Calmer, Easier, Happier Screen Time with Noël Janis-Norton

In the past she's come to Abingdon and given fantastic advice on parenting and homework. But we are excited to welcome back Noël Janis-Norton, who is coming to John Mason School to talk about children and ‘Screen Time’.

The most frequent question Noël is asked is how to limit and manage screen time. Parents know their children become aggressive and stressed after prolonged time on an electronic device - whether phone, XBox or TV - and they know that it limits their child's willingness to do other activities - yet they struggle to find ways to deal with it.

Noël is a real inspiration and has just so much wisdom and experience in dealing with children of all ages. She will be at John Mason School on Thursday, May 12 at 6pm to discuss her proven techniques to help parents in this complex area.

In 'Calmer, Easier, Happier Screen Time' she uses the latest scientific research to show just how addictive the digital world can be for the developing brain. She'll also use calmer, easier, happier techniques to help parents wean their children and teenagers away from their electronic devices, to limit and guide their screen time in a positive way and, feel parents are more in charge of this challenging area of modern life.

This event is free, but space is limited - so please email us to reserve a place if you want to come. For anyone who has seen Noël speak before, she's a quietly engaging and inspiring speaker. 

And if you know anyone who you feel would benefit from practical advice – let them know!

To Kepe a Hufband Faithfull - Five Questions with Ruth Warburton, author of Witch Finder

Last Thursday, we took YA author Ruth Warburton to John Mason School in our first event of 2014.

About 150 children listened to Ruth tell the story of how she came to write her Winter Trilogy, and read from her latest book 'Witch Finder'.

The series tells the story of Anna, whose life changes forever when she moves to the small town of Winter and events conspire to lead her - unwittingly and inexorably - to the discovery that she is a witch.

The books are a fabulous combination of adventure and romance - but with the trilogy at an end, Ruth has now taken her readers back a century or so to Victorian London and an altogether darker tale told in 'Witch Finder'. The story features the fearsome brotherhood of the Malleus Maleficorum, dedicated to hunting witches in the name of justice in Victorian London.

Ruth explained to her audience about the background to her books, the reality of witch hunts in the 15th and 16th century, and the religious-backed groups that set the laws for witch trials - and hunted down witches.

In researching her books, and to get inspiration for the spells that her characters use, Ruth has had to delve into some very old books indeed, getting to grips with anglo-saxon spellbooks, spells - and spelling.

As she explained, there was no real spelling 'standards' back then - if people could basically understand what you wrote, then words could be spelled in many different ways. There were also more characters in our alphabet. For example, the 'thorn' (written as Þ) was our 'th' sound, descended from the runic alphabet. This letter only slowly got replaced, often being substituted by 'y' when the printing press arrived (hence 'ye olde').

Ruth read from her books, and there were a lot of questions from the students, including my personal favourite 'if you were to write your books again, what would you change?' (the answer: I couldn't bring myself to rewrite my books, so nothing!).

A big thank you to Ruth and her publisher Hodder for travelling up from London for the event, and to John Mason School for being such great hosts. We had a chance to have a chat afterwards and find out a little bit about Ruth's writing life...

Five Questions with...Ruth Warburton's Writing Life

1.    What are you working on at the moment?

I’m currently editing the sequel to Witch Finder (Witch Hunt). I’m just going through editing changes with my editor. It’s quite enjoyable, a bit like homework! Once that is over, I’ve got a new idea which I’m going to be working on.

2.    What is the best writing tip you’ve ever been given?

Almost everyone experiences a dip at 30,000 words. Lots of writers give up at this point. The reality is that, with a new idea, the momentum carries you through, and those first 30,000 words get you set up. You need to take stock, appreciate that it’s a natural lull and PUSH ON THROUGH!

3.    What’s the best thing and the worst thing about being a children’s writer?

The best thing is that children’s writing is cross-genre. With adults, there’s a lot of pigeonholing, and someone who reads (for example) fantasy might never read crime. Kids don’t read like that, they will usually be quite happy to read different genres. The worst thing is that there is less and less coverage for children’s books across the media and broadsheets. It’s a shame.

