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May 19, 2011

There is MUCH excitement at Penguin Towers today. Why? Because Penguin Children’s Books won the much-coveted Children’s Publisher of the Year Award at The Bookseller Industry Awards last night. Hooray!

We fought off stiff competition from other big children’s publishers including Walker, Harper Collins, Egmont and Simon & Schuster. It was incredibly tense when we were waiting to hear the result and as you can imagine, it was a jubilant moment when our name was read out . . .

We puffed our feathers with pride when the judges called us ‘the best publisher in the business at the moment’ and it was like a trip down memory lane looking back at all the fun things we achieved last year. Here are a few highlights:

Taking the bestseller charts by storm with Percy Jackson, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, the Top Gear, In the Night Garden, Very Hungry Caterpillar and Peppa Pig annuals, Alice in Wonderland, Artemis Fowl and the Atlantis Complex and Vampire Academy: Last Sacrifice. 

   

Reaching you in new ways, especially with our groundbreaking new apps for Spot, Peppa Pig and BabyTouch. 

Creating new books and guides about your favourite websites like Club Penguin and Moshi Monsters
Designing fantastic covers that make you want to pick up and discover our books. Here are some of our favourites.

Our spectacular Happy Birthday Imagination 70th birthday celebration (and we look younger than ever!)
 
We’re thrilled to have won and the champagne corks are popping in celebration. What an amazing place to work!

Kirsten Grant
Campaigns Director

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Posted at 03:39 PM in Books | Permalink | TrackBack (0)

February 29, 2008

One of the things I love about working here is that one minute you can have an idea, just a teeny tiny idea and the next minute (or in this case a year or so later) it’s exploded into one of the most fun and exciting projects to work on ever, thanks to lots of brainstorming and teamwork from different people in the various corners of Puffin HQ. The project I’m talking about started with the name and it’s pretty much cannon balled from there. I went from the serious ‘Cathy Cassidy’s Friend in a Million Award’ to the silly ‘My Best Friend’s Socks’ to the favourite ‘My Best Friend Rocks.’

MBFR is the Cathy Cassidy Friendship Award and gives all Cathy fans the chance to tell us why their best friend, erm, rocks – and then we celebrate. Last year the finalists came to 80 Strand (where Puffin lives) for an awards ceremony, to meet Cathy and win all sorts of lovely prizes. I missed the big day last summer as I was at one of my own friends’ big day, but by all accounts it was an amazing success and by the end of it there wasn’t a dry eye in the (publishing) house.

We’re currently receiving entries for this year’s competition and there were literally squeals of girly delight when the first one came in. They range from the oh-so-sparkly to the shimmery to the downright tear-jerking (yes I have been known to cry at my desk). The date is in the diary for this year’s ceremony – but this is where I sign off and soon my friend Emily, our Senior Marketing Officer and MBFR expert extraordinaire, will be here to tell you about the event itself. I couldn’t even begin to tell you what’s happening for it - Emily’s arranged so much I need to put on my pj's and hit the hay just thinking about how much fun we’re I mean you’re going to have. Now, I’m off to read some more entries and try not to cry – but I'm hoping to get glitter everywhere.

Sarah Kettle
Puffin Copywriter

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Posted at 01:39 PM in Books | Permalink | TrackBack (0)

February 28, 2008

I am all alone.

They have all left me!

Am sitting, twirling round on my seat at Puffin Towers with hardly anyone to make me a cup of tea or to enter into a very serious discussion about whose dress we liked most at the Oscars (although none were as good as Kylie's cute Stella McCartney number at the Brits - although bit biased because she wrote us a v good book).

But where has everyone gone you ask?

Ah. T'is where the mountains are covered in snow, people get up very early and throw themselves out into the freezing cold willingly and ones feet aren't considered good enough to move from A to B anymore. Snowboarding (or for the more retro, skiing).

I don't do exercise as a matter of principle (because am lazy) but it seems that everyone's at it; friends from home, fellow Puffins, Victoria Beckham in a glam puffy white number...

Perhaps I am missing out? Even the last book that I edited, ICE CLAW by David Gilman (which is out in July), had its very own protagonist, Max Gordon, doing 360 degree spins and backward curls among other adrenaline-pumping snowboarding moves in an X-treme winter sports competition in the Pyrenees. This was actually a super cool (haha, get the pun?) chapter and made me wish that I was Max. Or at least had his sense of adventure, desire for danger, and let's face it, superior physical skills to moi. Sigh.

But, I still think that I'm the one who's got it right, really. I shall wait for enthusiastic friends and colleagues to return with sunburnt noses and goggle marks whilst staying here and reading a manuscript, engrossed in someone else's world; whooshing down the mountain, being chased by dangerous criminals, doing snow-spraying stops, looking super-sophisticated and cool... but in the warm and with a cup of tea.

That I tragically had to make for myself.

Until next time, fellow ski-bunnies.

Lindsey Heaven
Puffin Senior Editor

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Posted at 12:28 PM in Books | Permalink | TrackBack (0)

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