Templar at the English Association's 4-11 Picture Book Awards

The lovely Katie Cotton, Editor, has blogged about Templar's success at the English Association's Picture Book Awards

On Wednesday, we were lucky enough to be invited to the rather beautiful (and architecturally impressive) British Academy for the English Association’s 2013 4–11 Picture Book Awards. Templar got two (yes, that’s right, TWO!) of the four prizes, scooping both the Fiction and Non-Fiction awards in the 7–11 category.

Where My Wellies Take Me, by Clare and Michael Morpurgo / illustrated by Olivia Lomenech Gill, won the Fiction award. It’s always lovely to get nice comments on our books, and we especially enjoyed hearing the judges say that this was a book that really celebrated the English countryside, both in terms of natural beauty, through Olivia’s stunning artworks, and the literature it has inspired, by featuring some of the nation’s best-loved poems. How We Make Stuff by Christiane Dorian, illustrated by Beverley Young, won the Non-Fiction award, with the judges praising its innovative and educative use of novelty in explaining difficult concepts.

The worthy winner of Fiction 4–7 was the hilarious Hippospotamus – a tale of a hippopotamus who has a spot on her bottamus from publishing royalty Jeanne Willis and Tony Ross (Andersen Press). The Non-Fiction 4–7 Award went to A First Book of Nature by Nicola Davies, illustrated by Mark Hearld. A little like Wellies in terms of its ‘part poetry, part scrapbook’ feel, this is a gorgeous book from Walker that captures the simple loveliness that is everywhere in nature, if you can only look.

Unfortunately neither of the Morpurgos could make the ceremony, but Christiane, Beverley and Olivia were all invited up to the stage for some award-holding and photo-taking. After a lovely reception, where the other shortlisted books were greedily pawed over by the Templar team and a fair amount of wine was drunk, we moved on to the buzzing café of the ICA for more wine and chatting.

Massive congratulations to our super-talented contributors, and thanks to the English Association for a lovely evening!

Guest post from Christiane Dorion!

Author of the How it Works Series, Christiane Dorion, writes us a guest post about her new book out this month: How We Make Stuff

I must have one of the best jobs in the world, writing pop-up books about the extraordinary planet we live on. Having explored the natural cycles of the earth in my first two books, I decided to investigate how we make everyday products, from t-shirts to burgers and rubber ducks.

This book took me on an exciting investigation, talking to experts involved in the design, production and disposal of all that stuff we buy and use. Where do burgers come from? What are rubber ducks made of? How do we turn trees into paper? What’s the link between gorillas and mobiles phones?

These are some of the questions I explore in my new book How We Make Stuff. I also look at how our fellow creatures have been building amazing structures and creating incredible substances over millions of years, without producing any waste. Can we do things differently?

Working in collaboration with the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, we have developed a website to complement the book and explore further how we can learn from living systems and rethink the way we design, make and use our stuff. The website is aimed at parents and primary teachers who want to encourage children to explore new ideas in the way we make everyday things.
After all, they are the future designers and engineers of tomorrow!

Have fun exploring at www.made2bmadeagain.org!

Be in with a chance of winning a signed a copy of the new book here: http://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/education/primary