4.    Do you have a writer’s survival kit, eg a place, thing, thing or snack essential before you can start work?

A proper chair! I used to write on the sofa, or curled up in bed, but I gave myself back problems. I was given some advice that, when you get your advance, go out and buy a proper chair – it’s great advice! I went out and bought myself the ugliest office chair, but it’s really helped.

5.    What was your biggest breakthrough?
The decision to write for children. I’d always written for adults, but as I work in that world (publicity for a large publisher) I didn’t think I could possibly show my writing to my fellow professionals, particularly if they had turned round and rejected me! Then I had an idea for a young adult book, and when I thought about who to send it to, I thought – I don’t know anyone, they're all completely different people!

Reports of 'Unrest' at local schools: Michelle Harrison in Abingdon

Michelle Harrison always starts off school talks 'fessing up about the fact that she writes fairy books. This may or may illicit a chuckle or two from some of the boys in the audience, but, after explaining that her fairies are not of the 'pink' variety, but of an altogether darker hue, she goes on to talk about the dark side of myths and legends, and our need to be frightened. From then on, things get a lot scarier and there isn't much chuckling at all...

On Friday we welcomed Michelle to Abingdon to talk about her new young adult novel Unrest (which we reviewed here)

Over lunch, Michelle spoke to pupils from Larkmead and St Helen and St Katharine. The first extract she read involves the protagonist, Elliot, and a seriously scary episode of 'sleep paralysis', something that is truly terrifying if it happens to you, and for which Michelle got the idea from the experiences of her sister.

(honestly, sleep paralysis sounds horrible, and if you want to put yourself in the mood for what Elliot goes through in the book, take a look at this Guardian article here - I also found it very interesting that great works of art have resulted from the experience).

Michelle explained that she never always wanted to be a writer, and instead studied as an illustrator. But after starting with short stories in her teens - and with her love of the supernatural and horror - the writing slowly took over.

It took her four years to get an agent, and a further year to get a publisher to take her first book, so she certainly served her apprenticeship in her route to being published. In fact, talking of horror, she did make the process of editing (and in particular, copy editing) sound particularly awful - but the result is definitely been worth it.

In the afternoon we zoomed round the corner to John Mason School.

Here - after talking to students and giving another reading from the book - Michelle took questions about film rights, whether she would ever write a sequel, and a very involved question about 'The Exorcist'...

Thanks very much to Michelle, particularly as it was the final day of a gruelling tour around the UK.

 

Unrest deserves to do very well, and come Monday, Michelle has perhaps the most terrifying experience that any author can face, that of the blank sheet of paper - as she begins her next book. We attempted to find out a little bit more...

Five Question With...Michelle Harrison's Writing Life

1.    What are you working on at the moment? 

I'm about to start another teen novel (no title yet!) but this time telling a story from the girl's point of view. It's going to be a contemporary, very creepy tale in the same sort genre as Unrest.

2.    What is the best writing tip you’ve ever been given? 

Get it written, get it right. Can't remember who said that, but what it means is: get it down on paper first and then get it 'right' afterwards.

3.    What’s the best thing and the worst thing about being a children’s writer?

The best thing about being a children's writer is that you get to make things up all day long. The worst thing is anything to do with paperwork (e.g. accounts) - boring!

4.    Do you have a writer’s survival kit, eg a place, thing of snack essential before you can start work? 

Millions of cups of tea! No, I can pretty much write anywhere, but prefer to write on my laptop - so basically as long as I have my laptop to write on, that's fine. However, cutting off the Internet is pretty much essential!

5.    What was your biggest breakthrough?

Getting an agent without a doubt. Once I got an agent, everything started to happen.

Unrest by Michelle Harrison - unsettling, unnerving...and coming to Abingdon

When I was a teenager I loved ghost stories, and the scarier the better. As well as lots of 'true life' ghost books (Reader's Digest Book of the Unknown is one that springs to mind) I devoured every collection of ghost stories I could get my hands on, and this rich diet of the undead brought me to the attention of my English teacher, who - after a harmless walk around the school ended up with me describing trees as 'twisted victims of Satan' - wrote 'See Me' in big red pen, and at that point we both decided to 'widen' my range of reading...

