The Chicken House is a plucky, highly individual, children's book publishing company with an enthusiasm for finding new writers, artists and ideas. Chicken House books have found worldwide popularity with children, parents, teachers and librarians everywhere.
... a publisher with a growing reputation for ingenuity, not least in finding new talent.
SUNDAY TIMES
Chicken House has garnered itself a reputation for finding the quirky and original.
BOOKSELLER, 2007
Chicken House Publishing Ltd was founded in 2000 by Barry Cunningham, Publisher and Managing Director, with his Deputy Managing Director, Rachel Hickman.
Barry Cunningham has worked with all the great names in children's books from Roald Dahl to J. K. Rowling: it was as founder publisher of Bloomsbury Children's Books that he discovered Harry Potter.
If it wasn't for Barry Cunningham, Harry Potter might still be languishing in his cupboard under the stairs ...
J. K. Rowling
In a short space of time, the Chicken House has demonstrated that a small, creative team can make an impact on an international scale. Chicken House has had worldwide success with German writer, Cornelia Funke, with sales of over 6,000,000 copies in English worldwide and four New York Times children's bestsellers. Dragon Rider by Cornelia Funke is the longest-running No. 1 New York Times children's bestseller since Harry Potter, with more than 900,000 copies in print in the USA.
Closer to home, bookseller and former car-upholsterer, Stuart Hill, shot to fame with his debut novel, The Cry of the Icemark, one of the first children's bestsellers of 2005 and the winner of the Waterstone's Children's Book Prize. Other prize-winning Chicken House authors include Katherine Roberts, who won the very first Branford Boase Award in 2000 - awarded for an outstanding debut novel for young people - followed by Kevin Brooks in 2003. Kevin Brooks was the first ever debut author to be short-listed for the CILIP Carnegie Medal in 2002, and has since been short-listed twice for the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize. In 2004 and again in 2005, Chicken House was short-listed for Small Publisher of the Year at the British Book Awards.
Chicken House is especially proud of its association with Scholastic Inc. in the United States and Canada, having published in partnership with the company for the last five years. This highly successful relationship was sealed in April 2005 by Scholastic's acquisition of the Chicken House.
Barry's stellar instinct combined with his strong sense of developing new authors, original formats and inventive new series is a wonderful asset to Scholastic.
Barbara Marcus, President, Scholastic Books Inc.
The Chicken House team remains based in Somerset in the UK, and includes Esther Waller, Publishing Manager, and Imogen Cooper, Fiction Editor. Chicken House works closely with skilled freelance staff, including: Editorial and Rights, Elinor Bagenal, Art Director, Ian Butterworth and Publicist, Mary Byrne.
In the United Kingdom Chicken House books are sold and distributed by Scholastic UK.
