The school visit season began this month. Like many fellow authors I’ve been privileged to be invited into the halls, libraries and classrooms of schools and meet teenage readers. So far I’ve met Yr7 and 8 students in Hounslow, Ealing, Bath, and enjoyed judging a poetry recital competition at Christ Church Cathedral School.
Josh Garcia from Hyoronsha's edition of ICE SHOCK
Like most authors I try to vary my ‘author talk’ every year, in fact mine evolves through a few versions each year, especially if people are kind enough to let me know what kind of thing they’d like more of. This year I’ve been making use of the Japanese jacket art for Joshua Files, which features illustrations of all the main characters. (An example of Josh Garcia in the ginga stance is to the right.)
Despite the need to travel and to take time away from the writing schedule, I never get tired of meeting readers. Schools are such fun and vital places to be, filled with so much energy. The enthusiasm of readers who have read and enjoyed a book you have written is a real gift to any author.
Last week I visited via Skype with a group of students in Kingswood School in Bath.It wasn’t my first time doing a virtual author visit (Scottish Book Trust and I used the GLOW Scotland network to visit over 500 pupils interactively in 2009). It WAS the first time that I’d done a virtual visit from the comfort of my own home. (Well, at least, from my husband’s garden office.) A pretty cosy way to visit! Especially as I am so deeply entrenched in writing Joshua 5 right now. It meant I talk to readers with only a brief break from my writing!
Kingswood students have been reading INVISIBLE CITY as a group. Led by their talented librarian, Nicola McNee, they’ve enhanced their reading experience by creating an incident board to follow and solve all the mysteries (shown below). And an Animoto video displaying all their favourite elements of INVISIBLE CITY!
MG at Kennington Literary Festival (photo by Mostly Books)
It’s all over the Internet and the news – to save money, local governments plan to close down some libraries. In Oxfordshire, 20 of 43 local libraries are threatened with closure. The communities are protesting, demonstrating, writing letters. This is the moment to persuade the county councils to change their minds!
Local primary school children who use the Kennington Library have written letters to Cllr Keith Mitchell, who leads the Oxfordshire County Council. The Save the Library campaigners have written to Cllr Mitchell and to local MP, Nicola Blackwood, inviting them both to tea with the kids on February 7th, and to receive the letters of petition.
I’ll be joining with Korky Paul, an Oxford neighbour and illustrator of many wonderful children’s books (including Winnie the Witch), to read to the Kennington children.
Local media have also been invited to record the event. We’re very much hoping that Cllr Mitchell will turn up!
Here’s an excerpt of a letter I wrote to both.
The Government proposes to radically overhaul education, which I support. In that instance, it isn’t proposing to close schools and let natural selection take over! Libraries deserve the same, albeit on a smaller scale.
Please – consult with stakeholders, ask for proposals and bring in examples of best practice.
Don’t just cut a hole in the heart of the community. Don’t make the mistake of assuming that because some people don’t personally use a service, they don’t have an interest in its existence. Where would we be if we took that approach with every publicly-funded institution?
Libraries and civilisation go hand in hand. What do we rightly regard with horror as one of the existential crises in Western civilisation? The burning of the Library of Alexandria!
Please use your influence and act to serve the community who elected you.
Please show that this matters to you!
I’m involved in the Campaign to Save the Kennington Library. This is a perfect example of a local library that should be supported. It is the Big Society in action. The community run a Free Literary Festival (see attached article from The Oxford Times), which raises awareness and funds for the Kennington Library. The library is used regularly by local primary schools, in effect providing an extension of their own library provision. Without that library people for whom mobility is an issue will have difficulty getting to town.
So…roll on February 7th…! I will post a report from the event, right here on the blog.
More excitement on the Kids Lit Quiz and Booked Up front. Last week I joined the author’s team at the Oxfordshire & Berkshire heat of the Kids Lit Quiz, only to miss an historic finale because I had to swoosh off to That London for a Booked Up launch party.
(I love the swooshing to That London. It sounds very glam and so it is! Whizzing off on a train to some distant part of the capital to drink wine, eat canapes and meet lovely children’s authors and the movers and shakers in the Book Trust, who do so much for kids literacy in the UK that it’s not funny to imagine life without them.)
