Showing posts with label that was the year that was. Show all posts
Showing posts with label that was the year that was. Show all posts
Monday, 31 December 2012
2012 - That was the year that was - Part 4 (October, November, December) ReadItDaddy takes a retrospective look back at a year in Children's Books
As ReaditDaddy weathered the rain and storms of October, we said a sad goodbye to Helen Nicoll, one half of the extremely talented team behind the Meg and Mog books. I loved these when I was a kid, and these were some of the earliest books we checked out from the library for Charlotte when she was really tiny.
Helen and her illustrator cohort Jan Pienkowski gave the world great characters, fantastic (and varied) books that have been loved by generations of children. Even now we find them very hard to resist when we spot them in the library and I'm pretty sure they'll be around when this blog turns into "ReadIt, Grandaddy!" R.I.P Helen.
We touched base with the lovely folk at Springboard Stories, a book and learning resources site and magazine that comes accompanied with a brilliant story book with each issue. The springboard crew can be relied upon for very interesting child learning and book related articles, and they seem to have a knack for snaring brilliant writing and illustrative talent to back up their books and magazine - so we're always keeping a close eye on their twitter feed too (@springboardstories).
Our first book of the week showed the shape of things to come as the first Christmas book dropped through the letterbox, courtesy of the kind folk at Top That! Publishing. "When I dream of Christmas" by Oakley Graham and Patricia Yuste has gone on to become a free download e-book so if you haven't picked it up yet, go grab the kindle version - it's a christmas cracker!
More books through the letterbox, this time courtesy of MyLittleBigTown, a consistently brilliant publisher who have come up with some of the year's funniest (and grossest!) books. "Gorgeous George and the Zig Zag Zit Faced Zombies" gave George, Grandad Jock and Allison a second outing, this time combatting nasty snotty zombies invading the school. Eeek! They don't want brains, they want your bogies! More great stuff from Stuart Reid and Calvin Innes.
MyLittleBigTown also ended up as the recipient of a book of the week award for the rather innovative and original "Anisha's Adventures in Bangladesh" by Moinul Islam and Calvin Innes. A fantastic way of sharing other countries and cultures with children, we loved it and it is still a regular on our bedtime reading list.
Over on the app side of things, we were delighted to be given the opportunity to look at Made in Me's "Me Books" app. Giving children control over their favourite books, allowing them to record dialogue and passages of the book themselves using innovative 'hot spots' on the story illustrations sounded brilliant, and in practice it worked beautifully too. Me Books have gone on to win plenty of awards for their work. Deservedly so!
Lion Hudson have become one of our favourite publishers over the past year, and they kindly sent us copies of Rebecca Elliot's wonderful books to review. "Just Because" deservedly won Book of the Week and had a very personal meaning to me, and certainly struck a chord with Charlotte too. It's been brilliant to see it mentioned in lots of people's "Book of the Year" roundups, and we had some brilliant feedback on our review of it. It's very special so if you haven't met Clemmie and Toby yet, you really ought to.
As October came to a close, Ross Collins came up with a horror double feature as part of our Halloween celebrations. First with "The Elephantom" and then with "Dear Vampa" - Ross even popped by to say Hi on the blog, which was utterly brilliant! What a talented and lovely chap he is!
November was a heck of a month. I still do not know how we managed to squeeze in 69 articles in November given how tight our lives are on time, but burning the midnight oil and dealing with a big beautiful mountain of books really made us very happy and very proud of all the lovely folk we spoke to and emailed.
We followed up our review of "Just Because" by Rebecca Elliott with more brilliant stuff with Clemmie and Toby in "Sometimes". Again an achingly beautiful book that also helped us get to know more book folk like Lion Hudson, who are interested in inclusive and thought provoking books.
We got to know Child's Play, a publisher who have consistently produced some of the most important children's picture books of the year. Along with Beth Cox (an ex Child's Play employee and an expert on diversity and inclusivity in children's books), Child's play have introduced us to so many stunning books and kindly sent us a huge box full of brilliant stuff to review (which took us quite some time to work through, but oh boy was it ever worth it!)
Two books from Child's Play, "Rabbityness" and "The Flower" meant we had to double up on Book of the Week as both Charlotte and I struggled to choose between them. They are both so brilliant and well deserving of a place on any child's reading list. We've sneaked a peek at some of the things coming up from Child's Play in 2013. They really are going to knock our socks off again next year, without a doubt.
