Showing Off Our New Picture Books!

     Usually on Picture Book Den we don't directly promote our own books. We write blogs about some aspect of picture book writing, publishing or use. But 2020 is an extraordinary year. Publishing has been effected by the Covid 19 pandemic. Most books due to be published from March to August were delayed because shops were closed and warehouses struggling. Book distributor Bertrams went into administration, and a sad number of bookshops have ceased trading.

    But September brought hope. We are seeing a glorious, almost overwhelming, number of new books published all at once. There are over a thousand new titles in the UK this month! Many of those books will get lost in the crowd. So here we are going to wave around and celebrate our own new picture books!

PIPPA GOODHART:

'All Sorts', illustrated by Emily Rand and published by Flying Eye Books, is about how Frankie tries to sort out her world.

Frankie sorts her toys, the foods and clothes, flowers, trees, vehicles, animals, and then tries to sort people. Hardest of all is sorting herself ...

And a happy muddle of life provides the happy ending. After the recent blog on endpapers, I can't resist adding the front and back endpapers for this book, demonstrating some of Frankie's sorting!  ...

'You Choose Fairy Tales', illustrated by Nick Sharratt and published by Puffin, is the latest in the You Choose series of books which offer lots of choices to consider and talk about. This time the book has a shimmery golden cover, in keeping with its fairy tale theme!

Choose what appeals to you on each spread, and you can create a new fairy tale of your own. 

And, again, the endpapers aren't wasted!

CLARE HELEN WELSH:

'Poo! Is that you?' illustrated by Nicola O'Byrne and published by Macmillan Children's Book, is a non-fiction picture book about Lenny the ring-tailed lemur whose sunny, summer snooze is interrupted by something stinky.

Learn about sloths, stink birds and much more in this book, which cleverly interweaves facts throughout. It also contains an information page at the back of the book, with a photo of each animal.

LUCY ROWLAND:

'Wanda's Words Got Stuck'- illustrated by Paula Bowles and published by Nosy Crow.

Wanda the witch is so shy she can't talk at school. No matter how hard she tries, the words simply won't come out. But when another quiet little witch named Flo joins her class, it seems that Wanda's not the only one who gets nervous sometimes. Then disaster strikes at the school-wide magic contest. Will Wanda have the courage to shout out the magic words and save her new friend?

'Rapunzel to the Rescue'- illustrated by Katy Halford and published by Scholastic. 

What if Rapunzel saved the prince? In this terrific twist on a much-loved fairytale, a prince with magical hair is saved by a fiercely independent Rapunzel.

MINI GREY:

 

 'The Book of Not Entirely Useful Advice'-  by AF Harrold and published by Bloomsbury.

 

 160 pages of poems and advice from AF Harrold and illustrated by me...featuring a lot of food, swearing parrots, bears in your cornflakes and the right number of tigers to have at your picnic. (None.)

 

How to avoid escaped giants....

 

an outbreak of tigers at a picnic...

and the perils of shiplofting. Hopefully there's something for everyone here. There's also an absolutely enormous index compiled by AF.

 

Garry Parsons

The Dinosaur That Pooped A Pirate 

By Tom Fletcher and Dougie Poynter, illustrated by Garry Parsons. Puffin.

More nonsense shenanigans from Danny and his friendly 'eat everything' dinosaur as they set sail in search of treasure, but will being swallowed by the jaws of the monstrous whale and the perils of skull island be too much for them?