This was not exactly the blog that we planned to write. We were going to share a post about our Ghost Story Competition (which this still is), but it has suddenly become very pertinent and personal. On Saturday, only a day after sharing our Puplishing blog, we lost our founding publisher, Orlando. We are all utterly devastated, and Crowvus HQ has become very quiet. It is truly strange not to see him at the bottom of the stairs, or not to have him sitting at my feet while I write this. It is the little, everyday, routine things where his death is most acutely felt. Nine years ago, in our first ever Ghost Story Competition , we received a story entitled Black Dog . I admit, I had preconceived ideas about this one, based on its title, thinking about baying hounds and the Black Shuck. Nothing was further from the truth. A. J. Black's beautiful story was a journey of grief, a coming to terms with a loss of more than life, but of a companion. I remember reading it and ...
It is not long at all until our new Middle Grade book All the Time in the World is released! We know you are as excited as we are about this book, so we've created a few activity sheets which we will be sharing right here on the blog throughout this week. Our first activity is a character wordsearch . We've hidden the names of some of the book's key characters in the grid for you to try and find. If you manage that, see if you can locate some of the extra words we've tucked in. If you're not sure what those words might be, we suggest you have a read through the blurb here . Once you've finished, you can decorate the border with your own artwork. We'd love to see your finished wordsearch, so please feel free to share a picture of it with us. You can do this via email , Facebook , or BSky . We can't wait to see them!