The Write Club and a little bit of Witherstone

What an honour to have been invited to read an extract from Witherstone for the Write Club discussion this evening!

The podcast was, as ever, a wonderfully diverse discussion, including the writers' favourite books as younger readers, and although it's hard to choose just one from all the fabulous alternative universes I inhabited every day of my childhood (and still do, ha ha), my favourite was probably Tom's Midnight Garden - I loved it so much I read it into adulthood... and those who know me well know just how much I love the story of Tom and Hatty in that magical garden....

Write Club said some very kind things about Witherstone, and discussed the importance of not talking down to children when writing, discussed the wonderful Narnia books, and also discussed another inviting pile of new things to read over Christmas. It's a great group, easy-going and full of enthusiasm for writing and for reading, their podcasts are time delightfully well spent for readers and writers. 

Something exciting happening in the ether...

Well there's something exciting brewing over the next few weeks, and it involves writing and books and podcasts and sunshine and quite alot of rather gorgeous scenery...

Which Book has Saved Your Life?

Today's The Guardian Childrens' Books is asking authors and teenagers to share the books that saved their lives for Blue Monday #Gdnbluemonday. I tweeted a quick reply - my choice being instantaneous - but it got me thinking about how a book can do that. Save your life.

We talk about the vital importance of reading, of libraries, and we know reading is absolutely vital for literacy (of course), but also for economics, for emotional and physical well-being, and so on, yet sometimes it hits home, you feel it, and you remember that reading really can save your life.

Here's why my choice is Tom's Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce. 

Amazon link

As a child, Tom's Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce was the first book I'd ever read which gave me a very real escape into another world: the loneliness of both Tom and Hatty, the sense that neither home nor adults were a safe or trustworthy place for either of them; the deep need for a place they were free to be themselves in, and where they could find true friendship – to the extent that time and reality itself could somehow be changed by desire, by love - were not things I could articulate at the time I first read it. But that book offered me a deep and meaningful escape into what felt on a subliminal level to be a very real and accessible place where I felt safe, where new possibilities existed, where time and space and reality could change. This book saved my life.

I continued to read it right through my teens too, and its impact on my early life not only directly influenced my lifelong avid reading but led into my urge to write too.

Which book saved your life?

~

rather thrilled

Indeed I am rather thrilled to have been asked to run a Shared Reading "Get into Reading" style group in a Lancashire Library I'm rather familiar with. Can't wait, and am ordering myself a copy of A Little, Aloud to share stories and poems with the group.

Love reading, me, and shared reading is a subtle but surprisingly profound way for people to find inspiration, support, and a little bit of themselves along the way, just through listening to someone telling them a story and then talking about it as a group. Amazing.

Yes, yes, yes!!! Reading for Pleasure Campaign

The Society of Authors are campaigning to encourage reading for pleasure in schools and have written to Schools Minister, Nick Gibb, making recommendations regarding school libraries, teacher training and author visits, and to request a meeting to discuss practical strategies to further the Government response to the Henley Review and Ofsted’s Moving English Forward.

In their letter to Nick Gibb, they make the following three recommendations:

1. Primary and secondary schools should be required by law to have a school library and a trained librarian.
2. Teachers, in all stages of their careers, should be supported through a range of initiatives (detailed in the letter) to inspire a love of reading for pleasure in their pupils.
3. Schools’ use of author visits and longer residencies should be accredited by Ofsted.

Click here to read the letter in full.

They've got my support, yes yes yes!

See the Reading for Pleasure Campaign - Society of Authors for more information.