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28.02.14
CHILDREN’S NEWS
www.thebookseller.com
Publishers grab a Pizza the action
QUESTIONS WE ASKED...
Tracey Trussell Author
Can you tell us about the story of So What!? So What! [Digital Leaf, April] is a story about Daisy, who is having best friend trouble. The tale is set in the playground, where Daisy is struggling to cope with her best friend’s spiteful banter. Whenever she tells her so-called “best friend” Lissy some exciting news, Lissy always says, “So what!”, which makes Daisy feel disheartened and depressed. To cope with her feelings, Daisy daydreams. She imagines fanciful elaborate things she wishes she’d said to impress Lissy. The book has a very “girly” feel, which isn’t always fashionable. Was that important for you? I think it’s important that little girls should be able to celebrate all things pretty and pink. Daisy is seven and she loves pink sparkles, and pertinently she’s true to her own taste and style, and she isn’t constrained by peer pressure. So What! is saying that it’s okay to be yourself, to express your own individuality and not be dictated to by your friends or by current trends. How did you, your publisher and the illustrator come up with the look? It has punchy dialogue and attitude, which we decided would be best complemented by bold illustrations infused with rich, bright colour. But we also needed to address the magical, fantasy aspect of Daisy’s daydreams. When [illustrator] Neil Price submitted sketches of big faces on disproportionately small bodies, oozing character and humour, they seemed to enhance the true feelings behind the expressions. How important are imaginary friends? Imaginary friends can be really helpful in times of adversity and stress, giving a young child just the comfort and reassurance they need. They are there to help children deal with big emotions and anxiety. It’s a clever coping strategy.
BY CHARLOTTE EYRE
Pizza Hut is teaming up with Bloomsbury, Hot Key Books, Templar and Nosy Crow for its latest book club offer. Between March and June, all of the restaurant chain’s activity booklets will be dedicated to the Pizza Hut Book Club, featuring four books: Wrestling Trolls: Big Rock and the Masked Avenger by Jim Eldridge (Hot Key); Princess Ponies: A Magical Friend by Chloe Ryder (Bloomsbury
Candlestick for kids Nottingham-based independent Candlestick Press is launching a new children’s poetry imprint in March. The imprint begins
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The LEGO Movie Ultimate Sticker... The Singing Mermaid The Lego Movie: Mighty Allies Activity Book Superworm The Gruffalo The Snail and the Whale Monkey Puzzle Room on the Broom Zog Despicable Me 2: Make a Minion Sticker Book
*Week ending 22nd February
Children’s Books); The JolleyRogers and the Ghostly Galleon by Jonny Duddle (Templar Publishing); and The Rescue Princesses: The Rainbow Opal by Paula Harrison (Nosy Crow). More than a million booklets will be distributed to 300 Pizza Hut outlets across the UK. Marketing agency Mostra, which designed the booklets, will dedicate a double-page spread to each book with activities such as word searches, puzzles and mazes. Pizza
with four compilations: Five Creepy Crawly Poems (contains slugs), Five Nonsense Poems (contains two cows in a lift), Five Poems about Teachers
AUTHOR
PUBLISHER
ISBN
Donaldson, Julia Donaldson, Julia Donaldson, Julia Donaldson, Julia Donaldson, Julia Donaldson, Julia Donaldson, Julia Darling, Angela
Dorling Kindersley Macmillan Ladybird Alison Green Macmillan Macmillan Macmillan Macmillan Alison Green Simon & Schuster
9781409345152 9781447210856 9780723291121 9781407132358 9781447251941 9780333982242 9780333720011 9780333903384 9781407115597 9781471121463
Hut is also offering vouchers giving customers the chance to buy the books for half price at W H Smith. Sarah Benton, head of marketing at Hot Key, said the Pizza Hut Book Club was an opportunity to get a book directly in front of children and parents, while Kate Wilson, m.d. of Nosy Crow, said the book club was a great
(contains a headteacher in a dustbin), and Five Poems about Gh… Gh… Ghosts (contains spookiness). Carol Ann Duffy, Spike Milligan, Pauline Clarke and John Hegley are some of the poets featured in the books.