Anyway - a chilling, well-written ghost story for teens is always welcome at Mostly Books, and Unrest by Michelle Harrison is simply superb. We know Michelle very well for her '13 Treasures' series of books, which are written for slightly younger readers. There are plenty of scares and shocks in these 'dark fairy' books which served as a kind of reboot of the fairy genre - but in Unrest, Michelle has gone off into much darker territory, entirely appropriate for an older audience - one that would have grown up on Michelle's twisted fairies...

Unrest is the story of Elliot, a seventeen-year-old who feels and sees strange things when he falls asleep. His doctor tells him it is sleep paralysis and hallucinations as a result of an accident but Elliot thinks he is leaving his body when he sleeps - and also seeing a ghost. In pursuit of the truth, Elliot gets a job at the (supposedly) haunted museum, where he meets not only the enigmatic Ophelia, but also someone (or something) far more sinister. Elliot begins to suspect it is the ghost of a boy who died 100 years before, and as events take an increasing horrifying turn, there is a race to discover the truth.

Julia at Mostly Books read this as soon as the proof came in, in a single sitting. She said "this is a genuinely chilling and totally gripping ghost story, and - with Elliot's nightitime experiences and visions - it shares elements of, say, The Sixth Sense in terms of the atmosphere it creates. There's a particularly scary night-time sleepwalking scene that is *definitely* not for the faint-hearted, the book grips (and shocks) from the start, and doesn't really let you you go to the gruesome (and very unexpected) twist at the end. I loved it".

So - how chuffed are we that we are welcoming Michelle to Abingdon next Friday (May 4) and taking her into two Abingdon schools? First up is a joint event with Larkmead School and St Helen & St Katharine at midday, then onto John Mason School in the afternoon.

Having been a editorial assistant in children's publishing, and even a bookseller (how cool is that?) Michelle now writes full time and lives in Oxfordshire.

If you are lucky enough to hear her talk, you'll be able to get copies of her book - and get them signed - on the day. But if not, we will have signed copies, and you can pre-order them from us at the shop...

And if you would still like to know more about Michelle and the book, take a look at the trailer...

A master class in dealing with the undead

If you ever felt you needed to be much better informed in how to deal with an unexpected rising from the undead, you could've been in no better place than Abingdon School on Wednesday September 14, in the company of children’s author, Charlie Higson.

There is a suspicion that all the children who are avid readers of his books were already several steps ahead and knew that zombies don’t like sunlight and in a tight spot the bit to go for is the brain.

In a whistle-stop tour of despatching the undead, Charlie gave enthusiastic demonstrations of beheading, and stakes through the heart (good against vampires), before describing how popular entertainment in the Victorian era involved electricity and trying to revive recently demised corpses. Vampires were also the stars of the Victorian stage as people flocked to pay to be terrified.

Charlie led an enthralled audience in two sessions to 600 pupils from 12 schools across Oxfordshire, through the long tradition of stories to scare yourself stupid – weaving strands that can be traced back to the romantic poets.

What might have been new to the audience is that scare-the-hell-out-of-you stories are now considered classics when originally all they were out to do was to shock you. He advised everyone to go and read Bram Stoker’s ‘Dracula’.

Charlie’s talk was also a romp through the origins of some classic literature – for example, did you know that the image of a modern vampire is very much based on ‘mad, bad and dangerous to know’ poet Lord Byron?

Now it all makes sense that they are beautiful, charismatic and swish about in capes and lordly robes.

Zombies are, however, a different matter. Zombies are dirty, smelly, shuffling about and grunting. Charlie writes about zombies, so zombies were very much the subject of the day – as was how you manage to get the correct level of terror, gore, body bits and flesh eating when your audience is children.

The premise of his horror action stories is that a disease has struck the planet and has killed everyone over the age of 14 – and those not killed outright have been turned into zombies. So all the children must fight for their survival while also trying not to get eaten.

Charlie Higson relishes the fact that with his ‘The Enemy’ series, he is taking on the sky-high challenge of making reading as compelling as watching television or playing computer games.

When he set out to write a new series for kids he went right back to the stories that really gripped him as a boy – setting himself the challenge to make a story that packed enough punch that children would remember it for life. And here are some suitable exercised fans from John Mason School:

His starting point was that if it’s not giving your children nightmares it’s not working, so there was much sympathy in the room for Charlie’s ten-year-old son. We heard of his sweat-drenched night terrors (although it was possibly his own fault for night after night telling his horror-writing father ‘oh that’s not scary’).

