'Oi Cat!' to be BA indie booksellers children's choice

The BA Children's Bookselling Group is launching the Indie Booksellers Children's Book of the Season, which aims to showcase indie bookshops' abillity to promote and sell children's books.

Chosen by a panel of indie booksellers from a range of new children's titles, the first Children's Book of the Season is picture book, Oi Cat! by Kes Gray and Jim Field (Hachette Children's).

For the autumn season, around 60 indie bookshops are taking part and will be promoting Oi Cat! for a minimum of two weeks from 8th September. The BA will be supporting the promotion of the Children's Book of the Season through social media and promotional materials including posters, stickers, bookmarks and other POS material. Booksellers will also be support the Book of the Season on social media.

Meryl Halls, head of membership services at the BA, said: "It's been great fun working with the Children's Bookselling Group on this new project. There is such passion in children's books, and our BA committee is full of energetic, well-informed, brilliant booksellers who know how to get the right books into the right child's hands. When Vanessa Lewis of Book Nook in Hove, our Vice Chair, suggested the idea of the Book of the Season, the committee jumped at the chance, and the publishers have been incredibly positive about it. Kids' books are so crucial to all bookshops at the moment, this really gives us a good chance to shine a light on how effective a job the indies are doing in hand-selling and breaking children's books. And what a winner!"

The BA will be asking publishers to submit titles for the Winter Book of the Season in the coming weeks.