CBN SUMMER SOCIAL  EDINBURGH, JUNE 2023 We had an absolutely fantastic time meeting members old and new at our annual Summer Social last week. This year we held the event in Edinburgh, as we want to host in-person events in each of our different regions. (So we'll be meeting the the North East next summer!) It was our first Children's Books North event in Scotland, and wonderful to get together in such a vibrant literary city and see so many local members.  We had a brilliant turnout of authors, illustrators and publishing folk, around 50 people in total, including some of our current and previous mentees from our Mentor Scheme - thank you to everyone for making them so welcome!  CBN co-founders and mentees It was lovely as ever to meet in person and make new contacts as well as hearing what everyone is up to and celebrating what we've achieved through the network this last year. (We may have raised a glass or two to quite a big project that we've finally finished w...

 Children's Books North  We Are Three!  It hardly seems possible that it is already three years since we launched Children's Books North with our very first social event in Manchester February 2020. Our third year was another packed year of celebration, promotion and championing the creativity in the North and Scotland. Now seems like a good time to look back on a great 2022 ...  2022 Mentor scheme The second year of our mentor scheme for aspiring publishing professionals brought a brand-new cohort of mentees for Emma, Tilda and Liz to work with. Luke Power, Joanne Ruffell and Helen Varley joined us to take their first steps into learning more about the publishing industry. We're absolutely delighted that for our 2023 mentor scheme we will be joined by more publishing professional mentors, giving us the opportunity to offer additional mentee places to aspiring professionals. Watch this space for further announcements. CBN Summer Social After a long two and a half yea...

 Celebrating two years of CBN - Summer Social, Leeds On Thursday 30th June, Children's Books North finally managed only our second ever in-person social event (due to Covid) since our launch in February 2020.  Since that first launch our membership has grown from 60 to over 350, with more than 50,000 blog views and nearly 6,000 followers across our social media. It was a genuine joy to be able to celebrate more than two years of supporting and promoting our members' work, and championing regional diversity in children's publishing with everyone. In those two years we have been joined by the CBN Committee - Tom Ashton-Booth, Maria Rifiuti and Shaniah Shields - who contribute a huge amount to the day-to-day running of the network and were able to meet many of our members for the first time. Maria, Emma, Tilda, Tom, Shaniah We are now into our second year of the CBN mentor scheme for aspiring publishing professionals which aims to support mentees from the North of England an...

May 2020 Online Social Thanks again to everyone who joined in the conversation or shared their CBN profile online last night.  We were bowled over by the crowds and chatter on Twitter and Instagram. It was a clamorous hubbub - and brilliant to learn a bit more about one another, hear about current projects, book announcements, online readings and to share coping strategies for lockdown. Not to mention the all-important Snack Chat! We really hope you enjoyed it; we were all buzzing afterwards. We think we've caught all the conversation and replies now, and we've picked up a lot of new followers. We even managed to get our hashtag trending! It's great to know we can all connect and support each other during this unsettling time, as well as celebrating and drawing attention to the inspiring children's literature and creativity across the North West, North East, Yorkshire and Scotland. Cheers to that, and all of you! *Raises mug* The next soci...

Welcome ...  Its a couple of months since we held our inaugural Children's Books North networking get together, and don't things look different now! It was a dark, rainy night when we all packed ourselves into a basement bar in Manchester's Northern Quarter to meet up with old friends, discover new ones, share a drink and talk about our plans for what we want CBN to become.  Thank you to so many of you for braving the typically Mancunian weather to join us and to bring with you your thoughts and ideas for the network. While there may be the small matter of a global pandemic stopping us from physically meeting again for a while, we've been taking your ideas and planning lots of ways to strengthen our ties, and celebrate the North.  For now, we're sharing some photos of the evening ... of biscuits, drinks and people standing alarmingly close to each other!  Emma, Liz and Tilda xx Children's Books North Trade press coverage in BookBrunch Delic...