SHE'LL BE COMING ROUND THE MOUNTAIN • New Print-On-Demand UK & US Paperbacks

I'm delighted to announce that Deborah Allwright and I have just published new UK and US print-on-demand paperback editions of She'll Be Coming Round the Mountain, our picture book adaptation of the classic US folk song that was originally published in 2006.

There are several versions of the song in existence; the book is adapted from a campfire version that features accumulative sound effects. Each verse introduces a new sound effect which is repeated at the end of subsequent verses resulting in a long string of sound effects at the end of the final verse. To break down the repetition of the original, the picture book version substitutes a rhyming couplet into each verse.

The picture book includes several verses that will be familiar to readers who know the campfire version, such as "She'll be driving six white horses" …

… and several new verses of my own invention, all of which are accompanied by Deborah's wonderful illustrations of boisterous cowgirl Bonnie Bandit.

Although the original UK and US editions have been out of print for about a decade, the book has remained popular with schools and when lockdown began earlier this year I noticed that several teachers and librarians were sharing readings and singings of the book with their stay-at-home students via YouTube and other video-sharing platforms.

Here's a smashing sing-along rendition from a US elementary teacher.

 

These videos prompted me to create my own sing-along YouTube videos of the book for stay-at-home families which were shared online by Booktrust among others. When I got in touch with Deborah to discuss making the videos we decided that now would be a good time to bring the book back in a print-on-demand edition. 

The book is as popular in the US as the UK, so we created a separate edition for US readers. In addition to revisions to spelling and grammar (ie: pyjamas/pajamas or flavour/flavor) there are some changes in vocabulary. So Bonnie juggles with jello rather than jelly and drinks from a trash can rather than a dustbin in the new US edition. For some reason, neither of these changes were made to the original US edition.

To mark the publication of the new editions, I've remixed the videos of the book to match the new cover and page layouts. You can watch both the sing-along version and the extended version of the video (which teaches you the actions that accompany each sound) below.

Sing-along Video

Extended Sing-along Video with Actions

Readers of the new editions can also download a FREE MP4 audio version of the book from the Hatchling Books website.

You can order the new print-on-demand editions using the links below.

Find out more about the book on my website

RUBY FLEW TOO! New Ingram Spark Print-on-Demand Paperback Edition

The new Ingram Spark print-on-demand edition of Ruby Flew Too!

A few years ago, illustrator Rebecca Harry and I published a print-on-demand edition of our picture book Ruby Flew Too! (titled Ruby in Her Own Time in the US). As I wrote on this blog at the time, I've received more emails about this book than any of my other books, with many readers telling me how Ruby's story had touched their lives. You can read excerpts from some of these emails in this blog post. So when the book went out of print with its UK publisher, Rebecca and I decided to re-publish it ourselves. We originally published the book using Amazon's Createspace print-on-demand service as — at that time — it offered better print quality than its main competitor Ingram Spark. However in the last three years this gap has closed and we've now published the book on Ingram Spark as well.

The main reason for publishing the book on both print-on-demand services is that the Createspace (now KDP) edition is only available through Amazon, whereas the new Ingram Spark edition can be ordered through local bookshops as well as non-Amazon online stores like Hive and Wordery.

Here are couple of spreads from the new edition.

"Then one bright morning, the eggs began to hatch."

"And sure enough, she did."

And here is a read-along video of the book.

If this edition proves popular, Rebecca and I hope to make the sequels, This Way, Ruby! and Go For It, Ruby! available through Ingram Spark as well.

Order the Ingram Spark Edition with FREE DELIVERY from Hive

(Note: Because the book is print-on-demand it may be listed as "Out of Stock" at Hive,

but you can still order a copy which should be dispatched within a week).

Download the activity sheets for this book by clicking on the images below

Board Game

Draw Ruby

Colouring Sheet

Click here to find out more about this book on my web site

THE SANTA TRAP • New UK Print-On-Demand Paperback

I'm delighted to announce that Poly Bernatene and I have just published a new UK print-on-demand edition of our "darkly funny" Christmas picture book The Santa Trap.

