There’s a great new video reading by John Heffernan of his beautiful book with Kate Durack, Two Tales of Brothers from Ancient Mesopotamia. It’s on Camp Quality’s Happiness Hub, and it’s a lot of fun! Watch it below.
Category: authors
Announcing United Publishers of Armidale!
ANNOUNCEMENT
Armidale-based children’s book publishers, Christmas Press and Little Pink Dog Books, are delighted to announce a brand-new joint initiative, United Publishers of Armidale, with the launch of a new website, www.unitedpublishersofarmidale.net, and associated social media on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
The United Publishers of Armidale website features a number of books from each publisher, with free activities and resources to go with each, as well as information on each title. Activities and resources include audio and video presentations by creators, puzzles, quizzes, word searches, printable colouring pages, teachers’ notes, and more. The Featured Books page will be updated regularly with new, upcoming and backlist titles and their associated activities, while the About page gives information about the UPA partner publishers.
‘The idea behind United Publishers of Armidale is that in these difficult times, it makes sense for publishers, especially small, regionally-based publishers like us, to pool our efforts and resources in order to promote and showcase our books and help to support our creator communities, and we’re thrilled to be partnering with Little Pink Dog Books on this,’ said Sophie Masson, co-director of Christmas Press. ‘But it’s also very much about supporting the wider community, especially children, their families, teachers and carers, by offering free resources and activities through a dedicated website.’
‘We are delighted to be partnering with Christmas Press in this new enterprise and we hope that everyone will have lots of fun discovering our featured books and the activities around them,’ said Kathy Creamer, co-director of little Pink Dog Books. ‘And we warmly thank our authors and illustrators for getting so enthusiastically behind the project and creating such fabulous and diverse activities for our readers.’
Books featured for the website launch are, for Christmas Press, middle grade historical fantasy novel, The Phantasmic Detective Agency, by Julian Leatherdale (out May 2020) and Australian Children Laureate Ursula Dubosarsky’s recent collection of plays, The Boy Who Could Fly and Other Magical Plays for Children(2019); and for Little Pink Dog Books, author-illustrator Trish Donald’s picture book Tissy Woo and the Worry Monsters(2018) and Parmesan, The Reluctant Racehorse, written by Jacqui Halpin and illustrated by John Phillips (2017).
Check it all out here!
L to R: Kathy Creamer(LPDB); Sophie Masson (CP); Fiona McDonald(CP); David Allan(CP) and Peter Creamer(LPDB)
Our beautiful new August title has just arrived from the printers!
We were excited to receive stock this week of our gorgeous new August title, the lovely chapterbook Petal and the Really Hard Riddle, written by Kathryn England and illustrated by David Allan! For young readers 5-8, it’s a real delight of a book, with a funny, engaging story and absolutely beautiful illustrations. Available in all good bookshops from August 1!
Congratulations to Rebecca on School Magazine story!
Congratulations to Rebecca Fung, author of the fabulous Princess Hayley’s Comet, who has just had a short story for children, Homecoming, published in the prestigious and popular School Magazine! The story is in the May issue of the Orbit edition of The School Magazine. Here’s a sneak peek:
You can also read about the ‘batty’ inspiration for Homecoming, as well as a few words about the inspiration for Princess Hayley’s Comet, on Rebecca’s website.
Publication day for Tomodachi: The Forest of the Night!
We are delighted to announce that today is the official publication day of our newest Eagle Books title, Simon Higgins’ fantastic adventure novel, Tomodachi: The Forest of the Night!
Beautifully-written, excitingly-paced and with a deep understanding of one of the most interesting historical periods and fascinating cultures in the world, this is a superb novel that we are very proud to publish, with its beautiful cover and internal illustrations created by Simon’s wife, artist and animator Jenny(Yuxiao) Wang.
To whet your appetite for Tomodachi: The Forest of the Night, we are thrilled to present this lively and atmospheric trailer, created by Crane Animation and scripted and narrated by Simon Higgins. Enjoy!