His son’s sacrifices are, however, benefiting legions of teenage boys and girls who are now craving their next fix of Higson-induced zombie terror. The latest – ‘The Fear’, is out today (Sep 15):

So should you be recommending all this horror to your children?

Charlie Higson is probably still best-known to adults for his comedy writing. His long apprenticeship as a writer, including writing for television, plus some early (really nasty) adult horror means his books are very well written.

He told the audience he had written six full-length novels as a teenage boy, long before he was to make his living as a writer. He takes a whole year to write one of his children’s books – from initial draft to polishing, looking at the plot, the action and meticulously upping the body count, or deleting a character. The result is a roller-coaster thriller, full of strong character (including strong girl characters) and a seamless, gripping story, full of unexpected jolts and great moments.

Remember – if they do mean your children have nightmares you can be reassured they are in the long tradition of classic storytelling.

Of course if you’ve got a younger one, or a more sensitive one, Charlie Higson made his name as a children’s writer with his ‘Young Bond’ series – all about James Bond at school. Again, suitable from age nine upwards, it is the quality of the writing which means these will certainly become classics and they are readable for children right through their teens.

We hope Charlie Higson won’t have to resort to rising from his grave to grab a little piece of immortality.

We have signed copies in stock – while they last!

Charlie performed heroically over the course of six hours, and a huge thank you to him and Abingdon School for hosting the event so well. Charlie also very generously conducted a number of interviews - Gaskella has a fantastic write-up of the event over on her book blog - but we also were able to get a glimpse into the writing life of Charlie Higson...

Five questions with . . . Charlie Higson's writing life
Charlie Higson is the author of the ‘Young Bond’ series and now into the third of ‘The Enemy’ trilogy about a world where everyone over the age of 14 has either been wiped out by a plague. Those adults who weren’t killed outright were turned into zombies and are now after all the children as a source of fresh food.

1.    What are you working on at the moment?
I am about one-third of the way through the follow up to ‘The Fear’. Originally it was going to be three books and then my publisher, Puffin, said make it five and now we’re up to it being seven.

Writing an ongoing series means that even when you think you’ve finished a book and you might think it’s time to break open the champagne or book a long holiday, in fact the next day you have to start on the next one. You have to keep the momentum up, because kids finish a book and they want to get on with the next one and they grow up quickly.

2.    What is the best writing tip you’ve ever been given?
My father said when I was a teenager ‘get yourself a proper job you can always do your writing in evenings and weekends’. Of course, as I was a teenager I completely ignored him. In fact I’ve never had a proper job. I make a living writing – although technically I suppose I have followed his advice because I treat it like going to work and keep the words coming. So I suppose I must have taken something on board.

3.    What’s the best thing and the worst thing about being a children’s writer?
The best thing is the feedback. Only yesterday I met a boy having his book signed who was about 14 and said ‘The Enemy’ was the first book he had ever finished. When you get feedback from parents, librarians, teachers saying how much kids want to read them and through reading them they then find out what fun reading is – that’s the best thing.

The worst thing is that I sort of always have to think about behaving myself and think I had better not say this or do that and that’s probably not my natural behaviour. When Anthony Horowitz started writing for children (when nobody paid very much attention to children’s writers) he often followed around Roald Dahl on school visits. Roald Dahl had a reputation of saying very inappropriate things and probably didn’t even like children very much. My adult novels are full of sex and violence, but as a children’s writer you have to be an ambassador. And news papers being what they are I know that if my trousers accidentally fell down it would be the end of my career.

4.    Do you have a writer’s survival kit, eg a place, thing or snack essential before you can start work?
I try not to be superstitious about it. If you say to yourself you can only write with a certain pen it can become a bit of an albatross. I would probably find it difficult to write without a computer – it does make life easier, but I can write almost anywhere, although it is easier at home.

5.    What was your biggest breakthrough?
The success of ‘Loadsmoney’ on Saturday Live, which I wrote with Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse, meant we were accepted as established comedy writers. People asked us to do stuff. It opened lots of doors and meant publishers were more interested as well. Publishers want a writer they can market – it’s a business and they want to sell books. And I saw the possibility that I could make a living as a writer.

