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Presentation Footage From Recent Waterstones Children’s Book Prize

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Last year’s winner, Angie Thomas, seen here in the video thumbnail, spoke on video link about the impact winning this important UK prize has had on her sales. Children’s laureate, Lauren Child, presenting the award to the outright winner, spoke of the importance of being recognised early on in a creative career.
The winning author, in true Academy style, thanked her mother.
Tomi Adeyemi… well, watch the footage.
The two winners of the illustrated category received whoops of support.
And Florentyna, Waterstones Children’s Buyer, spun a clever speech threading together the titles of past winners, only a snippet of which is caught here. She also, for the record, kept referring to James Daunt as a pirate.

The original entry about the Prize results has now had this video added.

Midnight At Moonstone by Lara Flecker ill. Trisha Krauss

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The author based this book on her 15 years experience as a Senior Textile Conservation Display Specialist at the V&A.

Kit’s father is away AGAIN, and although she’s supposed to be staying with her brother and sister, Kit steals away to visit her grandfather at Moonstone Manor. The costume museum once filled with extravagant wonders, is now an aging house with creaking floorboards and damp walls. The decadent fashion designs seem dull and lifeless. The fabrics worn and dusty. But there is still magic within Moonstone’s walls, and Kit will soon discover that the old costumes hold their own secret splendour . . . because on the stroke of midnight, the costumes come to life. And they’ve got a lot to say.

The illustrator’s website: https://www.trishakrauss.com

Waterstones

Flemish Author Bart Moeyaert Wins Astrid Lindgren Award 2019

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The Flemish author Bart Moeyaert is the laureate of Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award 2019

Bart Moeyaert was born in 1964 and lives in Antwerp, Belgium. He made his debut at age 19 with the award-winning novel Duet met valse noten (1983). His large and diverse body of work includes more than 50 titles, ranging from picture books and YA novels to poetry. His critically acclaimed books have been translated in more than 20 countries. He also writes television screenplays and stage plays, has translated a number of novels, and teaches creative writing.

The Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award (Swedish: Litteraturpriset till Astrid Lindgrens minne) is an international children’s literary award established by the Swedish government in 2002 to honour the Swedish children’s author Astrid Lindgren (1907–2002). The prize of five million SEK, makes it the most financially advantageous award in children’s literature and the one of the richest literary prizes in the world.

The award is administered by the Swedish Arts Council funded solely by the central government

Andersen Acquisition – Evernight by Ross Mackenzie

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Andersen Press has acquired Evernight, the first in a trilogy by Blue Peter Award-winning author Ross MacKenzie [pictured above].

Charlie Sheppard, Publishing Director of Andersen Press, bought World rights at auction from Stephanie Thwaites at Curtis Brown in the biggest fiction acquisition for Andersen in recent years.

The book is described as t “a darkly magical adventure story, with a strong mixed-race heroine, perfect for fans of Northern Lights and Nevermoor.”

It will publish with a large-scale marketing and publicity campaign, which will include an author tour across the UK, marketing spend and point of sale material for the trade, and a school-focussed sampler campaign. Proof copies will be available in the summer, ahead of a March 2020 release.

Charlie Sheppard, Andersen Press’ Publishing Director, has said, “At Andersen Press I’ve always had the luxury of being able to publish books that I would have devoured as a child. Evernight, for me, has the perfect combination of magic, intrigue, twists and world-building that my inner child still can’t resist. I’m so very pleased and proud to be publishing this book and can’t wait to get it into the hands of children everywhere.”

Andersen Acquires Chinglish

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Interesting sounding title coming from Andersen Press in September:

Chinglish – an illustrated diary from the perspective of a teenage, first-generation, British Chinese girl.
A coming-of-age story about a girl growing up above a Chinese takeaway in the West Midlands in the 1980s by Sue Cheung.

The publisher is describing the book as “East is East meets Georgia Nicolson in a Chinese takeaway”.

World rights were acquired from literary agent James Catchpole.

