HELLO – and welcome to our final Blog of 2024 .. and, in a way, our first of 2025 as we take a little look back at some of the amazing events, news, visits, achievements and times of the past year … and look a little ahead to what 2025 has in store.. for ALBERT the tortoise and our chums Hugg ‘n’ Bugg.
One thing that bridges the old and New Year is our Nomination for a Carnegie Medal – a highly prestigious award, judged by librarians – for our picturebook ALBERT AND THE FLOOD. We will know more of our progress on this in early 2025. We will certainly keep you posted.
As ever, a LOT of our time this year was spent in schools all over England and Wales talking about real ALBERT the tortoise, about Hugg ‘n’ Bugg and reading our stories – hopefully, encouraging children to see the joy of books, of reading and possibly of writing or being creative. We think we achieved more than 90 storytime sessions.. we also recroded a wonderful two part podcast with Dogthorpe Infant School in Peterborough. Supersize thanks to all the teachers, staff, pupils and everyone involved.
We must give special mention to the AMAZING giant Albert crafted at a school in Wales from papier mache. Really brilliant!
Further afield .. we are always pleased to see and hear from our firends in South Korea who publish the first two Albert stories there (in Korean). The year ends in turbulent and sad times for South Korea and we wish all well.
Of course.. as well as schools, much of our time in 2024 was spent at or in bookshops… Of all shapes and sizes. Book signing, storytimes and quick visits .. we loved them all. Thanks to all the booksellers. Your support is amazing and very much appreciated.
We especially salute indie bookshops on Bookshop Day – and 2024 was no exception. Too many friends to mention but some are here is picture form,
We also love to mark Book Day – and this year as especially wonderful as more little ones donned Albert costumes. We very much hope to see more Alberts in 2025!!
We had cause to do some of our own selling this year on a few occasions .. including a book stall at beautiful Easton Gardens in Essex. We very much thank the volunteers there for thinking of us.
We try to help causes when we can as well. Once again this year we were pleased to gift signed books and other goodies to Children In Read – helping the BBC fundraiser Children in Need.
We also supported various animal charities and our local food / community hub gifting books to be handed out at Christmas.
We were also delighted to team this year again with Bookmark Reading Charity. Their aim is to Let Every Child Read.. and they offer books and equipment plus volunteers to schools to help boost reading skills and confidence. We visit primary schools in association with the charity. This year as we also got stuck into some filming. We talked about being writers, the joy of books and reading and we read snippets of our books ALBERT AND THE FLOOD and Hugg ‘n’ Bugg FINDING HOME.
This all carries over into 2025 when videos will be shared online and into schools across the UK. We are thrilled to be part of this initiative.
Libraries also played a big part in our world this year. We visited a fair few as part of literature festivals and we gifted a lot of our books to libraries where we could. We always say – Please, Support Libraries. Great local assets.
Children’s Literature Festivals once again took us all over this year.. Including to the North East for the Northern Children’s Book Festival in Darlington and Whitley Bay. Also to Bridgend in Wales. Thanks to all the organisers.
We released a few new titles this year as well… Our Board Books ALBERT 123 and ALBERT ABC plus ALBERT AND THE THIEF picturebook plus Hugg ‘n’ Bugg THE SURPRISE. We have been lucky to receive loads of positive and 5* Reviews from readers and from bloggers. We are always grateful for nice reviews. Please keep posting reviews if you can.
REVIEWS
Looking ahead slightly… We have schools, Festivals and bookshop events lined up taking us into June 2025 already! So exciting.
We start on THURSDAY JANUARY 9 from 11am at Oakmere Library, Potters Bar, Hertfordshire with ALBERT the tortoise and Hugg ‘n’ Bugg storyime and book stall.
Possibly saving best to last, we were so excited this year to sign deals with Brands with Influence (a brand licensing management company) and with 3Megos Productions (an animation production company). The hope is this will help to take ALBERT to a wider worldwide audience and help us to create further Albert products .. and an animated TV series.
There will be more announcements on this early in 2025.
Of course, the real star of all this is real Albert the tortoise. He had a pretty good year.. with some nice weather mainly. He inspired the first ALBERT picturebooks about five years ago. So much has happened since .. with help from lots of people including, of course, publishers Graffeg.
Finally, as we count down to the end of 2024 and look to 2025… massive thanks to everyone who has supported us and our endeavours. Special thanks to all who read our books.. it’s wonderful to be able to count on you….
HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!