DFB did brilliantly at the Sheffield Children’s Book Award yesterday!

Huge congratulations to Giles Andreae and Sarah McIntyre, who won the Best Picture Book category for the truly disgusting Morris the Mankiest Monster, and to Mark Haddon who won the Shorter Novel category for his explosive Boom!

And as if that wasn’t enough, Morris the Mankiest Monster then went on to scoop the Overall Winner prize!

This is a huge award, and our favourite kind – the winners are chosen by children, not grown-ups. Over 200 schools voted, and there were a thousand children present at yesterday’s awards ceremony in City Hall, Sheffield.

Check out Sarah McIntyre’s blog for her very funny account of the event and some great pics.

Congrats to D.M. Cornish, whose final instalment of the Monster Blood Tattoo trilogy is published this month. 

And don’t they make a handsome trio?

D.M is the ultimate world-maker, and children, and adults too, will find themselves completely immersed in his Half-Continent, a land that bears the scars of centuries of conflict between monsters and men. Here monsters of every variety roam, and even the smallest can kill a human quicker than thought.

This breathtaking final volume has everything D.M’s fans have come to expect – action, adventure, incredible creatures and fascinating characters. And if you haven’t read the first two, then you should! Enter the world of the Half-Continent, and don’t forget your hat…

Last week we celebrated the publication of Sarah McIntyre’s brilliant comic book, Vern & Lettuce. And because Vern is a woolly sheep, Lettuce loves to knit and Sarah shares her studio with one of the founders of Stitch London, the evening had a knitting theme.

All guests were challenged to knit a sheep, with prizes awarded for the Most Splendid Sheep. It was a great night, bringing together lots of top knitters and comic-creators. Fuelled with cupcakes, brownies and glasses of fizz and armed with wool and knitting needles, the Stamford Arms was soon full of people stitching little sheeps.

Here’s Kate Brown, author of Spider Moon, getting stuck in:

And here’s me and David, failing to submit to the knit but having fun nonetheless:

Sarah looked fantastic in a sparkly party dress and spent much of the evening signing copies of her gorgeous book, which is out now!

If, like me, you missed the launch party for Monkey Nuts by Robin and Lawrence Etherington  last Thursday, it sounds like you missed a treat!

The party took place at the lovely Kew Bookshop in London, where the owners, Mark and Isla, had created the most amazing window display:

Publisher, David Fickling, and author, Robin, both gave energetic speeches, glasses were raised and co-creators Robin and Lawrence were kept busy signing books for the rest of the evening.

The brothers had bowls of actual monkey nuts to help them keep their strength up, although, as anyone who’s ever met them will know, they’re never short of get-up-and-go! Everyone in the signing queue was asked “monkey or robot?” so that Lorenzo could doodle a pic of their chosen character. And some lucky people got both!

Check out the Etheringtons’ blog for more info, pics and a video of the speeches.

To read all about Andy Mulligan’s TRASH tour, check out Carli Bennett’s brilliant blog, Writing from the Tub. Andy wrote his own blog while on tour, which Carli kindly hosted.

We met Carli at the Trash dinner and she clearly knows her stuff, so do browse her reviews of the latest YA fiction while you’re there. Meanwhile, we’ll keep aspiring to blog as regularly as the experts do!

This week we celebrated the publication of TRASH with a dinner at the very trendy E&O Restaurant in London. Before dinner there were the usual speeches and toasts, and then Andy Mulligan did something we’ve never heard an author do – instead of talking about his own book, the book we were all there to celebrate, he spent several minutes telling everyone about someone else’s book!

Andy had just finished a proof copy of Half Brother by Kenneth Oppel, which we’re publishing in January next year. He’d been so completely swept away by the story of Ben, a teenage boy, and the baby chimp his parents adopt, that he couldn’t stop telling people about it, and urging them to read it. The thrilling thing for Andy was that his own book shares the same list as a book of such a high calibre.

Of course, we’re very proud to have both Trash and Half Brother on our list – they might be worlds apart, but they’re both cracking stories, stories that move you, stories that make you want to talk about them to anyone who’ll listen.

Andy behind piles of TRASH

We were very excited to see that our local Blackwells has a brilliant display for TRASH in their window:

Andy will be there doing an informal stock signing on 21^st September, so if you’re in Oxford, pop in and grab yourself a signed copy!

TRASH has been garnering some great reviews – Bookbag loved it: “Trash comes highly recommended by me, and I don’t have time to say any more about it because I’m off to read it again. And after that, I might read it again. And then again. You read it too.”

Julia Eccleshare reviewed it for Love Reading 4 Kids: ‘Headlong and heart-stopping, this is an adventure you just can’t put down.’

And in the Times Amanda Craig called it an ‘outstanding, hotly anticipated thriller’, and goes on to say that the setting, ‘has the reader rooting for the kids through every twist of an exceptionally satisfying plot.”

Andy will be touring the country over the next two weeks, doing a whole host of interviews, school events and signings, so look out for him!

This is Morris, star of the most disgusting picture book we have ever published, MORRIS THE MANKIEST MONSTER:

And this is Sarah, the talented illustrator of MORRIS, reading the text aloud at Edinburgh Festival: http://bit.ly/bkzpQu

Written by Giles Andreae, the brilliantly repulsive rhyming text was rejected by five different editors before DFB dared to take it on. Needless to say, children love it! Out now in hardback, and coming later this month in paperback, the surprise ending will definitely make you squirm…

“…must be the most revolting picture book of the year!…This book needs a warning to parents – they’re going to have to read it over and over again – children will absolutely love it.” The Bookseller

“Treading the tightrope between revolting and sweet is hard but Morris does it.  What a gem!” Books for Keeps

Check out Sarah’s blog, where there are always lots of lovely things to look at, and find out more about her brand new book for the DFC Library, Vern & Lettuce.

We were thrilled to see Meg Rosoff’s brilliant review for White Time by Margo Lanagan in last Saturday’s Guardian. Meg says: “There is a great deal to admire about these stories, not least the author’s terse, angular prose and her extraordinary talent for creating hybrid worlds. As in the best fantasy and science fiction, the characters and settings are familiar enough to resonate emotionally while remaining wholly other; Lanagan’s vision of the world skews effortlessly towards the seriously weird.” To read the full review, click here.

Meg finishes by saying that she looks forward to reading whatever Margo writes next, and so do we! To find out more about Margo, check out her blog here.

Advance copies of the next three DFC Library books are in, and we’re so excited we just had to show them off:

And here are all six DFC Library books in all their glory, in pride of place on the office mantelpiece:

Beautifully produced and packed full of stunning artwork and brilliant stories. Irresistible!