children's & YA recommendations on the go
Mr Bunny’s Chocolate Factory by Elys Dolan
The Big, Fat, Totally Bonkers Diary of Pig by Emer Stamp
Tom Gates: Epic Adventure (Kind Of) by Liz Pichon
The shortlist was judged by Michael Rosen, children’s novelist, poet and former Children’s Laureate, and a panel, consisting of CBBC presenter Katie Thistleton and The Sunday Times’ Children’s Books Editor, Nicolette Jones.
Voting on the shortlists is now open and closes on 8th December.
Winners will be announced in January 2018.
Captain Underpants and the Sensational Saga of Sir Stinks-A-Lot
CAPTAIN UNDERPANTS returns for a twelfth adventure in this highly illustrated comic book style series! George and Harold, and their doubles, Yesterday George and Yesterday Harold, have a good thing going.
When Andy Griffiths was teaching high school students in Mildura in the late 1980s, he was struck by how different their experience of reading was from his own. In his youth, books were omnipresent, and were wild, fun places to be—an escape from the adult word of logic.
In my experience as a child I loved being a little bit scared and I loved a good story. There are very few kids that can resist the lure of both of those.
ANDY GRIFFITHS, AUTHOR
But many of the kids at his school had never had a good experience with a book. Books were for nerds, they told him, and to be avoided at all costs.‘I wanted to turn my class around,’ he tells Sunday Extra.
‘I started writing down silly little stories, provocative stories, about bums growing arms and legs and running away. And they laughed … “This is cool, sir! Can I write a story like that?” I said, “Yeah! And I’ll photocopy them and we’ll put them in a book in the library and look, you’ve just become authors.”
‘They had this sudden organic connection to words and stories and got the idea that you’re actually entertaining an audience.’
A quarter of a century later, Griffiths is one of Australia’s best-known children’s authors, having sold more than five million copies of his books around the world. The stories about bums growing arms and legs turned into a three-part series with increasingly silly titles—The Day My Bum Went Psycho, Zombie Bums from Uranus, and Bumageddon: The Final Pongflict—and even an animated TV series.
Missed this welcome bit of news while I was away in North Norfolk for a few days – well done Michael Rosen and Scholastic…
Following the closure of the Roald Dahl funny books prize last month, there’s now a new funny books award on the block – the Laugh Out Loud book prize. It’s a set of awards launched by the publisher Scholastic that recognises the funniest children’s books on the market. The best part? The ultimate winner will be chosen by you!
The prize, also known as the “Lollies”, will be made up of three categories: the Best Laugh Out Loud book for 6–8s, Best Laugh Out Loud book for 9–13s and Best Laugh Out Loud Picture Book. Publishers will submit their favourite funny books to a panel of judges, with poet and former children’s laureate Michael Rosen (who started the Roald Dahl prize) at the head of the panel. The shortlist will be announced in March and that’s when you can vote for your favourite laugh-out-loud read, through the “Lollies” website.
Liz Pichon’s top 10 funny books with pictures
Read more
Rosen says the new prize “will be like a great big signpost saying ‘this way laughs’”, so if you want a say in the silliest reads, this is the perfect chance to get involved.You can follow the latest updates through the hashtag #lollies, and Scholastic will also organise a series of events in schools across the country, bringing the funniest books to a classroom near you.
via Michael Rosen heads up new funny books award | Children's books | The Guardian.
Philip Ardagh interviewed for the Guardian by members of the Imagine children’s festival “ideas cloud”:
Literature did wonders for my early vocabulary By the age of five, I was writing couplets that featured the word “alas”. I suppose I had a way of speaking that was not always suitable for my age. It made me stand out at school – and not in a good way.
School can be hell I was bullied from the age of seven, and I had to share a classroom with the main bully, my nemesis, for the next nine years. I was made fun of, stabbed with pencils in the back. It was all pretty unpleasant, and made me very anxious, very scared. I didn’t talk about it to anyone, I didn’t ask for help; I just thought that this was what life was. I coped by reading; books were a window to another world.