Anyway, the author team starred the inimitable Lucy Coats, the adorable Mark Robson, the quietly brilliant Susie Day, the Next Big Thing in teen historical fiction, Marie-Louise Jensen (yep, the former editorial director at Scholastic told me that), and a new friend, Joanne Kenrick, who I know from FaceBook and the kids lit world, but met for the first time that night.
Normally the combined intellect of Susie, Mark and Lucy alone would be fine to win the heat, beat all the kids, pah, see THAT?!
But not that night. It was an historic night, destined to bring the highest number of teams ever to participate in a heat (42), as well as the highest ever score in the KLQ (97.5).
St Gregs KLQ team 1 2010 (3rd place)
The author’s did not get the highest score, nope. The winners did – Oxford High, those brilliant girls. Joshua Files fans too, good on ’em!
(ahem – added belatedly. Apparently I’m wrong, the author’s team did win, by half a point. But their score flashed past in a moment onscreen and we never mention it when the authors win…)
However, the photo shows not the winning team (who for my money may go on to win the UK Championship next week). Instead, it shows the 3rd placed team from St Gregory the Great – the school of which I’m a governor. It’s only the second time we’ve fielded a team, and these guys had to beat former heat winners Cherwell in a tie-break for the 3rd position.
So three cheers for the Saints! And what an achievement by Oxford High – 1st and 2nd place, as well as a record-breaking score!
I missed all the excitement, alas. Still, I had big fun in London, met the lovely people on the selection panel who so kindly included Invisible City in the Booked Up list for 2010. Met Chris Priestly, whose amazing Uncle Montague’s Tales of Terror helped me to give our daughter such a great Halloween. And Steve Cole, author of so many hit kids titles (Astrosaurs and Z-Rex, to name only two) that he makes me feel like a slacker.
Turns out that Steve Cole and I share a teenage passion for Blake’s 7. Oh the geekiness in the air as we quoted favourite episodes… Then I had to rush off to catch a train. I didn’t get round to telling Steve Cole how much Blake’s 7 fan fiction I’d written. Just as well. Sometimes I get all silly and start pressing it on fellow B7 fans. Never wise…
Some kind of publicist’s witchy magic must have been operating last week because Scholastic’s dynamite team of Alyx’n’Alex (suggest a HipHop name for the duo?) managed to coordinate three events into a one week visit.
The wonderful staff of Derry Central Library, including Eugene Martin and Trisha were on hand, as well as Liz Canning of Booktrust, Hannah Pegg and Caroline Wright of BookedUp. Poor things, they had to sit through my Event (it’s a thing!) twice as classes of Yr8 kids from four different schools were brought in to hear all about Joshua, my visits to the land of the Maya as a teenager, etc. A spectacular lunch of fresh sandwiches and delicious traybakes was on hand to entertain us all. I was particularly impressed at the reach of the Booktrust when two ladies from the regional Education Boards were brought in, and then at the end, a TV crew from the BBC! Trisha, Liz and I then dashed off to talk to local BBC station Radio Foyle before I was whisked off to Bangor by Scholastic Book Fairs dynamo Jenny Duncan.
Where, in Bangor, I dined in slap-up style with established authors like Gillian Cross, Paul Dowswell, Geraldine McCaughrean, as well as leading lights of the UK Youth Libraries Group, Joy Court, Margaret Pemberton and Lesley Martin. And another newish author, Keren David…who also writes about a teenage boy.
Now that, for the record, is a Very Exciting Author Day. You have to write something pretty darn amazing on a writing day to match that.
The following day was a one-day conference, another first, the Youth Libraries Group in Northern Ireland. I was joined in a two-handed event by Keren David, author of two deliciousy angsty teen-boy novels, When I Was Joe and the sequel, Almost True. I’d spent the previous Friday and Saturday immersed in the world of Keren’s lead character Tyler, a 14-year old whose family life is hit by a bolt of lightning when he’s forced into the Witness Protection Scheme. So it was a very happy hour indeed that I spent discussing Tyler and Joshua with Keren, lead by Joy Court of YLG. I suspect the convivial atmosphere that Joy succeeded in encouraging may have led to some revelations that I didn’t plan to make, but hey-ho. I’m sure they won’t go further than the gathered audience of librarians…
Tanja Jennings and Wayne Mills at KLQ Northern Ireland, 2010d
The conference was no sooner drawing to a close when Carol Martin of Scholastic Book Fairs popped me into a car and it was off to Belfast for a whirlwind tour of schools and the Northern Ireland heat of the Kids Lit Quiz.
