Scarlett Thomas at Chandlings

On the afternoon of 12th September, 100 excited year 5 & 6 pupils piled into the Lantern Hall at Chandlings School to be greeted by acclaimed author Scarlett Thomas.

After a brief introduction by librarian, Elspeth Greig, and our very own Sarah from Mostly Books, Scarlett took to the floor.

After starting off with an introduction to all things magic and the characters in her new book Dragon's Green, Scarlett soon whipped the children into a frenzy when she started asking them questions such as whether they had magical powers, what those powers were and whether they would take the place of a friend who was going to be eaten by a dragon(!).

Scarlett introduced all of the Kharakters that exist in Dragon's Green and asked

the children to nominate one of their teachers to go up to the front to be analysed!!  Mr Hancock was the (un)lucky volunteer and after a number of questions were answered by the children (our favourite being 'Is Mr Hancock nice or scary?'), it was decided that he was a Bard with a smattering of Witch (yes, it's true, boys & men can be witches too).* 

The children were then asked a bunch of questions about themselves and the answers helped Scarlett identify five pairs of pupils to come to the front of the hall.  Based on the answers that they were given, each pair was aligned to one of the five main characters in Dragon's Green: Euphemia Sixten Bookend Truelove (otherwise known as Effie), Maximilian Underwood, Wolf Reed, Alexa Bottle (known as Lexy) & Raven Wilde.  All 10 children were given magic crystals to take away with them as a reminder of everything that Scarlett had talked about.

When Scarlett opened the floor for questions, the children interrogated her on a range of topics including the stories, the process of writing and what made Scarlett become an author. 

 After the talk was finished, a long queue formed for the children to meet the author and to give them the opportunity to have their book signed. 

It was a brilliant afternoon and a great way for the pupils at Chandlings to start their new school year.  A huge thank you to Scarlett and the team at Chandlings for making it such a great success.

Dragon's Green by Scarlett Thomas was published in paperback on 7th September.  

* If you would like to find out which Kharakter you are, you can take a quiz on the WorldQuake website (click here to go to the quiz).

Cute Emergency: Hero Pup with Megan Rix

This week, we took animal-adventure author Megan Rix into two schools in Abingdon - as well as an extra special guest who went down well with all the children...

Children from Thomas Reade Primary School and Chandlings School listened as Megan described her experiences training assistance dogs, and how she used this to tell her stories of animals performing incredible feats of bravery and heroics during times of conflict.

Her latest book, 'Hero Pup', tells the story of a young boy Joe and a puppy, Patch. Joe and his Dad have always wanted a dog, but when Joe's father dies, he doesn't think he will ever have one. But when Joe meets Patch at Helper Dogs, Joe has the opportunity to train Patch to make him a useful companion to someone in need. And as their relationship develops, Joe starts to overcome his feelings of gried in what is a very moving but uplifting story.


The special guest was a retired guide-dog called Dru, brought to the school by her owner Richard. Part Labrador Retriever, part Golden Retriever, 12 year old Dru had actually been a breeding dog for other guide dogs, having had 25 puppies, most of which had gone on to become guide dogs.

Megan explained how she came to be a writer - including her own experiences of being off school with whooping cough for a whole term. Having been at the bottom of her class and not very interested in reading, she had nothing to do but read - with her mum bringing books from the library, and her voraciously reading everything she could get her hands on in the house ((including books she probably wasn't supposed to read!). When she returned to school, she found herself at the top of the class - a great testament to the power of reading for pleasure!  

The children had plenty of questions about her books, but also about her own dogs - and of course Dru.

She also read to the children from Hero Pup (published this week) and signed copies for children who queued up to meet Megan and Dru...

Our thanks to Megan for a truly heartwarming talk (and plenty of cute pictures of animals!), Puffin for setting the whole thing up, the children who behaved impeccably...and of course, we took the opportunity to find out more about what makes Megan tick as an author...

Five questions with . . . Megan Rix's writing life

1.  What are you working on at the moment?
I’m currently working on a World War I-era tale involving a circus dog and a young elephant – the dog attempts to reunite the young elephant with its mother. During World War I a lot of elephants were taken from zoos and circuses and ended up doing heavy lifting work around the country, and the older elephant is logging in the Lake District. I typically think and plan the book for a month before writing, but this one is taking a bit longer.

2.   What is the best writing tip you’ve ever been given?
Don’t stop. You must continue to write, because as you practice you cannot help but get better. Don’t instantly think that you’ll be good, and don’t limit yourself to one kind of writing, because you don’t know how your style will evolve.

3.   What’s the best thing and the worst thing about being a children’s writer?
The best thing is the sheer variety of writing that you can do – for different ages, styles, etc. You have total freedom to set books where you like, when you like. If you write as an adult author, you tend to get stuck with a particular genre (such as crime) but you are really not as limited as that when you are a children’s author. Worst thing – I can’t really think of one!

4.   Do you have a writer’s survival kit, eg a place, thing or snack essential before you can start work?
Years ago, when I was writing books under my real name (Ruth Symes) I would have said yes, I would prepare to write by lighting some incence sticks, etc. But now, and particularly since I’ve owned and trained dogs, I tend to sit on my bed writing with the dogs asleep next to me. One thing I do use is a marvellous digital pen. This lets me write in longhand as if with a traditional pen, but then I plug the pen into my laptop and everything is downloaded as text without having to retype it.

(As regards the dogs, I now just have to say ‘work time’ and they immediately trot upstairs to the bed!)

5.   What was your biggest breakthrough?
It sort of relates to what I mentioned earlier about writing tips – the whole ‘Megan Rix’ pseudonym came about because (initially) I wanted to write about things that had actually happened to me and my family – and to protect my privacy. But out of that came stories about animals, and I changed my style of storytelling. Up until then I had always written in quite a ‘realistic’ style, but with Megan Rix I was able to develop an ‘omnipotent viewpoint’ style. I had never had the confidence before, because at school they squashed you if you tried to use this. It was almost like “The omnipotent viewpoint? Do you consider yourself to be God?”!

BBC Radio Oxford Afternoon Bookclub for March - and a Face Like Glass

Following on from World Book Day last week, here are two sessions on the BBC Oxford Afternoon show - the first is the regular monthly afternoon bookgroup that took place today (Monday March 11 - and which will be on BBC iPlayer for the next 7 days).

So get yourself a hot beverage, and indulge yourself in some bookish discussions...

Together with Nigel French of Coles Bookshop, we discussed some new titles - including Katherine Rundell's 'Rooftoppers' and John Ashdown-Hill's book 'The Last Days of Richard III' as well as discussing 'Red Bones' by Ann Cleeves, the book which inspired 'Shetland'.

Click on the link here and fast forward to approximately 1 hour and 9 minutes (or slightly earlier if you fancy a bit of Belinda Carlisle). The full list of books discussed can be found here.

On World Book Day itself we did an event with Frances Hardinge at Chandlings School - here are some of the children with copies of Frances' books:

Click to listen here and fast forward to approximately 2 hours 9 minutes. It's a fascinating interview with an author who was shaped by books, was addicted to books and stories from an early age, and can't imagine a life not writing...