When children ask which of my own books is my favourite, this is the book I pick. It tells the story of Bradley Bartleby, an obscenely rich, villainous child who sets out to trap Santa Claus so that he can steal all of Santa's presents. One of the reasons I'm particularly fond of the book is that it's slightly autobiographical; as a child, I used to build Santa traps. However, unlike Bradley, I didn't want to capture Santa and steal his presents – I just wanted to get a glimpse of him. So the traps I built were designed to wake me up the moment Santa set foot in my room.

After several years of creating increasingly complex traps, I came up with the tripwire system shown in the diagram below. I strung four thin nylon tripwires around my bedroom and tied the ends to four large beads resting on one end of a Lego see-saw. The opposite end of the see-saw was wired up to a battery-powered alarm. If a tripwire moved, the bead it was tied to would be pulled off the see-saw, causing the opposite end to drop and close the circuit on the ear-piercing alarm. In addition to real tripwires, I strung a similar number of decoy tripwires around the room. It was impossible to tell the real tripwires and the decoys apart – so they both had to be avoided. I tested the trap myself and — even with the light on – I was unable to cross the room without setting off the alarm. The whole system took me so long to build and test that I didn't get into bed until almost midnight, by which time my bedroom looked like an enormous web, crisscrossed with gossamer threads, with me lying spider-like at the far end.

This diagram, from one of my school sessions, shows the final trap I built in my attempts to trap Santa. 

The strict code of secrecy surrounding Santa prevents me from telling what happened that night*, but I can tell you that it was the last Santa trap I ever built.

Another reason I'm particularly fond of the book is Poly's wonderful illustrations. Although it didn't take long to find a publisher, it took three years to find a suitable illustrator. A couple of illustrators agreed to do it but then changed their minds. Eventually, editor Emily Ford found Poly and asked him to do a sample. He turned out to be a perfect fit and well worth the wait. Poly and I have since done another three books together.

One of my favourite spreads from the book.

Bradley's darkly comical antics were a hit with readers and reviewers alike and in 2015 the story was adapted into a stage musical by Robin Belfield and Simon Slater.

Toby Vaughan (left) as beastly Bradley with Elouise Secker and Ben Tolley as his parents in Belfield Slater's 2015 stage production.

Although technically in print, the original UK paperback has not always been available in the weeks leading up to Christmas, so Poly and I have published the new print-on-demand edition to ensure its availability this year.

Another spread from the new edition.

Here's a trailer I put together for the new edition:

The book has proved popular in schools and Herts For Learning have produced a set of lesson plans, based on the book which you can download using the link below.

Download Herts For Learning's Primary
School lesson plans for The Santa Trap

You can also download some activity sheets for the book by clicking on the images below.

The book is also available in a US Hardback edition from Peachtree Publishers. You can order the new UK print-on-demand edition and the US edition using the buttons below.

Find out more about the book on my website

* Which is a shame because it was extremely funny.

PIGS MIGHT FLY! New Paperback Edition

Around this time last year illustrator Rebecca Harry and I published a set of print-on-demand editions of our Ruby the Duckling books after the original editions went out of print. I'm pleased to announce that Pigs Might Fly!, one of my picture books with illustrator Steve Cox which recently went out of print, has just been re-published in the same format.

The new square-format, print-on-demand edition.

I was particularly keen to get Pigs Might Fly! in print again as it's one of my most popular books to read on school visits and its production is the focus of the How a Picture Book is Made presentation I do with Year 5 and 6 classes.

This slide from my How a Picture Book is Made schools presentation shows some of the character
designs Steve came up with before arriving at the final characters of Waldo, Woody and Wilbur.

The book's popularity with young readers was also demonstrated when it won the “Books for Younger Children” category at the 2006 Red House Children’s Book Awards, a national children's vote awards organised by the Federation of Children’s Book Groups.

Steve and I with my son and daughter and a very shiny trophy
at the 2006 Red House Children’s Book Awards.

The new edition has different page proportions to the original and has been re-typset using open source fonts. One of the advantages of having to re-work the layouts was that it gave us the opportunity to produce a 'directors cut' version of the book which incorporates a few improvements. For example: the original version had no imprints page, so the imprints details were printed on the opening spread. This gave the story a rather awkward start, so we created a new imprints/title spread for the new edition and reworked the opening text to cover both sides of the opening spread.

