NEVERMORE

NEVERMORE, my new novel for readers of about 9+, is now published by Orion Children’s Books, beautifully illustrated by Ian Benfold Haywood. Ian’s website is at www.benfoldhaywood.co.uk

AUTHOR OF THE MONTH

I'm Author of the Month for January at the Orion website, interviewed by Danuta Kean: www.orionbooks.co.uk/authors

CATCALL

CATCALL won the Silver Medal in the 9-11 category of the Nestle Children’s Book Prize, presented at the British Library in December. It is also shortlisted for the Lincolnshire Young People’s Book Award and longlisted for two other regional prizes.

COSTA BOOK AWARDS – 3-minute film

SET IN STONE was one of five category winners in the Costa Book Awards last year. Short films were made of each of the five authors, to be shown at the presentation, and these can now be viewed at http://youtube.com/user/costabookawards. It felt most peculiar at the ceremony to have the whole glittering assembly (Doris Lessing was at the next table) watching me in my kitchen. But Charles Turley and his crew did an excellent job of filming. It took almost a whole day’s filming to produce three minutes of film. After spending some time at my house and in my writing hut and garden, we all went off to the studio of local stonemason Bernard Johnson. The close-ups of him at work are the best part of the film.

SET IN STONE

SET IN STONE, which is now published in both young adult and adult editions (with identical text) in the UK, is to appear in France this year as an adult novel, titled DE PIERRE ET DE CENDRES. It will also be published in Romania.

COMING SOON

My first picture book! With delightful illustrations by Catherine Rayner, POSY will be published in April, by Orchard.

Catherine Rayner’s website will be ready soon: www.catherinerayner.co.uk/

COMING SOON

FLIGHTSEND is to be reissued by David Fickling Books, published in April. More details then.

CHILDREN’S BOOKS OF 2007

Each December, the book scout John McLay, who now organises the Bath Festival of Children’s Literature, invites authors, editors, reviewers, booksellers, and other people in the children’s book world, to comment on two of their favourite books of that year. Here are my two:

Two unusual novels for teenagers have impressed me this year. Mary Hoffman's THE FALCONER'S KNOT is a cleverly-crafted murder mystery set in Umbria, full of intriguing detail of daily life in a medieval convent and friary, women's roles, painting techniques and pigment production. The large cast of characters is deftly handled, and tensions mount as the murders multiply. Equally original, Michael Lawrence's THE UNDERWOOD SEE completes a trilogy in which teenagers Naia and Alaric discover other versions of the "realities" they respectively inhabit. Alaric's mother is faced with a fifty-fifty chance of surviving an accident: in Alaric's world, she dies; in Naia's, she survives. Things become ever more complicated as the trilogy proceeds and "realities" multiply. Science fiction? Fantasy? Hard to categorise, especially as the stories are so firmly rooted in a very specific place, with family roots reaching deep into the past. Clever, complex and compelling.

TOO GOOD TO MISS

Recently, The Observer invited readers to nominate books they thought hadn’t received enough recognition. Without hesitation, I chose FOXES’ OVEN, by Michael de Larrabeiti, a magnificent novel which has so far appeared only in hardback. It tells the wartime story of Becky, evacuated to relatives near Arundel. Michael de Larrabeiti’s ability to enter into the mind of an adolescent girl is astonishing, and the story utterly engrossing, but above all it’s the quality of the writing and the evocation of countryside and period which make it so admirable. It’s a book I shall return to with renewed enjoyment.

Please, someone, publish this outstanding novel in paperback, so that it can reach all those readers who’d love it as much as I do!

HERE AND THERE

Bookings for 2008 include a Dorset Readers’ conference in March, Birmingham Young Readers’ Festival in May, the Edinburgh Book Festival in August, and a day conference for the Oxford Children’s Book Group in October. I’ll also be at the Society of Authors’ Conference in Cambridge in September, and will be tutoring an Arvon course on Writing for Teenagers at Lumb Bank, near Hebden Bridge. My co-tutor for the course will be Nick Manns, with Melvin Burgess as guest speaker.

If you’re interested in an Arvon course, you can find out more from ww.arvonfoundation.org

This page last updated 11 January, 2008