Posted by Kate on Nov 17, 2010

On Monday, we had a pre-launch lunch for Nosy Crow. Adrian cooked up a storm (Indian food – a speciality of his), and we invited journalists and other influencial people in the world of children’s books to talk to them about our 2011 programme of books and apps. For some of them, the lunch was the first time they’d seen a children’s app.

Here’s Damian Kelleher talking to Nicholas Tucker of The Independent and Nicki Marsh of Book Trust talking to Abigail Moss of The National Literacy Trust.

It was a sort of celebration for the Nosy Crows too, as we have finished copies of our first two books and proofs of many others, so we are in the final run-up to publication.

Graeme Neill from The Bookseller came, and wrote a short article in yesterday’s electronic edition of The Bookseller.

Tagged with book trust, national literacy trust, publishing, the bookseller

StarLit, Star Bright

Posted by Camilla on Oct 07, 2010

Here at Nosy Crow, we love a festival almost as much as we love cake, and this week Kirsty and Camilla were down in London’s fashionable Hoxton Square for the StarLit festival.

StarLit is run by the Shoreditch Trust and is a scheme designed to get children having fun reading, writing and drawing. Working with publishers, bookshops, Booktrust and corporate sponsors, the scheme matches up classes with specific books, who then spend a month getting to know the titles with their teachers. The festival is the culmination of all their work, when the classes get to meet the creator of their particular book.

With over 2,000 children, and 70 authors, illustrators and poets taking part, it is an ambitious and valuable scheme, and clearly hugely enjoyed by both the children and teachers involved. Kirsty and Camilla saw events with Deborah Allwright, Thomas Docherty, Bruce Ingman and Philip Ardagh (pictured, and who had his audience almost literally rolling in the aisles!). Andy Stanton, Viv Schwarz, Malory Blackman, Philip Reeve and Michael Foreman were amongst the many others involved.

Dylan Calder, StarLit’s organiser, is starting a similar scheme, called Pop-up, next year, which Nosy Crow is very much hoping to support.

Tagged with book trust, cake, festivals, starlit