Waterstones Children’s Book Prize 2019 – The Winner

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The category winners, and outright winner, of the fifteenth Waterstones Children’s Book Prize were announced last night on the second floor of the company’s Piccadilly store. It was a glittering event, attended by many of the previous years’ winners.

Congratulations to Onjali Q. Rauf for being delcared the outright winner.

For sheer exuberance and joy of winning nothing could beat the response of the first category winners, the author and illustrator team behind The Girls.

As I left the event and waited for the next 38 bus I had a short chat with the partner of the illustrator, who was outside taking a short ciggy break. He spoke with enormous and touching pride having just seen his girlfriend, Jenny Løvlie, accept such an influential award for her very first picture book. Apparently she is currently working on four more titles, one of them taking inspiration from her rural upbringing in Norway. Scroll down for a video about this promising young illustrator. Click images in the gallery for fuller-sized view and slideshow. There will be a video supplement to this post in due course.

 

Meet The Penguins by Mike Brownlow

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Don’t you just LOVE that cover?!

When two penguins arrive from a faraway place and want to make friends, the other animals do not want to play with them. If only they would give the penguins a chance, they might discover how wonderful they really are! A funny story about welcoming others – brilliantly written and illustrated by best-selling author of Ten Little Superheroes.

Mike Brownlow’s 10 Little Bookworms was one of the special World Book Day 2019 titles.

Waterstones

Carnegie & Greenaway Shortlists

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CILIP Carnegie Medal shortlist (alphabetical by author surname):

  1. The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo (Electric Monkey)
  2. Rebound by Kwame Alexander, illustrated by Dawud Anyabwile (Andersen Press)
  3. The House with Chicken Legs by Sophie Anderson, illustrated by Elisa Paganelli (Usborne Books)
  4. Bone Talk by Candy Gourlay (David Fickling Books)
  5. A Skinful of Shadows by Frances Hardinge (Macmillan Children’s Books)
  6. Things A Bright Girl Can Do by Sally Nicholls (Andersen Press)
  7. Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds, illustrated by Chris Priestley (Faber & Faber)
  8. The Land of Neverendings by Kate Saunders (Faber & Faber)

CILIP Kate Greenaway Medal shortlist (alphabetical by illustrator surname):

  1. The Day War Came illustrated by Rebecca Cobb, written by Nicola Davies (Walker Books)
  2. Ocean Meets Sky illustrated and written by Eric Fan and Terry Fan (Lincoln Children’s Books)
  3. Beyond The Fence illustrated and written by Maria Gulemetova (Child’s Play Library)
  4. The Wolf, the Duck and the Mouse illustrated by Jon Klassen, written by Mac Barnett (Walker Books)
  5. Julian is a Mermaid illustrated and written by Jessica Love (Walker Books)
  6. You’re Safe With Me illustrated by Poonam Mistry, written by Chitra Soundar (Lantana Publishing)
  7. The Lost Words illustrated by Jackie Morris, written by Robert Macfarlane (Hamish Hamilton)
  8. Suffragette: The Battle for Equality illustrated and written by David Roberts (Two Hoots)

The Carnegie shortlist contains three verse novels for the first time in the Medal’s 81-year history. Elizabeth Acevedo’s The Poet X, Kwame Alexander’s Rebound and Jason Reynold’s Long Way Down each use free verse to create coming-of-age stories, blending influences from slam poetry and hip-hop to explore identity, first love, loss and gang crime. The Carnegie Medal was first won by verse nove in 2016, by Sarah Crossan for One.

Jon Klassen is the only previous winner to appear on this year’s Medal shortlists, having won the 2014 Kate Greenaway Medal with This Is Not My Hat. Former shortlistees to make it onto this year’s lists are Frances Hardinge and Kate Saunders for the Carnegie Medal, and Rebecca Cobb, David Roberts and Jackie Morris for the Kate Greenaway Medal.

There is a strong showing for independent publishers on the lists, with seven of the 16 titles coming from Andersen Press, Child’s Play Library, David Fickling Books, Faber & Faber and Lantana Publishing. The two smallest presses – Child’s Play Library and Lantana Publishing – have books on the Kate Greenaway shortlist for the first time.