Since many people are now at home I have made all of the worksheets from my books The Station Mouse, Pigeon P.I. and Life Is Magic available to download on my website. There are drawing activities, colouring in and puzzles too. Stay safe and wash those hands.
The Bookbug Picture Book Prize 2020 winner was announced yesterday and I'm happy to report that The Station Mouse won. Woohoo!
The beautiful trophy was made by Emily Hogarth
Every year Scottish Book Trust give all of the primary one children in Scotland a Bookbug bag containing three shortlisted books. This year Scottish Book Trust gave out an incredible 189,000 books in these bags alone. That's 63,000 bags! The most wonderful part of all this is that young readers get three great books of their very own to keep.
The winner is picked by the readers too, which for me is the loveliest part. It's really nice to know that the people you write books for are actually enjoying them. Thank you to all the schools who took part, all the libraries that helped out and to all the pupils for voting.
Here is the announcement video.
Huge thanks to Liam, Heather and Jonathan who made this video, and to Hannah who filmed the shortlist videos, you who were all so helpful and supportive.
Maurice and I are off to celebrate with our favourite things, cheese and cake. Maybe there's a way we can combine the two...
Three books are shortlisted and put into Bookbug bags which are given to every Primary 1 child in Scotland. The children then vote on their favourite book. This is the reason that the prize is so amazing, every child gets three books to read and to keep. Scottish Book Trust are amazing at getting books into the hands of young readers and I'm really proud that The Station Mouse gets to be a part of that this year. Huge thanks to everyone at Scottish Book Trust.
You can read about the other amazing books shortlisted this year here and there's a video of each author reading their story.
You can watch my reading of The Station Mouse below or click here.
I was really thrilled this week to learn that the The Station Mouse has been nominated for the CILIP Kate Greenaway Medal 2019 alongside so many other incredible books so a massive thank you to whoever nominated it.
I'm delighted to see so many friends listed, to see some of my favourites this year being recognised and to discover the books that somehow passed me by. All picked by children's librarians. You can see the full list here and don't forget to check out the CILIP Carnegie Medal nominees too.
What better way to celebrate than with a good book?
My next book, The Station Mouse, is publishing one week today. That's when Maurice will begin his new job. He's a very responsible mouse so he's got it marked on his calendar. There's still a lot of unpacking to do, but with a whole week to go I think we can let him sleep a little longer.
