Welcome to my stop on the Children's Book Award Blog Tour!
The Children's Book Award is the only national award for children's books that is voted for entirely by children. It is owned and coordinated by the Federation of Children's Book Groups and is highly respected by teachers, parents and librarians. It has brought acclaim and strong sales to past winners such as J.K. Rowling, Patrick Ness, Andy Stanton, Malorie Blackman, Anthony Horowitz and Michael Morpurgo, who has won a record four times. The award has often been the first to recognise the future stars of children's fiction and has the ability to turn popular authors into bestsellers.
I am delighted to share a blog from Olaf Falafel all about his shortlisted title, Blob Fish, published by Walker Books!
To celebrate my book Blobfish being shortlisted for the FCBG Children's Book award I thought I'd share the part of being a children's book author that is my favourite bit.
A lot of authors say it's the moment when they first get an actual printed copy of their book sent to them by the publishers. Some say it's when they first spot their book on the shelves of a bookshop – for me though, it's something different.
The part of being an author that I think is the most amazing is when I go and visit schools.
I do have a slight advantage when it comes to entertaining audiences as I'm also a stand up comedian. I'm fairly comfortable with being thrown the odd curveball (having to do my talk in the playground due to a fire drill) and I've also developed a reasonably thick skin to cope with the unintentional insults ("You look older than my Grandad!").
There are a lot of similarities between drunk hecklers and children; they don't necessarily think about what they are saying before shouting it out. They don't have a filter and what you get tends to be brutally honest. But also, they can be incredibly entertaining and sometimes inspire new comedy routines. There was one memorable question during the Q&A bit where a child asked (completely unrelated to anything in the book) "Are sausage dogs called sausage dogs because they like to eat sausages or because they are the meat that sausages are made out of?" – obviously I told him it was the second one!
My favourite part of school visit though, is being in an assembly hall full of pupils who are all drawing a character from my books. This to me is the moment that it all becomes real and my stories start to exist beyond words and pictures on a page. The level of engagement you get from a group draw-along is something special. I also love how creative children can be. After we have drawn Blobfish, I tend to get the kids to freestyle with the background and draw whatever scenery they like. I get lots of shells, sharks, seaweed, submarines and mermaids but the funniest (or possibly most tragic) was a shopping trolley!
A lot of children (and teachers!) seem to think they 'aren't good at drawing' but I always say, with a bit of encouragement and a bit of persistence you'll be surprised at how good you actually are.
I've travelled to schools all around the UK with Blobfish and it really is great to see the enjoyment that an author visit brings. To me, being nominated for the FCBG award means that much more knowing it is solely voted for by children.
Stay Blobtastic!
Olaf
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Who will win? Children nationwide are now invited to vote for their favourite of the ten shortlisted books. The deadline for online voting is 12 noon on Friday 12th May. The category winners and the author of the best children's book published in the 2022 nomination period will be announced at a glittering awards ceremony which takes place in Central London on Saturday 10th June, and will be live-streamed.
Vote online here - www.fcbg.org.uk/childrens-book-award-2023/.
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