Gill Lewis, author of the award-winning Sky Hawk and White Dolphin tells us about the inspiration behind her extraordinarily moving new book Scarlet Ibis. What’s the story behind a book? Where does the inspiration come from? For Sky Hawk , White Dolphin and Moon Bear , I have a clear idea where the stories came from and what inspired them. With Scarlet Ibis , I’m […]
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To celebrate Mother’s Day, an ode to mums by Mina May, illustrator extraordinaire of the Wendy Quill series Wendy Quill is a Crocodile’s Bottom , Wendy Quill Tries to Grow a Pet and Wendy Quill is Full Up of Wrong (out July 2014), which she creates with her own mum, author Wendy Meddour. This is me when I was ten: the year I became an illustrator with Oxford University Press. I’ve wanted to be an […]
Read moreWriter and lexicographer John Ayto gives us a glimpse into The Oxford School Dictionary of Word Origins , a fascinating insight into words and where they came from… Have you got a tabby cat? Brown or grey with dark stripes? If you have, do you know why it’s called a tabby? If not, you could guess a thousand times and never […]
Read moreJulia Lee tells us about her love of atmospheric houses that feature in books she has enjoyed throughout her life, and which have helped inspire one of the key locations in her debut children’s novel, The Mysterious Misadventures of Clemency Wrigglesworth . It was one of the great disappointments of my childhood that I didn’t live in a house like Green […]
Read moreIt’s hard to believe that four and a half years have shot by since Frozen in Time was first published in January 2009. For its launch I dressed up in a 50s style frock and convinced my family to clothe themselves similarly (the menfolk objected but the frocks didn’t look bad), hired a Wurlitzer jukebox and got some […]
Read moreCAN YOU MOVE THINGS AROUND JUST WITH YOUR MIND? DO ALI SPARKES’ FUN QUIZ AND FIND OUT… A NEW telekinetic is in town! The thrilling adventures of Tyrone Lewis are out now in Ali Sparkes ’ new summer must read, Out of this World . Shapeshifter fans will have met Tyrone in the last two books of the Shapeshifter series , when he shows up […]
Read moreI wasn’t supposed to be a writer. I was supposed to be an iconic artist or a world-famous DJ spinning the wheels of steel in front of a crazy festival crowd. Writing was a complete accident. It wasn’t an accident that I learned to actually write – we all have to do that. It was […]
Read moreHi! And thank you for asking us to join you on this blog. So here we are: the mother/daughter team behind the Wendy Quill books – working EXTREMELY hard. Mina May is slaving away on her iPad whilst I am doing VERY IMPORTANT writerly work: You see, because Mina May is only eleven, people are always asking […]
Read moreMy stories are a bit like a fairy with bunions. They are fantasy but they have their feet in the real world. What I really love is making startling, spooky or paranormal things happen in the ‘real’ world that we all know and recognize. When I started out with Dax Jones in the very first […]
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Historical fiction author Marie-Louise Jensen introduces us to the hidden world of smuggling – the backdrop to her latest novel Smuggler’s Kiss. Isabelle is rescued from drowning by the crew of a notorious smuggling ship, and finds herself in a world of adventure, romance, and a thrilling fight for justice. Researching smuggling is a tortuous […]
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