Charlotte enjoyed Book Week at her school in November, choosing to dress as "Nugget" from Jonny Duddle's brilliant "The Pirates Next Door" (which was a Book of the Week). It was quite something seeing the reaction of her teachers and her classmates. Most of the girls turned up as princesses, it was great to see Charlotte choose something quite different (and could be a key reason why all the boys in her class think she's really cool!)
November crept out quietly with our wish list of books to stuff into our christmas stocking. We're backing the internet campaign to make sure a child gets 'a book in every stocking' - a campaign started off by Sarah Poynton, so please make sure you take a look at her blog and see some of the brilliant book recommendations made there (as well as ours, of course!)
The air of December turned chilly, and we had a light dusting of snow. As the month began, Charlotte began her preparations for the school nativity play (which was brilliant!) and naturally publishers, authors and illustrators gave us lots of christmassy festive cheer and brilliant snowy books. Philip Bell from Beachy Books got in touch and sent us a copy of his awesome "Jack and Boo's Snowy Day". Beautiful flowing prose and photographic illustrations from Eleanor Bell make the Beachy Books stand out. We were very happy to be given the opportunity to review one as we've been admiring them for ages.
Innovative children's app developers DuckDuckMoose dropped us an email and we happily covered their ranges of utterly fantastic apps and worksheets. We've been happy to see children's apps really coming on and heading in fantastic directions in 2012 and we cannot wait to see what developers do in 2013. With many of you cuddling iPads and tablets you've received for Christmas, you're very well prepared for a year when apps may finally come of age and be properly recognised as a very valuable way to reach children and educate, delight and involve them in fantastic stories and content.
Once again we made sure we trumpeted the campaign to stuff a book in every stocking and we hope the campaign snowballs and continues on until Christmas 2013 when we'll definitely be doing it all over again.
Maverick Books popped us a copy of the brilliant "Sparkle's Song" by Samantha Hale and Maria Ruiz Johnson. As we've previously said on the blog, Maverick have come out of nowhere to establish themselves as a brilliant independent publisher in 2011 / 2012 and we've taken a sneaky look at some of their upcoming 2013 releases (like "Tabitha Posey was Ever So Nosy" by Julie Fulton and Jona Jung, and the utterly beautiful "The Cautionary Tale of the Childe of Hale" by Rachel Lyon and Vanina Starkoff) so we know they're going to go from strength to strength next year. Chief Maverick Giles Paley-Phillips is probably one of the nicest people you could tweet to on Twitter so be sure to give him a follow.
Phew, we're almost there. As Christmas loomed on the horizon, publishers showed no signs of sipping mulled wine, munching mince pies and slowing down. Book news and fantastic 2013 previews came thick and fast all month, and we were delighted to take an early look at "No Bot - The Robot with No Bottom" by Sue Hendra, courtesy of Simon and Schuster Children's Books (which is due out on January 3rd).
As we draw our rather long (but hopefully very interesting) series of posts about 2012 to a close, we really hope our readers and our wonderful contacts in publishing, PR, writing and illustration (and our brilliant brilliant fellow book bloggers, educational advisers, teachers, librarians, tweetfolk and parents) stay with us through to 2013 and continue to wow and inspire us as they have all year.
Special thanks from Charlotte and Phil
A very huge thank you to the publishers, PRs, authors, illustrators and app developers who have been kind enough to supply items for review this year. A huge tip of the hat, pat on the back and raised glass to:
Random House Children's Books
Usborne Children's Books
Maverick Publishing
Child's Play International Publishing
Top That! Publishing
Lion Hudson Publishing
Little Tiger Press
Blue Apple Books
Quirk Books
Made in Me
Strata Books
Templar Publishing
MyLittleBigTown Publishing
Bloomsbury Publishing
Francis Lincoln Children's Books
David Fickling Books
Wasabi
Simon and Schuster Children's Books
KiteReaders
J & J Gill Publishing
Beachy Books
Springboard Stories
Abingdon Library
Mostly Books
Letterbox Library
YoYoMe
KWS
Maggie & Rose
The Phoenix Comic Collective
Nosy Crow
Anorak Magazine
Meadowside Children's Books
Oxfordshire Library Services
...and just a very small selection of the superb individuals who have inspired us to keep on doing what we're doing (brilliant Twitter chums too!)
