Summertime at The Chicken House
BARRY CUNNINGHAM – OBE!
Chicken House is proud and delighted to announce that Barry Cunningham was awarded an OBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list this month, as publisher of The Chicken House and ‘for services to the publishing industry.’ I’m sure you’ll agree – he’s made a bit of difference to children’s reading habits over the years!
AWARDS AND NOMINATIONS GALORE
At the start of the year, both Flyaway and The Crowfield Curse were shortlisted for the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize and since then our books have enjoyed a flood of other nominations and wins. Stolen has won the prestigious Branford Boase Award (which both it and Numbers were shortlisted for, as well as the American Library Association’s Best Fiction for Young Adults Award.) Numbers has also won the Wandsworth, Hounslow and Angus Book Awards and Stolen is on the shortlist for the Children’s Book Council of Australia Awards. We keep our fingers crossed that we will have some more good news to report very soon!
CHICKEN HOUSE GERMANY GOES FROM STRENGTH TO STRENGTH
Chicken House Germany was launched this spring and in May we welcomed around thirty German booksellers to Somerset for a wonderful weekend of talks, author readings and local fare. Coming out this autumn in Germany will be The Crowfield Curse, Stolen, Demon Strike, Wolven, The Keepers’ Daughter, Threads and Meltdown. And now you can visit the wonderful website at http://www.chickenhouse.de/home/.
BUMPER TIMES FOR RIGHTS SALES AT CHICKEN HOUSE
In May we sold Stolen to Taiwan and Turkey and Numbers is now out to buy in France, Germany, Holland, Poland, Sweden and USA. Threads is now out in France and Holland and doing very well indeed and Chicken House Germany will be releasing it in the autumn as their lead title. Flood Child is now out in France, Germany, Holland, Italy, Korea, Poland, Taiwan and USA. We also recently sold Wolven to Poland and mainland China.
BOOKED UP 2010 ANNOUNCEMENT
The Crowfield Curse by Pat Walsh has been selected for the Booked Up programme, the government initiative to offer a free book to every eleven-year-old in the country. As one of twelve titles selected, it will be offered to more than 650,000 children in schools up and down the UK this autumn. Well done Pat!
CORNELIA FUNKE’S RECKLESS – COMING 14TH SEPTEMBER
Cornelia Funke’s thrilling new fantasy Reckless will be published worldwide on 14th September with an announced first hardcover printing of over 1 million copies. All the proofs have now gone out and we’ve already had some very positive early reaction. Cornelia herself will arrive on our shores around launch time for book signings and to meet her legions of fans. To learn more about Reckless, you can watch Cornelia reading an excerpt on our takeover site or visit www.recklessthebook.com to see the fabulous book trailer!
TIMES CHILDREN’S FICTION COMPETITION
We are now accepting submissions for the 2010/2011 Times Children’s Fiction Competition and we can’t wait to see what delights the next clutch of potential Chickens will produce! This year’s winner was the wonderful Muncle Trogg by Janet Foxley. The story of a very small giant, bullied at school for being human-sized, enchanted the judges and we look forward to publishing the book next year. Click here to read the announcement in The Times and see our Submissions tab for more details of how to enter the competition. Closing date for entries is 29th October 2010.
*NEW* CHICKEN HOUSE 10th ANNIVERSARY COMPETITION FOR
POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS OF CREATIVE WRITING
See the Submissions page for more details of this exciting new venture which we are offering exclusively to students on postgraduate courses in writing children’s literature.
TUNNELS: THE MOVIE
Brilliant young director Vincenzo Natali is poised to direct the very first Tunnels movie, details of which will be released shortly so watch this space!
THREADS CONTINUES TO MAKE THE FASHION PAGES
Sophia Bennett’s Threads continues to make fashion headlines, this time in collaboration with teen magazine, BLISS. Chicken House received more than 200 entries to the Threads young fashion designer competition. The second Threads novel Beads, Boys and Bangles was released in May and Sophia has just delivered her third book in this much-loved series. Don’t forget to keep looking at www.threadsthebook.com for all the latest news!
A message from Barry Cunningham
Dear Friends, I feel like I've been on tour myself this month! I joined our wonderful author...
Rights News
From our Rights Manager Elinor Bagenal
August 2010
10th ANNIVERSARY NEW TITLES BROCHURE
To celebrate our 10th birthday, we have a terrific array of NEW titles to show you, from dream pirates to dustbin cats. Click here to download.
BOLOGNA A BIG SUCCESS!
Bologna was very good for us here at Chicken House with non-stop appointments and most of them double appointments thanks to the BA strike! Everybody was very willing to share, which was good and quite a few new friendships developed as a result.
A NATURAL BESTSELLER
We had an offer in on the first day for our big book, Ravenwood by Andrew Peters which set the whole fair off on a very good note. We have since then finalised two other deals and hope to do several more before the end of the month.
STILL HOWLING
Wolven by Di Toft continues to attract a lot of attention and we did a deal with Brazil at the fair. We’ve had the most amazing review in Kirkus for this book and Book Clubs in America have taken 150,000.
. . . as Toft puts it, “when the astonishing happens, you just get on with it,” and so she does, briskly folding magic and slapstick into a madcap scramble. . . . Expect sequels.
GET READY TO ROCK!
Rockoholic by C.J. Skuse had its first outing at Bologna. There was lots of interest in this book about what happens when you accidentally kidnap your favourite rock star! Who would you kidnap if you had the chance? Most people seemed to want Michael Jackson…
COVER COVERAGE
We got universal acclaim for most of our covers and the new jacket for Dog Lost we’ve created to celebrate the unveiling of Ingrid Lee’s new book, Dustbin Cat, went down very well indeed. Many people wanted to read both these books as there are not many titles about real animals out there at the moment.
TEENAGE TRIUMPHS
Rights in Stolen by Lucy Christopher, Numbers by Rachel Ward, Pretty Bad Things by C.J. Skuse and Threads by Sophia Bennett still continue to sell and with the follow-ups coming for most of these, we hope for teenage triumphs all over the world.
Do contact me, Elinor Bagenal, on elinor@doublecluck.com for any more information.
Keep Watching!