While the original edition (top) had the imprint details printed on the opening spread,
the new edition (bottom) has the imprints details on a new imprints/title spread.

Most of the other changes were done in response to my experience of reading the book aloud in schools and are less easy to spot. So fans of the book can rest assured that the Big Bad Wolf is just as conniving as he was in the original edition …

… and Wilbur just as indomitable!

Here's what reviewers said about the book when it was originally published.

"A super book with a good storyline, amusingly told and wonderfully illustrated … a book children will want to look at again and again."

BOOKS FOR KEEPS

"Bright, breezy and fun with action on every page."

CAROUSEL

You can find out more about the book on this page of my website and download and print the new Spot the Difference activity sheet by clicking on the image below.

Find out more about the book on my website

Ruby Flies Again! – RUBY THE DUCKLING new editions

All three of the Ruby books are now available in new Hatchling Books editions

The children’s book business is exactly that – a business – and if sales begin to tail off for a book, a publisher will often decide to take it out of print. Any stock that remains in the warehouse is sold off at a heavily discounted price for sale in bargain bookshops and the book disappears from bookseller’s databases. As I write this, a little under half of my books are out of print. Every now and again a publisher may decide to delight an author by putting an out-of-print book back into print. However this a relatively rare occurrence and – generally speaking – when a publisher tells me that they are taking one of my books out of print I’ve learnt to take it in my stride and focus on getting new books published.

“Generally speaking” that’s what I do – but some books are harder to let fall by the wayside than others. Over the last few years all three of the Ruby the Duckling books, written by me and illustrated by Rebecca Harry, have gone out of print. Both Rebeca and I were especially sorry to see these books go, so we decided to make an effort to put all three books back into print again.

One of the reasons I was personally keen to do this is that I’ve received more emails and letters about the first Ruby book, Ruby Flew Too! (titled Ruby in Her Own Time in the US) than any of my other books. Readers from all over the world have written to me to tell me how Ruby’s tale has touched their lives and given them comfort in what have often been extremely trying circumstances.

A spread from the new edition of Ruby Flew Too! Ruby’s story has touched the lives of readers all over the world.

Having done a bit of research and read a few articles like this one, Rebecca and I decided to re-publish the books as print-on-demand editions using Amazon’s Createspace service.

Although Rebecca and I owned the rights to the book’s text and illustrations, the typography and title lettering design of the original editions belonged to the original publisher, so we had to re-typeset the spreads (using open licence fonts) and create new title lettering for the covers. The typesetting of the new editions is similar to the originals as the text placement has to fit into the gaps in Rebecca’s original illustrations, but we took the opportunity to make a few changes here and there. Some of the spreads have been cropped slightly wider to show a little more of Rebecca’s artwork and we’ve added in a book plate page at the front and an “About the Author and Illustrator” page at the back. As such, the new editions could be seen as being the “Director’s Cut” versions of the books.

A spread from the new edition of Go For It, Ruby! The text has been re-typset and some of the spreads have been cropped slightly wider to show a little more of Rebecca’s artwork.

We did the first book on its own as a trial run and agreed that if either of us weren’t happy with the printed proof copy we would not make it, or any of the other books available. So when the proofs eventually arrived through the post, we were both relieved and impressed by the quality of the printing and binding.

We were impressed by the print quality of the new print-on-demand editions.

All three books are now available under the specially-created imprint of Hatchling Books. Rebecca has designed this lovely new logo …

… and we’ve set up a web site at hatchlingbooks.co.uk where you can find out about the books and download these free Ruby activity sheets. There's a colouring sheet, a board game, a spot the difference and a maze.

The whole exercise has been a bit of an experiment for Rebecca and myself. We’re hoping that books will continue to sell without a mainstream publisher to promote them, but only time will tell! We’d love to think that by making them available in this way, Ruby’s story will continue to entertain, inspire and comfort new readers.

One of my favourite spreads from the new edition of This Way, Ruby!

The books are available for £6.99, $9.99 Or €8.99 each through Amazon’s UK, US and European stores. US buyers can also purchase them at a 15% discount through the Hatchling Books eStore.

Click here to go to the Hatchling books web site