Beth Cox
Marie ChildLedChaos
Ellie elephantthai
Helen Dineen
Giles Paley-Phillips
Philip Bell
Peter Abbey
Alex daddacool
Anne Booth
Shoo Rayner
Louise Yates
Jane Hissey
Julia Dweck
Matthew Cordell
Sarah Cowan
Guy Parker-Rees
Richard Collingridge
Sam Pope
Paul Harrison-Davies
Jez Alborough
Colin West
An Vrombaut
Adam and Charlotte Guillain
Jamie Smart
E.J. Gill
Jemma Parsons
Jess Smart Smiley
Paula Hubbard
Jo Empson
William Bee
C.J Harper
Mr Ripley
Rebecca Elliott
Debi Gliori
Andrew Weale
Jen Outlaw
Louie Stowell
Tracey Kewley
Jane Considine
Elaine Aldred
Ben Towle
Harriet Venn
Levi Pinfold
Sally Poyton
Jim Field
Tape Face
Toca Boca
Back Streeter (The Abingdon Blogger)
Ian Whybrow
Emma Reynolds
Mike Byrne
Leeza Hernandez
Hannah Cumming
Luke Pearson
Garen Ewing
Jenni Desmond
Julie Fulton
Izzy Penguin
Paula Harrison
Ame Dyckman
Go Comics
Charlotte Cooke
Juliet Brough
David Melling
Sam Usher
Zoe Waring
Neal Layton
Mark Thornton
Chris Haughton
Four Little Testers
Zoe Toft
Loll Kirby
Peter Bently
Mark Chambers
Nadia Shireen
Lauren Bennett
Marta Altes
The Booksniffer
Laura Clempson
Ministry of Stories
Emma Dodd
Gary Northfield
Clara Vulliamy
Louise Chadwick
Babette Cole
Mo Willems
Viviane Schwarz
Melanie McGilloway
Michelle Robinson
Valerie O'Riordan
Lydia Monks
Neill Cameron
Sarah McIntyre
Cressida Cowell
Eric Carle
Barefoot Books
Colin West
....and so many many more!
Without a doubt though this blog wouldn't be here if it wasn't for my wonderful wife @thestrollingmum and of course The Boss - Charlotte - who both inspire, enchant and enrich my very existence on a daily basis. Love the pair of you to bits!
Happy new year and here's to a prosperous 2013!
Phil & Charlotte @ ReadItDaddy
Sunday, 30 December 2012
2012 - That was the year that was - Part 3 (July, August, September) ReadItDaddy takes a retrospective look back at a year in Children's Books
The summer sort of half materialised but was soon dampened down by rain, rain, and more rain. Thankfully we had more than enough books to keep us entertained. We also started taking a look at storytelling apps and the rise (and rise) of e-books, discovering Julia Dweck and Patricia Saco's sublime "Hare with the Pearl Earring" along the way. Anything that teaches children about the importance of art gets a huge thumbs up but rarely have children's books dealt with the subject in such a fun, innovative and very beautiful way. Fantastic text and sublime illustrations make this one to look out for and it's recently been overhauled with a special edition so go and grab it now.
As July rolled along, we had a mighty fine blog adventure courtesy of Crockett Johnson's classic "Harold and the Purple Crayon". We'd been thinking of lots of ways to evolve the blog and make sure people knew that it wasn't all just down to me, and that Charlotte was such a massive part of what the blog was about and how the blog was shaped. Letting her star in her own photo adventure was brilliant fun and we had such a good day taking pics and drawing out Harold's fantastic purple landscapes and characters. A brilliant memory of 2012 and a very well deserved book of the week.
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Our first Book of the Week in July was the utterly lovely "I Want a Dog!" by Helga Bansch. Rollo (the dog in the book) had such a lovely little face, and the message behind the book was so beautifully told that we just couldn't resist it. We've searched fruitlessly for more doggy goodness by Helga but it seems there aren't any more, which is such a shame as the book really would've been a great start to a whole series so if you happen across this blog Helga, more Rollo please!
On one of our trips to the library, we spotted a book that made us think "Oh that's a brilliant book, we'll 'ave that!" Of course, it was the utterly ace children's classic "Burglar Bill" by the legendary husband and wife team of Janet and Allan Ahlberg. You already know how much we love Allan Ahlberg's work and Burglar Bill was an instant hit, nabbing Book of the Week with ease. Altogether now, "Boglaboll!"