PUB DATE Jan 14 Mar 13 Jan 14 Sep 13 Jan 14 Sep 04 Aug 00 Sep 02 Sep 11 Oct 13
RRP
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£7.99 £5.29 £6.99 £4.48 £6.99 £5.70 £6.99 £4.61 £6.99 £3.93 £6.99 £3.15 £6.99 £3.46 £6.99 £4.26 £6.99 £4.25 £3.99 £3.04
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CHILDREN’S NEWS
15
COMMENT: UNDERAGE RAGE
T
girls who wear een sexuality is something adults short skirts are like to pontificate about as if simply girls we’ve forgotten what it’s like to who wear short think about everything on the spectrum skirts; and from kissing to sex every other second. that mistakes But teenagers who have sex are no more happen. morally reprehensible than those who People sleep with the wrong don’t. Do pregnant teens on TV—there person. It’s not the end of the world. because a sperm hit an egg at the right It’s not easy being a teen. You are so angle/wrong time—deserve the easy tut close to being responsible for yourself and eye-roll that the programmes invite? without the freedom to test it. Your If I were a teenager now, I’d wonder why the media was inciting my peers to judge body’s out of control and hopped up on hormones. Wouldn’t each other. it help if your friends Here is where YA and enemies (often saves. The media one and the same) may have an agenda, had read a book that but a book that aims made them think to reach a young The reader has twice before they audience cannot the power to called you out for afford to have one. A walk away with exerting agency over book requires trust for the message yourself? the reader to become they most want My argument immersed in the world to hear isn’t that sex is created, and nothing empowering, but that breaks trust like the one should be empowered enough to feeling of being manipulated. Get it be able to choose how, when and who right and a book has the potential to to do it with. Too often the conversation change your mind, teach you empathy is framed to undermine the agency and question prejudice—it’s why that teenagers are trying to exert. This booksellers and librarians take the time helps no one. Books can, by suspending to recommend the right one, and why judgement and being frank, by showing publishers and authors invest so much that teenagers should feel in control of time in creating them. The relationship their own bodies and desires, so that if between the words and the reader is a and when they choose to have sex, take private conversation, one in which the drugs, or drink alcohol—or even hand reader has the power to walk away with their homework in late—it is a choice. the message they most want to hear. Right now, I’d want reassurance: that Non Pratt is the author of Trouble (Walker, sex isn’t a stick to beat me with, nor March), which centres on a teen pregnancy one I should use to do the beating; that
N on Pratt
fit for the “well-written and commercial” Rescue Princesses series. “We hope that we’ll see an uplift in sales with increased awareness of the series generally, but it’s great to have a retail partner on
board in the form of the halfprice W H Smith voucher,” she said. The books will also be promoted through the Pizza Hut website, emails and Facebook page.
Candlestick is also publishing a book of a single poem, The Tale of Custard the Dragon, by Ogden Nash. Editor Jenny Swann said she wanted to publish poetry for children because of the range of good poetry for younger readers out there. “We felt that children often get put off poetry at school—often teachers don’t understand it—so we wanted to show them that poetry can be fun,” she said. “We tried to steer a course between dreary classics on the one
hand, and patronising poems on the other.” The books are illustrated by Amy Blackwell and Ruth Green, and the cover designs were inspired by books published by the German Insel Bucherei, which Swann had on her bookshelves when she was a child. Unlike Candlestick’s poetry books for adults, each children’s collection comes with a page for the reader’s own poems or drawings, as well as a sticker and bookmark. All of the five titles will be priced £4.95.
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Ratburger Paws and Whiskers Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Hard Luck Gangsta Granny Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Third Wheel Demon Dentist Billionaire Boy The Boy in the Dress Diary of a Wimpy Kid - Cabin Fever Mr Stink
*Week ending 22nd February
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AUTHOR
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ISBN
Walliams, David Wilson, Jacqueline Kinney, Jeff Walliams, David Kinney, Jeff Walliams, David Walliams, David Walliams, David Kinney, Jeff Walliams, David
HarperCollins Doubleday Puffin HarperCollins Puffin HarperCollins HarperCollins HarperCollins Puffin HarperCollins
9780007453542 9780857533524 9780141350677 9780007371464 9780141345741 9780007453566 9780007371082 9780007279043 9780141343006 9780007279067
PUB DATE Feb 14 Feb 14 Nov 13 Feb 13 Jan 14 Sep 13 Jun 11 Jun 09 Jan 13 May 10
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£6.99 £4.42 £12.99 £7.24 £12.99 £7.78 £6.99 £4.51 £6.99 £4.66 £12.99 £8.00 £6.99 £4.56 £6.99 £4.50 £6.99 £4.49 £6.99 £4.36
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