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Features

Could ‘green noise’ be your secret weapon to reading – and writing – more?

A picture of several different books that celebrate differences and diversity on a green and pink background with white doodles

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Children's reading lists

Best children’s books that celebrate difference

A collage of black and white photographs of Zadie Smith and Nick Laird and the cover of their new book, Weirdo.

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9 things we learned from Zadie Smith and Nick Laird’s Penguin Podcast episode

Weirdo

Meet Maud: a guinea pig who inexplicably wears a judo suit - and not everyone understands or approves. When Maud is thrown into a new and confusing situation, it takes brave decisions and serendipitous encounters for her to find her place and embrace her individuality. 
 
The charming characters of Magenta Fox, whose work is evocative of Raymond Briggs and Janet Ahlberg, perfectly offset Zadie and Nick's warm, wry prose. 
 
Weirdo is an endearing story about the quiet power of being different by two veteran writers, and introduces an exciting debut illustrator. Together they have created a picture book that adults and children alike will treasure.

Zadie Smith (Author) Zadie Smith is the author of the novels White Teeth, The Autograph Man, On Beauty, NW, Swing Time and The Fraud; as well as a novella, The Embassy of Cambodia; four collections of essays, Changing My Mind, Feel Free, Intimations and Dead and Alive; a collection of short stories, Grand Union; and the play, The Wife of Willesden, adapted from Chaucer. She is also the editor of The Book of Other People. Zadie Smith was born in north-west London, where she still lives. Nick Laird (Author) Nick Laird was born in Northern Ireland in 1975 and was educated at the University of Cambridge and Harvard University. He has published two novels, Utterly Monkey and Glover's Mistake, and three collections of poetry, To a Fault, On Purpose and Go Giants. He has also edited Zoo of the New: Poems to read Now, an anthology of poetry, new and old, alongside Don Paterson. 
Laird is the recipient of many awards for his fiction and poetry, including the Betty Trask Prize, the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, and the Somerset Maugham Award. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a 2016 Guggenheim Fellow, he teaches Creative Writing at Columbia University in New York. 
Twitter: @NickLaird 
 Website: nicklaird.com Magenta Fox (Illustrator) Magenta Fox was born in south-west London in 1994. She studied English at the University of Exeter and since moving back to London in 2015, has been working as a children's book designer. These days she works freelance - illustrating, writing and designing children's books from her flat in south London.

Meet Maud: a guinea pig who inexplicably wears a judo suit - and not everyone understands or approves. When Maud is thrown into a new and confusing situation, it takes brave decisions and serendipitous encounters for her to find her place and embrace her individuality. 
 
The charming characters of Magenta Fox, whose work is evocative of Raymond Briggs and Janet Ahlberg, perfectly offset Zadie and Nick's warm, wry prose. 
 
Weirdo is an endearing story about the quiet power of being different by two veteran writers, and introduces an exciting debut illustrator. Together they have created a picture book that adults and children alike will treasure.

Other Ways to Leave the Room

Penguin Modern Poets 4

Don Paterson was born in Dundee in 1963. His previous poetry collections include Nil Nil, God's Gift to Women, Landing Light, Rain and 40 Sonnets. His poetry has won many awards, including the Whitbread Poetry Prize, the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize and all three Forward Prizes; he is currently the only poet to have won the T. S. Eliot Prize twice. He was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 2009. He lives in Edinburgh. 
 
Nick Laird was born in 1975 in Co. Tyrone. His debut collection, To a Fault (2005), won the Aldeburgh Poetry Prize; his second, On Purpose (2007), won the Somerset Maugham Award and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. He is the author of two novels and lives between New York and London. 
 
Kathleen Jamie was born in the west of Scotland in 1962. Her poetry collections include the selection Mr and Mrs Scotland Are Dead: Poems 1980-1994 (2002); The Tree House (2004), winner of both the Forward Prize and the Scottish Book of the Year Award; The Overhaul (2012), which won the Costa Poetry Award; and The Bonniest Companie (2015). Her non-fiction books include the highly regarded Findings and Sightlines. She lives with her family in Fife.

Other Ways to Leave the Room features the work of three of the most beloved and lauded poets currently at large. Between them, Kathleen Jamie, Don Paterson and Nick Laird write lyrical, luminous and often darkly witty poems about the rugged wildness of the Scottish landscape; about fatherhood; about whisky-drinking, alcohol abuse and tenement life; about sex, love and the pursuit of the spiritual; about childhood in the Ireland of the Troubles, and about the strange possibilities of the technological future. What all three have in common is an ability to combine observations of gritty real life with a sense of the mythical proportions always lurking just under the surface of the everyday. 
 
The Penguin Modern Poets are succinct guides to the richness and diversity of contemporary poetry. Every volume brings together representative selections from the work of three poets now writing, allowing the curious reader and the seasoned lover of poetry to encounter the most exciting voices of our moment.

Zadie Smith

Nick Laird

Magenta Fox

One of the Observer's Best Children’s Books of 2024 
 
A warm and endearing story about the quiet power of being yourself from Zadie Smith, Nick Laird and Magenta Fox. 
 
Maud - a judo-suit wearing guinea pig and proud weirdo - is off into the wild, as is Kit, her owner. Both are slightly nervous about what they'll find in the great outdoors, but with a pinch of bravery - and a few Signature Moves - they'll make new friends and explore new worlds. 
 
Praise for Weirdo: 
"A sweet, tightly written tale about the benefits of not fitting in, cheered on by Magenta Fox's gorgeous illustrations" The Times’ Best Children’s Books for Summer 2021 
"As cockle-warming as a cuddle from a favourite pet, Weirdo ought to be a smash hit" Observer 
"it's delightful" the i

Nick Laird

Books by Nick Laird

Articles featuring Nick Laird

Could ‘green noise’ be your secret weapon to reading – and writing – more?

Best children’s books that celebrate difference

9 things we learned from Zadie Smith and Nick Laird’s Penguin Podcast episode

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