I am pleased and honoured to be taking part in the blog tour celebrating the recent announcement of the Children’s Book Award shortlists.

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.

Press Start! Game On, Super Rabbit Boy by Thomas Flintham is one of the books shortlisted in the Younger Readers category. This cleverly designed first chapter book is just right for gaming enthusiasts as its appearance resembles both Minecraft and Lego games giving it an eye catching and familiar look. With short chapters, a punchy writing style and the use of present tense newly confident readers will be able to read this by themselves and gain a real sense of achievement. As well as being lots of fun Thomas Flintham gently encourages his young readers to learn to persevere if at first they don’t succeed.

I am delighted to welcome Thomas Flintham to the blog today to tell us a little about his inspiration for the series, his love of gaming and his reasoning for how he styled the artwork for Press Start! 

There have been a lot of books about characters from video games, but I never found anything that really captured what it actually felt like to play video games. When I started to develop the Press Start series I was really keen to include the player in the story.

Each story focuses on Super Rabbit Boy’s latest adventure unfolding as a young boy called Sunny plays the latest Super Rabbit Boy game. When Sunny gets stuck, so does Super Rabbit Boy. When Sunny succeeds so does Super Rabbit Boy. My favourite thing about Super Rabbit Boy is that no matter how many times he gets knocked back he never gives up. He keeps coming back until he has saved the day. He faces every challenge with a determined smile and will do anything to protect his friends.

I think the series can be fun for non-gamers, but I think it would have a big appeal to readers who love video games and that are just like Sunny. I hope I capture something that they can really relate to. I discovered Nintendo and video games when I was 10 years old and as a kid I was drawn to anything and everything video games related. I still have my collection of Super Mario books! I also used to buy piles of video game magazines. Repeatedly looking at every page and article really helped improve my relationship with reading.

I wanted to make sure the characters were clearly in a videogame and so making everything pixelated was a clear choice from the start. I didn’t want the artwork to be too stiff though, so even though everything is made of flat square shapes and straight lines, I bend, squish and rotate them where needed to bring everything to life. To contrast the scenes in the video game to the scenes where we see Sunny playing, I tried to make everything in the real world as round and squishy as possible.

I think kids are always drawn to books and stories that celebrate and explore things they are already interested in. Although I hope the Press Start books are fun for all readers, they’re also full of gaming references that I think would be a lot of fun for gaming fans to find. 

I’m so pleased that Press Start! Game On, Super Rabbit Boy has been shortlisted for the FCBG Children’s Book Award and I hope readers have as much fun with Sunny and Super Rabbit Boy as I do!

Thank you Thomas and I think your readers are going to have great fun with Sunny and Super Rabbit Boy!

Who Will Win?? FCBG groups are voting within their group and non-members can vote online via the link at https://fcbg.org.uk/cba-2024/. The deadline for voting is Friday 18th May. The category winners and the author of the best children’s book published in 2024 will be announced at a ceremony in Birmingham on 8th June, attended by representatives from all our local groups.