In today’s issue of Publisher’s Weekly, the US book trade magazine – which is a sort of bible for the North American industry – collected together the top books of the year out of the (tens of) thousands of books published year.
They listed nine children’s “non-fiction” titles. Two were Nosy Crow’s. One was the US edition of I Am The Seed That Grew The Tree, called, in the USA, Sing a Song of Seasons, which is published in the USA by Candlewick Press. The other was the US edition of HerStory, which is published in the USA by Simon and Schuster.
Of Sing a Song of Seasons, Publisher’s Weekly wrote:
“With a cohesive visual thread and an eye toward interacting regularly with poetry and the outdoors, this hefty offering presents a nature poem for every day of the year, from a wide variety of writers including Christina Rossetti and Margaret Wise Brown.”
Here’s a look inside our UK edition of the book, I Am The Seed That Grew The Tree: A Nature Poem For Every Day Of The Year:
And of HerStory, Publisher’s Weekly wrote:
“This inclusive volume’s vibrant collage-style spreads recount the stories of 50 notable women over time and across the globe (among them Empress Wu Zetian of China, Indian secret agent Noor Inayat Khan, and Mayan human rights activist Rigoberta Menchú) and emphasize change-makers’ common bonds.”
Here’s a look inside our UK edition of the book:
We are hugely proud of this. Nosy Crow only began publishing non-fiction of any kind in 2016, when we launched our began publishing in collaboration with The National Trust. This was followed, the following year, with books from our collaboration with The British Museum, and it’s only this year that we have published any “non-partnership” non-fiction. So this feels like a pretty meteoric rise.
So many people touched both of these big, ambitious books, from concept to the details of the indexes and acknowledgements. They are, of all our books, perfect examples of how collaborative a process publishing is, and how it depends on input from multiple sources. But Holly Jackman, a senior designer at Nosy Crow, designed both books, and so I feel that she’s to be particularly congratulated, as the aesthetic vision for them is something that the listing of the best books of 2018 pulls out, speaking of the “cohesive visual thread” of I Am The Seed That Grew The Tree/Sing a Song of Seasons and the “vibrant, collage-style spreads” of Herstory.