Thrilling news: four of our books featured in Hello from Australia!
We are absolutely thrilled to announce that four of our beautiful picture books have been selected for featured inclusion in the catalogue of the very prestigious Hello! from Australia exhibition which will be held at the famous Bologna Children’s Book Fair in Bologna, Italy, April 3-6. As well, an illustration from one of the featured books, Margrete Lamond and Ingrid Kallick’s Two Troll Tales from Norway, has been selected to be hung as part of the exhibition itself.
The four books featured in the exhibition catalogue are: Duncan Ball and David Allan’s Two Tengu Tales from Japan; Adele Geras and Fiona McDonald’s Two Fearsome Fairy Tales from France; John Heffernan and Kate Durack’s Two Tales of Brothers from Ancient Mesopotamia; and Margrete Lamond and Ingrid Kallick’s Two Troll Tales from Norway. Warm congratulations to all our wonderful creators!
You can see the catalogue here. And below you can see the fabulous selected illustration from Two Troll Tales. Bravo, Ingrid!
Here’s more about the exhibition, from the catalogue:
Hello! From Australia is an exhibition that aims to promote Australian literary culture, drawing attention to the creativity of Australian children’s book illustrators and the diversity and excellence of the Australian Children’s Book Industry. The exhibition also aims, specifically through the catalogue, to support publishers in the promotion and sale of rights of Australian books and facilitate contact between Australian publishers and international publishers, agents and promoters. Since 2009, eight Hello! From Australia exhibitions have been curated by Books Illustrated for the annual Bologna Children’s Book Fair. Many have then toured to events and festivals in Australia and particularly into Asia.
Cover reveal of Jack of Spades(Eagle Books 2017 title)
Delighted to reveal the cover of our forthcoming (April) title in our Eagle Books imprint, Sophie Masson’s Jack of Spades. The fabulous cover image is by Yvonne Low, design by Beattie Alvarez.
A fabulous opportunity for emerging authors in our 2017 Christmas anthology!
Boxing Day, and of course it’s the perfect time for us to start working on our 2017 Christmas title, ‘A Christmas Menagerie’!
As usual, it will be an anthology of original Christmas stories by established and emerging authors — this time with an animal theme.
The established author spots are all filled.
BUT in an exciting opportunity, we have five emerging author spots to fill!
The stories need to be between 750-1500 words and be suitable for a 6-10 age group. They should be original, unpublished(including on blogs and websites), and ms should be in Word or RTF (not in PDF please), double-spaced, in Times New Roman 12 point.
We will be accepting submissions for twelve days ONLY, starting TODAY, the 26th of December, and ending on the 6th of January. Any submissions that arrive out of that time frame won’t be accepted.
Send your story, as an attachment, by email only, to submissions@christmaspresspicturebooks.com , with ‘A Christmas Menagerie submission’ in the subject line, and a few lines about yourself in the body of your email.
Good luck, and happy writing!
Merry Christmas and happy New Year!
It’s that festive time of the year again–and to all our contributors, readers, friends and supporters the Christmas Press team sends the very best of wishes for a merry Christmas and a very happy and successful New Year! Thank you all for your support throughout 2016, and here’s looking forward to a great 2017!
Pictures are from our latest title, the fabulous anthology, A Toy Christmas.
And to all emerging authors: watch this space on Boxing Day for some great news about our 2017 Christmas anthology!
Lovely review of Troll Tales in Magpies
Delighted to see that Margrete Lamond’s and Ingrid Kallick’s gorgeous Two Troll Tales from Norway has garnered another lovely review! It’s in the latest issue of the prestigious children’s literature magazine, Magpies, and is by author and bookseller Mike Lucas. Here’s a very short extract:
Christmas Press, a relatively new publisher specialising in fairy tales, folk tales and traditional stories, has brought together a magical storyteller and a perfectly suited illustrator to retell these two Norwegian tales..
The review is below(not available online)