Highly recommended Guardian Review profile:
There is a simple test to see whether a child will like reading Lemony Snicket books, says the man who wrote them over tea at a Dublin hotel: “If there was a small child here who said, ‘Can I have one of those cookies?’, I might say, ‘One of those cookies is poisoned. We have no idea which one.’” And, adds Daniel Handler, who wrote the bestselling, 13-volume series A Series of Unfortunate Events, under the pen name Lemony Snicket, “there’s the sort of child who is alarmed by that and the sort of child who delights in it.”
So the latter would enjoy the bittersweet adventures of the tragically orphaned Baudelaire twins and their travails with venal uncle Count Olaf and his unpleasant henchpersons? “That’s right,” laughs Handler, joined by his wife, graphic artist Lisa Brown, who is sketching on a nearby sofa. “People say, ‘How old does a child need to be to appreciate Lemony Snicket?’ And I say, ‘It’s not how old, it’s the arrival of irony.’”
Coda:
Before he leaves, I ask Handler to sign a copy of the third Lemony Snicket book, The Wide Window, for my daughter, who liked that volume most of all. “To Juliet, a future orphan. DH (allegedly LS)”, he writes. Bloody cheek, I think, as I read the inscription on the flight back to London. I still haven’t given her the signed copy. My daughter likes irony, but I don’t think she – or I – are quite ready for that sentiment.
It was announced last week that Circus Of Thieves And The Raffle Of Doom [by William Sutcliffe] has been chosen for this year’s Young City Reads as part of Brighton Festival.
The idea is that one book by one author is chosen for children across the city to creatively engage with, at home and at school, and the project launches officially on March 5 (World Book Day) at Jubilee library.
…
Circus Of Thieves And The Raffle Of Doom is the first book that William has written for younger children (eight years and up), and the first of a series, the second of which is soon to be published.
The central character in the offbeat adventure is a girl called Hannah, whose life is dull until Armitage Shank’s Impossible Circus comes to town.
William has written five novels for adults, including the international bestseller Are You Experienced?, while his first novel for young adults, The Wall, published in 2013, was shortlisted for the Guardian Fiction Prize.
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“I think the eight to 12 age group are the least well-served when it comes to finding something to read, and hopefully this will fill that gap.”
William began writing Circus of Thieves and the Raffle of Doom shortly after the birth of his third child, so didn’t have huge amounts of time to dedicate to it. The first draft was written without too much scrutiny, but then the re-write was more rigorous, he says.
“I have no idea where the story comes from, I think it had been knocking around for a while; sometimes you have an intangible sense of how you want the story to feel.
“The story and characters revealed themselves to me as I wrote.
William explains that he approaches writing projects differently depending on what they are. Because Circus Of Thieves And The Raffle Of Doom is a humorous children’s book he was able to take a more freeform approach, rather than outlining a structure and sticking to it strictly.
“I have spent most of my adult life writing, and in order to keep the process alive for yourself as a writer you can do different things,” says William.
“I do enjoy taking a different approach each time.”
The book is definitely on the border between the real and the surreal, and the characters are brought to life with illustrations by David Tazzyman.
William and David will be in Brighton for a special Young City Reads event on May 20.
William now lives in Edinburgh, with his wife, novelist Maggie O’Farrell, and their three children aged 10, 5 and 2.
via Author's new children's book to be read across the county (From The Argus).
Two very different books from the same author, both published this year, one by Andersen Press, the other by Hot Key.
Seven Second Delay – described as “a blood pumping thrill ride” by one Amazon reviewer – and as a “Tense dystopian thriller” by School Librarian – has a striking, predominantly matt black cover design.
Boys Don’t Knit, as the very different cover evokes, is a diary format comedy. (There is already a sequel)
