Merry Christmas everyone, and a very happy new year! These were our publishing highlights for 2018.

Michelle Robinson toured Ten Fat Sausages around the country dressed as a sausage. Is there a harder-working author out there? Sell-out shows at Cheltenham made for a richly deserved finale.

Sometimes the critics nail it, as in this Kirkus starred review of Polly Dunbar’s A Lion Is A Lion: ‘From start to finish, the spirits of Dr Seuss and Maurice Sendak hover happily.’

Good to see Jane McGuinness’s debut Say Hi To Hedgehogs! picked as a Junior Library Guild selection in the US, and to read all the glowing reviews of Sarah Edmonds’ Nature Craft online (her Discovery Globe from 2017 has now sold in 16 territories).

Janetta Otter-Barry did an inspired job with Sean Taylor’s retelling of the Mullah Nasruddin stories in Riding A Donkey Backwards, and I’m really pleased that Graffeg’s success with Malachy Doyle’s Molly and the Stormy Sea has led to their commissioning a series of four more Molly books from Malachy and Andrew Whitson, starting with Molly and the Whale next year.

One of the most exciting successes of 2018 has to be Steve Tasane’s Child I. Faber found an inspired design to express the universality of these anonymous children making a life for themselves in a refugee camp, and have sold it in ten languages all over Europe, more than once at auction. A book for now.

And an unexpected project to finish. Only One Of Me wasn’t among our Ones To Watch for 2018, because it was only conceived as an idea in June. That it should have been published just four months later is remarkable, as is the story of how it all came together, from Michelle’s first blog post to the very moving launch party with Lisa in Frome. A wild ride… and a very special book.

Do click on 2019 for our highlights for the year to come.