Carol and I achieved an unprecedented level of book sales at Victoria College in Belfast when Carol unveiled a stash of now-rare, brand new neon sleeved copies of Invisible City and Zero Moment. I’ve spotted Ice Shock with the neon sleeve in shops, but mainly the PVC sleeved versions of the books are now out of stock. So the youngsters fair jumped on the books that carol brought along. I even had a couple of kids asking for signed, lined and dated copies to sell on ebay. ‘After I’ve read it’, they assured me…
At the KLQ, Wellington College, Belfast, was throwing a birthday party for the event’s 5th anniversary. Students of the school played songs from famous children’s movies (The Little Mermaid, Oliver), there was cake and balloons. And Coleraine High School won the regional heat, so go on to the UK Lids Lit Quiz Final in Oxford!
On the Friday morning I’d been prepared for a lie-in or a walk around town, but at the last minute Jenny Duncan pulled one last school visit out of the bag – Fort Hill Primary School in Lisburn. What enthusiatic Joshua readers they turned out to be! We had to finish the event a little earlier than usual so that I could sign all the Joshua books that the students had snapped up. It turns out to be a devastating combination – the Scholastic Book Fair+author event! (schools get a 60% commission for books sold, redeemable against books/teaching materials – pretty good deal huh?
MG with girls from Victoria College, Belfast
The week I spent in Northern Ireland was a fascinating glimpse into a part of the UK with a different state education system (post-11 selection on academic grounds), and a history of sectarianism that still creeps into everyday conversation. It’s not so much that you see evidence of the Catholic/Protestant divide everywhere (you do, it’s in all the language, there are Catholic and Protestant parts of town), but that the idea that people can talk openly about differences between people; as in, they can acknowledge it frankly in conversation and in their societal structures.
After all the years I’ve as a school governor when I’ve been immersed in the often politically correct environment of education, it’s actually pretty refreshing. Or maybe that is a naive view…
If you watch this video from Teacher’s TV you’ll see my shock and delight that I was able to announce TWO winners. And that’s from a very strong shortlist! It was a joy to be able to see the work that all the honour list of librarians has put into the ‘Learning Resource Centres’ in their schools. I quite envied the kids at Kevin Sheehan’s school in Offerton, Stockport, who got to enjoy, amongst many other activities, a Doctor Who theme day.
Then it was on to St. Gregory the Great School, Oxford, where a House competition was run to find the best school poet for National Poetry Day. Four talented young poets stood up to represent their houses before a packed hall at lunchtime. The brilliant Raymond Pelakamoyo won for Benedict House with a poem about Home that brough the house down. (You can watch the video of Raymond Pelakamoyo below or on Youtube)
Huzzah and thank goodness! For those of us who carry resentment that Jorge Luis Borges and Graham Greene were never given their due recognition by the Nobel Committee, Mario Vargas Llosa was another thorn in our side. Now he’s won! Now he is officially the literary equal of his former friend and subject of his doctoral thesis (until he punched him in the face in Mexico City), Gabriel Garcia Marquez!
MG fangirls Mario Vargas Llosa at Oxford Literary Festival 2009
I’ll confess that I have yet to finish the two books that are considered to be Vargas Llosa’s greatest contributions to the American Novel.
The Green House
The Feast of the Goat
And I haven’t yet read Conversations in the Cathedral, which Vargas Llosa told an audience at the 2009 Oxford Literary festival, was his own favourite. Or The War at the End of the World.
But! I have read and loved The Time of the Hero, Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter, Captain Pantoja and the Special Service, Who Killed Palomino Molero, The Storyteller, The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta and The Bad Girl.
Readers who know their onions are now nodding and thinking, yes, she’s a lightweight, only read the shorter, more entertaining novels. That’s what makes Vargas Llosa such a genius and such a worthy winner!Unlike most Nobel winners he can write dense politico historical epics, comedy, thrillers and murder mysteries. As the guy who announced the Nobel said, Vargas Llosa is a STORYTELLER.
He can write ANYTHING and make it awesome.
If you haven’t read anything by him, start with Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter. And yet again, thanks to Alan Hoyle, former boyfriend of my mother’s for giving me this book for honeymoon reading over 20 years ago and introducing me to your literary hero and now mine.
