Children's Features

Letter from London
Julia Eccleshare -- 10/30/00
A new company debuts, a bestselling author switches houses and Narnia turns 50


In This Article


New Publisher Hatches This SeasonCelebrating the launch of its first list of titles this month, The Chicken House is a new company publishing for "free-range" children. Best known as the man who discovered J.K. Rowling in the early days of Bloomsbury Children's Books, Chicken House publisher Barry Cunningham is creating a list that is "imaginative, fun, sometimes surprising but always child-centred, in a mix of exciting and different formats."
The list starts small--25 titles in 2001--and the intention is to keep it that way. "We want to be small, light and creative," Cunningham said, "so that we can be quick off the mark with the best ideas. Our list will be international in appeal, with the U.S. as a key market."
The Chicken House is the third children's list that Cunningham has started in the last five years (Bloomsbury and Element Books came first), but his enthusiasm for innovation remains bright. "Our trademark is that it's got to be new--new authors and new illustrators, or old authors and illustrators doing a new thing, and new formats of nonfiction."

The first novel of the list is Spellfall by Katherine Roberts, whom Cunningham discovered at Element. Roberts's first novel, Song Quest, won the Branford Boase Award for best first novel of 2000. Other launch titles include a new nonfiction series, Fun Kits, which have already attracted worldwide sales.

Backing for The Chicken House comes from Cunningham himself and from Egmont Holdings. Egmont will handle print buying, U.K. sales distribution, warehousing and European rights, while the small Chicken House team remains in charge of all creative publishing, overseas customers and U.S. rights.


Brian Jacques Chooses New HouseBestselling author Brian Jacques has moved from Hutchinson, part of the Random House group, to Puffin in the U.K. in a major deal designed to make the most of a coordinated global marketing campaign led by Penguin Putnam in the States.
Redwall author moves
from Hutchinson
to Puffin.
Hutchinson has published Jacques's 13 Redwall titles, establishing him as one of Britain's most successful fantasy writers, with sales of each title reaching around 100,000 copies in hardcover and paperback combined. But his reputation has flourished even more strongly in the U.S., where he has long enjoyed a close editorial and marketing relationship with Penguin Putnam and has sold over three million books in hardcover and paperback combined.
Puffin has contracted for a non-Redwall novel, The Castaways of the Flying Dutchman, due out next March in the U.S. and the U.K., and three future Redwall novels. Puffin managing director Philippa Milnes-Smith said, "Jacques hasn't been as big here as he deserves to be or as big, relatively, as he is in the U.S. This is our opportunity." The publisher plans to grow Jacques as an adult crossover author by adopting promotional idea that have proved successful in the U.S.

Jacques's backlist will stay with Hutchinson, which will also publish the 14th Redwall title, Taggerung, in autumn 2001. Losing Jacques is a blow to Hutchinson and Random House, which had published him for the last 14 years. Publisher Gill Evans confirmed Random House's continued commitment to Jacques and the Redwall series. "We have ongoing publishing and tie-in publishing as well as a big backlist, and we will still work in close cooperation with Penguin Putnam. We have always been ambitious for Brian here and he has left us reluctantly in order to consolidate his position in the English-language market."


Anniversary Plans for Narnia

New editions of the classic
stories are part of a
50th-anniversary program.
C.S. Lewis's The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe turns 50 this year. An immediate success when it was published, it has subsequently sold all over the world and was recently voted Children's Book of the Century by the Youth Libraries Group. To celebrate the anniversary, Collins Children's Books is promoting the titles with its biggest marketing spend ever. Wardrobe-shaped dump bins, Narnia parties and drama workshops are just some of the in-store activities, while the publishing program includes a number of formats of all the Narnia titles aimed at different age groups. New editions include deluxe volumes of each title and a single, bound volume of The Complete Chronicles of Narnia with Pauline Baynes's original illustrations, to which she has added color; and, for younger readers, an abridged version of The Lion, the Witch and the Ward-robe with illustrations by Christian Birmingham.
HarperCollins U.S. and U.K. have also jointly created www.narnia.com, a new Web site devoted to the Chronicles and to C.S. Lewis.


Pleasant Company U.K. Closes Up ShopPleasant Company, which announced the closing of its London publishing operation in August with the axing of 15 employees, has now shut down completely. The closure came only a month before a planned launch in the U.K., which had been set for September. Initially managing director Ingrid Selberg had been retained to control the foreign rights for all Pleasant Company titles and especially the European co-editions of the Angelina Ballerina titles. She has now parted company with Pleasant Company. "The closing of Pleasant Company in the U.K. was part of Mattel's cost-cutting exercise," Selberg said. "What's regrettable is that everyone was thrilled with both the book and the doll side of what we were producing and the market research throughout Europe had been very positive."

Two titles in a bestselling horror trilogy.
Debut Author's Scary SuccessNew author Darren Shan has just signed a seven-figure deal with Warner Bros. for the rights to his first two titles, Cirque du Freak and The Vampire's Assistant. Shan hit the headlines with Cirque du Freak when it was published in original paperback by Collins in January. A story that combines near horror with everyday reality in a humorous and lighthearted way, Cirque du Freak was described by J.K. Rowling as "a compelling book with a plot full of twists which leaves the reader hungry for more." Shan followed Cirque du Freak with The Vampire's Assistant in June, and the third of the trilogy, Tunnels of Blood, is due out next month. All three titles have run up high sales, with figures on the first two titles nearing 50,000 since publication.

Smarties Shortlist AnnouncedThe 2000 Nestlé Smarties Book Prize is wide open again after having been won for three consecutive years by J.K. Rowling for her first three Harry Potter titles. (Last year, Rowling took her future titles out of the competition on the grounds that Harry had grown up too much to fit the Smarties profile.)

The shortlisted titles are: for 5 and under: Husherbye by John Burningham (Cape); Max by Bob Graham (Walker); Me and My Cat? by Satoshi Kitamura (Andersen); for 6-8: Beware of the Storybook Wolves by Lauren Child (Hodder); The Red and White Spotted Handkerchief by Tony Mitton, illus. by Peter Bailey (Scholastic); Lizzie Zipmouth by Jacqueline Wilson, illus. by Nick Sharratt (Young Corgi); for 9-11: Arthur the Seeing Stone by Kevin Crossley-Holland (Orion); The Other Side of Truth by Beverley Naidoo (Puffin); and The Wind Singer by William Nicholson (Mammoth).

The three books in each category will now be judged by a panel of children. The gold medal winners will be announced on November 29.