Timely stuff, we took a look at "The Hobbit" by J.R.R Tolkien before the movie mania gripped the nation. It's been getting some fairly poor reviews, so if you're still in two minds and have never read Tolkien's meisterwork, see what we thought of it and why it's a book that's particularly important to me. The first 'proper' book I remember reading. Wow.
Then something rather special hit the blog in a big way, and has since become one of the year's most demanded 'read it again, Daddy' books (as well as nabbing our 'book of the week' award for that week). The utterly charming and truly wonderful Nicola L. Robinson got in touch with us and asked if we'd like to review her book. We're still quietly gobsmacked that things like this happen, and Nicola was very interested in Charlotte's reaction to her book so we naturally said yes. Knowing that "The Monster Machine" contained monsters made it all the more tempting - long term 'Read It Daddy' followers will know how much Charlotte loves a good monster yarn.
The book turned out to be superb. Not just because it was a great father / son tale, but because of the sheer amount of detail worked into Nicola's illustrations. She's since gone on to exhibit her works as part of an art retrospective at Somerset House. It's really not hard to see why. She also happens to be one of the very nicest people you could tweet at on Twitter so go and follow her now, you will not be disappointed. We are on the edge of our seats wondering what she's going to come up with next! Charlotte was so enamoured by the book and by Nicola that she even sent her a drawing.
As July came and went, we slid into August and Charlotte's last pre-school month wondering what the future would hold. We made the most of our days off (which we'd been taking once a week) to visit the library as often as we could, and of course the month sped by in record time.
We grabbed an iPad early in August and soon started catching up with some really great storytelling apps and educational programs for Charlotte (poor girl, I'm sure she'd much rather play dressing up princesses but we always bought it with education in mind).
We met The Froobles - Top That! Publishing's great range of fruit and vegetable characters. With innovative storytelling and playmaking apps, Top That's print range is well supported and we liked the fact that they produced a lot of great free content with no nags for purchases as well as a really good range of reasonably priced stuff too.
Our first Book of the Week in August was 'Stick Man' by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler. A brilliant, bittersweet little book that I actually prefer to The Gruffalo (don't tell Charlotte I said that though, eek!) I'm so disappointed that Magic Lantern Studios are making "Room on the Broom" this christmas and not this, as it's so festive and atmospheric, it would've been a far better choice. Hey ho, what do we know though.
The lovely Viviane Schwarz nailed another Book of the Week win with "There are no cats in this book". I think if she wins another we'll have to send her some sort of an award with her name on it. She's a consistently interesting tweeter, and knows her way around a good comic (and comic-printed apron dress) so we love her to bits.
More Preston Pig goodness arrived from Colin McNaughton in "SWALK". Preston fell in love, and mooned over a lovely little piggie he met on holiday. Just like Colin McNaughton's other Preston adventures, this was read and re-read but I'm a bit puzzled how it missed out on a book of the week (the competition must've been tough that week).
More lovely book folk crossed our path back in August when we first started chatting to the legendary book bloke Giles Paley-Phillips on Twitter. He kindly offered to let us take a look at his book "The Fearsome Beastie" (illustrated by Gabriele Antonini) and also sent us a few other brilliant Maverick Books as well. Maverick have consistently produced some brilliant books over the last couple of years and it looks like they're warming up to do the same in 2013. Look out for a new book from Giles in the coming year, as well as some distinctly different and very engaging Maverick titles. If you don't know who Maverick Books are now, you most certainly will by the end of 2013.
As July rolled along, we had a mighty fine blog adventure courtesy of Crockett Johnson's classic "Harold and the Purple Crayon". We'd been thinking of lots of ways to evolve the blog and make sure people knew that it wasn't all just down to me, and that Charlotte was such a massive part of what the blog was about and how the blog was shaped. Letting her star in her own photo adventure was brilliant fun and we had such a good day taking pics and drawing out Harold's fantastic purple landscapes and characters. A brilliant memory of 2012 and a very well deserved book of the week.
Those lovely tireless and incredibly committed folk at Bookstart gave Charlotte her last preschool book bundle - and a rather snazzy book bag. We're always so happy to receive bookstart packs and always make sure we cover their work as much as we can. We made a bookstart pledge earlier in 2012 and followed up on it. If you count up the number of reviews in 2012, I think we definitely achieved our pledge goal!
