Puffin Books

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Puffin Books
managing director)
Publication typesBooks
No. of employees50
Official websitewww.puffin.co.uk

Puffin Books is a longstanding children's imprint of the British publishers

children's books in the UK and much of the English-speaking world.[1] The imprint now belongs to Penguin Random House, a subsidiary of the German media conglomerate Bertelsmann
.

History

Four years after Penguin Books had been founded by Allen Lane, the idea for Puffin Books was hatched in 1939, when Noel Carrington, at the time an editor for Country Life books, met him and proposed a series of children's non-fiction picture books, inspired by the brightly coloured lithographed books mass-produced at the time for Soviet children.[2][3] Lane saw the potential, and the first of the picture book series were published the following year. The name "Puffin" was a natural companion to the existing "Penguin" and "Pelican" books. Many continued to be reprinted right into the 1970s. A fiction list soon followed, when Puffin secured the paperback rights to Barbara Euphan Todd's 1936 story Worzel Gummidge and brought it out as the first Puffin story book in 1941.[4]

The first Puffin editor,

(1960). Many different genres featured in the list, e.g. The Puffin Song Book (PS 100), 1956.

1960s to 1970s

In 1961,

Dr Dolittle and The Hobbit, and originals such as Stig of the Dump by Clive King
. The books were promoted with flair through the Puffin Club, started by Kaye Webb in 1967 with the promise to Allen Lane that "It will make children into book readers". Though by 1987, it had become uneconomical and evolved into the schools-only Puffin Book Club, at its height the club had 200,000 subscribers and held regular Puffin Exhibitions, and its magazine Puffin Post appeared quarterly for many years, resuming publication in January 2009.

Webb set up the Puffin Club partly to address class inequality in children's literacy.[5] It was important to her that membership was affordable, and Puffin subsidised costs for that reason.[5] She and her team replied to every letter that children sent in, in order to create a sense of community.[5]

Colony Holidays (predecessor to ATE Superweeks) ran Children's Literature Summer Camps for members of the Puffin Book Club. Fifty or so children from all over Britain who loved reading would spend a ten-day holiday together, and popular children's authors such as Joan Aiken, Ian Serraillier and Clive King would spend a few days with them.[6] Webb continued as editor until 1979, and the 1970s saw Puffin further advance its position with successes such as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl and Watership Down by Richard Adams.

Picture Puffins

The range of Picture Puffins, introduced in the late 1960s for younger children, also developed rapidly.

Jan Pienkowski's Meg and Mog
books from the 1980s.

1980s to 1990s

The 1980s saw Puffin taking full advantage of popular culture with film tie-in publishing, forming close links with

Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone introduced the concept of adventure gamebooks to Puffin which grew into the Fighting Fantasy phenomenon.[2] Philippa Dickinson, who had worked for Webb on the Puffin Club, was the editor for the first book, The Warlock of Firetop Mountain.[7]

The 1980s also saw the launch of the Puffin Plus line of

young adult fiction, a market earlier catered for by the imprint Peacock Books. In 2010, the young adult line was relaunched as Razorbill.[8]

The 1990s continued to see new writers join Puffin and in the 21st century the brand still shows heroes and heroines familiar to children such as

Madonna have written for Puffin.[2]

2020s

In 2023, it was revealed that Puffin had employed sensitivity readers to edit content regarded as objectionable from at least 10 of the classic works of Roald Dahl, making hundreds of changes to Dahl's works to remove words like "fat", "ugly", and "crazy", and references to gender.[9][10] Phrases such as "boys and girls" became "people" or "children". Puffin explained that these changes were part of the usual editing processes "to ensure that it can continue to be enjoyed by all today." After the revelation of these changes, Puffin was criticised by numerous literary and political figures, including by author Salman Rushdie[11] and Queen Camilla.[12]

Following backlash Puffin announced that they would continue to release the Classic version of Dahl's original works alongside the edited versions,[13] while other publishers of Dahl's works refused to consider the changes at all.[14]

Puffin Post

Puffin Post was a children's books magazine published by Puffin Books, and the magazine of the Puffin Club.[15] It was launched in 1967 by Kaye Webb, editor of Puffin Books.[15] It declined after Webb retired in 1982, but was relaunched in 2009 through the bookseller The Book People as a bi-monthly magazine.[15] The magazine was discontinued again with the November 2012 issue.[15]

The magazine contained a mix of stories, jokes, interviews, competitions and quizzes, and reader contributions.[15] At its height, it had more than 200,000 readers.[15] Prior to 1982, contributors to the magazine included well-known authors such as Alan Garner, Roald Dahl, Joan Aiken, Leon Garfield and Spike Milligan.[15] After the 2009 re-launch, contributors included Charlie Higson, Cathy Cassidy and Michael Morpurgo.[15]

See also

  • UK children's book publishers
  • List of largest UK book publishers

References

  1. ^ Puffin Children's Books changes its logo for the first time in 40 years Archived 2009-03-20 at the Wayback Machine Press release, April 2003
  2. ^ a b c d "The History of Puffin". Retrieved 28 April 2023.
  3. ^ Puffin Picture Books, Stella & Rose's Books
  4. ^ Daniel Hahn, The Oxford Companion to Children's Literature (Oxford: OUP, 2015), p. 479.
  5. ^ . Retrieved 16 May 2023.
  6. ^ "How summer camps could change Britain" (PDF). Camping for Summer Camps. Retrieved 28 April 2023.
  7. . Retrieved 16 May 2023.
  8. ^ Nuffin Like A Puffin, Book Brunch, 26 April 2010. Accessed 15 August 2010.
  9. ISSN 0307-1235
    . Retrieved 25 February 2023.
  10. ^ Singh, Anita (17 February 2023). "Augustus Gloop no longer fat as Roald Dahl goes PC". The Telegraph. Retrieved 25 February 2023.
  11. ^ Hassan, Jennifer (19 February 2023). "Salman Rushdie calls revisions to Roald Dahl books 'absurd censorship'". The Washington Post. Retrieved 25 February 2023.
  12. ^ Khomami, Nadia. "Camilla tells authors to 'remain true to calling' amid Roald Dahl row". The Guardian. Retrieved 23 February 2023.
  13. ^ "Puffin Announces The Roald Dahl Classic Collection to keep author's classic texts in print". Penguin.co.uk. Puffin. Retrieved 24 February 2023.
  14. ^ "Roald Dahl's U.K. publisher has responded to the backlash over proposed changes. : NPR". NPR. 2 April 2023. Archived from the original on 2 April 2023. Retrieved 14 August 2023.
  15. ^ a b c d e f g h Alison Flood (17 December 2012). "Puffin Post to become extinct". The Guardian. Retrieved 18 December 2012.

Further reading

  • Phil Baines (2010), Puffin By Design: 70 Years of Imagination 1940–2010. London: Allen Lane. .

External links