A double award-winning day for Nosy Crow - Nosy Crow Skip to content
Posted by Tom, November 29, 2013

A double award-winning day for Nosy Crow

Yesterday was something of a triumph for Nosy Crow books – awards were won at TWO separate ceremonies! The two awards – a Sheffield Baby Book Award and an Oldham Brilliant Books Award – are particularly meaningful to us as they’re voted for by readers and parents: exactly who we have in mind with every book that we publish.

At the crack of dawn, Camilla was on her way up to Sheffield, where Icky Sticky Monster, illustrated and paper-engineered by the wonderful Jo Lodge, had been nominated for the Sheffield Baby Book award 2013 – and the book won!

The Sheffield Children’s Book Awards this year celebrate its 25th anniversary and has, in that time, grown from a small-scale, local event to the grand occasion that it is today. It was an initiative started by the city’s librarians working with kids in schools, libraries and nurseries, and who describe their ambition as being to make ‘every Sheffield child articulate and literate by the age of 11’.

The awards are divided into four categories: Baby Book, Picture Book, Shorter Novel, Longer Novel and Young Adult, and what makes them slightly different from other awards is that the winners are chosen by the child readers themselves, who slowly work their way through the short list over the course of the year, and then vote for their favourite book at the end of it all.

A whopping 1336 children submitted votes for the baby book section and though it was apparently a close-run thing, Icky Sticky Monster prevailed, which makes it particularly satisfying. Here’s Jo with her splendid award:

You can order Icky Sticky Monster online here.

And later on that day, Caryl Hart and Sarah Warburton, author and illustrator for The Princess and the Peas, were in Oldham for the Oldham Brilliant Books Award – where their fantastic first picture book collaboration triumphed in the Key Stage One category!

Here’s what Sarah had to say about the award:

“It was the most fantastic night. Oldham had really put on its Hollywood glitz. The best thing about it was the room was full of children who were the best behaved and best dressed we’d ever seen. I’m so overjoyed that this award was voted for by the children themselves, and the heart-felt hug by a little girl at the end of the evening really was a highlight for me! A massive thanks to Oldham for such an amazing night, thanks to Caryl (for just being so clever) and thanks to everyone at Nosy Crow for pairing us up to begin with.”

And here’s Caryl’s reaction:

“I was so surprised the we won the Key Stage One award – especially amongst such stiff competition! It’s only the second year that Oldham Council have run the Brilliant Book Awards – and they’ve done a fantastic job. We sat around tables in true Oscars style and were treated to live performances of extracts from all the shortlisted books.

The children were dressed up to the nines and all seemed to have a great time – topped by a parade at the end of the evening! We are all going to the amazing Oldham Library this morning to meet more children and run some workshops. I’m really looking forward to reading The Princess and the Peas and playing a story-making game with them.

It’s fantastic to be involved in these wonderful awards. They are a brilliant way to generate enthusiasm about books and reading and will hopefully help ensure that the children of Oldham are readers for life.”

And here they are with their fantastic awards:

You can take a look inside The Princess and the Peas below – and the book is available to order online here.

Many thanks to Oldham and Sheffield for these awards, and congratulations to Jo, Caryl and Sarah for their fantastic books and this much-deserved recognition!

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