Through the iPad we found a development studio that produces the sort of children's app that gets children and their parents buzzing with excitement every time they release something new. TOCA BOCA might sound like a bizarre latin american dance but they're a swedish studio who know exactly how to fine tune their games, produce intuitive controls and really pour on the production value both visually and sonically to make some of the best apps in the world. We took a look at TOCA Kitchen Monsters and Charlotte still plays this even now. We've since gone on to grab most of their apps (brilliantly they became available for 69p so I think we grabbed them all at once, too good an offer to miss!)
Midway through August, we dropped our star rating 'scores' for books. Coming from a background of writing about games, scores seemed like a natural fit for the blog in the early days, as an easy guide to a book's quality and a clear indication of what Charlotte thought of each book. It became more and more difficult to marry scores to books as we've consistently seen such high quality, it felt rude to slap a number at the end of our review that could easily be misconstrued. We dropped the rating and from time to time I still wonder if it was the right thing to do, but we definitely aim to keep the Book of the Week going into 2013, perhaps even splitting it in two so both Charlotte and I can choose our own (as Charlotte gets older, we often disagree over our favourite books - which I actually think is really great, and shows that she's not just being led by my guiding hand - she's toddling off with her own tastes, good for her!)
We took a look at Anorak Magazine in August, when the kind folk at the mag sent us a sample copy of Anorak and its little sibling Ploc. A refreshingly different alternative to those dreadful merchandise and TV-show-driven magazines that are often pushed at children in supermarkets, Anorak felt like a breath of fresh air - packed to the gills with brilliant stories, puzzles, games and activities. Anorak now have their own TV app on iOS and that's also well worth checking out if you can.
Jon Klassen dropped a bear-shaped bomb on the blog in August with the brilliant "I Want My Hat Back". Our review seemed to neatly coincide with 'Klassen-mania' as the hype for his next book went global, but the most interesting aspect of reviewing the book was the way it raised so many questions and prompted such a heated discussion with Charlotte over the end of the book. Did the bear just do what we think he did? Klassen says "Hell yes, he most certainly did" so if you read it, always bear (hah) that in mind :)
September seemed to be upon us before we were ready. Soon the carefree summer felt like a distant memory as the whole year felt like it was hinging around Charlotte's very first day at school. It was such a massive relief when Charlotte took to school like a duck to water, and really enjoyed it - so much so that now term's coming to an end, it feels like she's been going for years! She really does love it and more importantly it's great to see what we've been doing here with the blog actually have an effect on how she gets on with her literacy at school (her report was absolutely brilliant, so well done my lovely!)
Even though school started, we still found time for books (you would not believe how busy a 4 year old's first term at school can be!). Alan Snow's brilliant "How Dinosaurs Really Work" proved endlessly entertaining and fitted neatly with some of Charlotte's first school subjects (as they started covering Dinosaurs pretty early on). A comic look at our dinosaur friends with plenty of factual information too with those excellent trademark Alan Snow cutaways providing a lot of belly laughs.
My beautiful wife The Strolling Mum always has an eye for something special and different in the library and she spotted Ayao Imai's astonishing version of "Puss in Boots" on one of our regular library jaunts. With illustrations that practically leap off the page, Imai's retellings of classic fables and fairy tales have leaped to the top of our book wishlist and it's really not hard to see why, they're amazingly beautiful books.
Peter Bently and Jim Field's hilarious X-Factoresque "Farmer Clegg's Big Night Out" was a book of the week in September. A sleepwalking farmer, performing animals and a nice dig at Simon Cowell made this a shoe in for our prestigious award. Again they're a pair of brilliant tweeters so watch out for them on Twitter.
We took an early look at Jen Desmond's sublime moggy caper "Red Cat, Blue Cat" courtesy of Blue Apple Books. Jen was also the subject of our very first author / illustrator interview and the book has deservedly gone on to be nominated for a bucketload of awards. There's more feline stuff coming from Jen in 2013 so keep a look out for it, she's awesome.
International Talk Like a Pirate Day, and lots of piratical goings on at Charlotte's school inspired us to draw up a top ten list of Pirate-themed children's books. Pirates still seem to be amongst Charlotte's favourite characters in books and she even dressed as one for her school's Book Week.
We rounded off August by taking a look at some of the best children's apps around at the moment - work that makes us think that 2013 is going to be an absolutely stunning year for e-book and storytelling apps. With tablet PCs at the top of a lot of children's 'want' lists this christmas, it's a format that's not going to go away in a hurry and one that we'll be delving into a lot more next year - stay with us for some big news on that front early in 2013.
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