This penultimate week of December has brought some surprising treats.
Piers Torday, a wonderful writer, penned an article about how celebrity children’s books were damaging to both the market and their readers. This triggered a segment on Radio 4’s Today show with Frank Cotterell Boyce and Robin Stevens, both of whom gave me a shout-out, which was lovely. The dominos kept falling as the next day The Telegraph arts editor wrote a feature about it and committed to reviewing at least one children’s book a week. In that article, he featured Spark and names me as one of the great writers for children producing books today. It was all unexpectedly lovely, especially because Spark hasn’t been mentioned once in the national press or media - which is standard for the second book in a series. Only stand-alone novels are ever reviewed. There was a second Today show segment with Katya Balan and then a third with Michael Rosen! It almost makes me feel like children’s books might finally get the attention they deserve… almost.
The Times awarded Sabotage on the Solar Express the accolade of Best Children’s Audiobook of the year! This is of course down to the talent of Jot Davies, the actor who reads our Adventures on Trains books.
David Walliams did a round-up of his favourite books of 2022 and selected Spark, which was a nice surprise.
And Waterstones listed The Arctic Railway Assassin as one of the Best Children’s Books of 2022!
And The Ice Children has already received over 300 positive reviews in just two weeks. It seems to be going down really well with everyone except a few angry climate change deniers. Those are the kind of angry reviews I can live with.
All in all, it’s a lovely way to end the year.