The Awesome Andy Briggs

Andy Briggs uses the word "awesome" a lot. This is very appropriate. Andy hangs out a lot in Hollywood. He sometimes overtakes Beyoncé and walks past Steven Spielberg and on his way to work. He writes books, but he also writes for TV, films and scripts comic books. Stan Lee once phoned him up and offered him a job.

Andy Briggs IS awesome, and any one of the 300 hundred or so children at Larkmead and John Mason schools who spent an hour in his company yesterday during a series of incredible events would definitely agree. As one boy said on his way out at John Mason: "you sir are the most awesome author I have ever heard". 'Nuff said.

Andy was in town ostensibly to talk about his latest book "Tarzan: The Greystoke Legacy". I was already bowled over by this book - but Andy's talk was so much more than what Tarzan is about and how it came to be written.

Andy talks with more passion that I have ever heared about writing. He asks the kids "who here likes films?", "who here watches movies?", "who listens to songs?". All written by people like him: writers. And why stop there: let's include soap operas, sports commentary, video games and the sides of cereal boxes. Advertising, most of the Internet...and, yes, books. No writers = nothing to read, watch or be entertained by.

And then he makes the link between where his audience is now, and where he was at their age: broke, bored, but with an idea in his head which eventually spilled out as writing. It was compelling stuff. Even I wanted to get out a pen and start writing...

Then we were onto Tarzan. Andy approached the estate of Edgar Rice Burroughs with an idea to change Tarzan and bring him up-to-date. One trip to Burrough's preserved house (Tarzana, near Los Angeles) later, and Andy was the first person in 100 years to be given permission to change the origins of Tarzan.

As well as a précis of the story, he talked about preserving endangered species (via his work with EAZA's Great Ape campaign), gave a fantastic geography lesson on the sheer size of Africa (see how China and the US fit neatly in there, and look out for GB overlaying Madagascar)...

...before finishing up with an awesome jungle quiz to see how many people would survive - or more likely perish horribly - if forced to survive in the rainforest.

All that in under an hour, three times in a row, and signing books after as well. As I say...awesome.

(The only thing not quite so awesome was my lamentably bad photography, but hopefully you get the general idea).

Signed copies of Tarzan are now in Mostly Books, and I urge you to take a look. Written in a tradition of Rice Burroughs, Willard Price, Spiderman...and with a sprinkle of Hollywood glamour thrown in there as well, this is unashamed rip-roaring entertainment, and one written in the service of making a real difference to endangered species. As Andy says, soberingly, "there are 900 children in this school, but there are only 650 mountain gorillas left anywhere in the world. This is their last chance".

Me Bookseller, You Jane: the return of Tarzan...in Abingdon

In the days before running a bookshop, I spent a bit of time at the other end of the ‘paper supply chain’ – timber production. And not just any old timber, but tropical hardwood. I helped develop a system (still going strong) which tracked timber from the forest, proving (amongst other things) that the patio set you just bought from your local garden centre did indeed start life as a legally felled log – and definitely not from a shady illegal operation.

So when (ahead of two school events with him tomorrow) I started reading Andy Briggs’ Tarzan: The Greystoke Legacy I was - quickly, brutally, and in an utterly compelling way - plunged back into the world of illegal timber in the rainforests of Congo. Boy oh boy, is it an exciting read...here's a picture of Andy at the recent launch of the book at Scotia Books.

We have been involved in one or two franchise ‘reboots’ this year, and it seems to be an increasingly attractive thing for publishers to do: this year there has been Deaver’s Bond, Lustbader's Bourne and forthcoming attractions include Cottrell-Boyce’s “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” and Anthony Horrowitz’s Sherlock Holmes novel “House of Silk”. But rebooting Tarzan? It wasn't clear to me that that bringing Edgar Bice Burrough's creation back to life would work.

2012 is the one hundredth anniversary of the original Tarzan, and – like many people my age – I grew up with the tail end of the black and white Tarzan on Saturday morning telly, with Cheetah and Jane. However, I would be hard-pressed to tell you much about the characters and the stories, aside from swinging through the trees, thumping his chest and uttering that well-known roar.

But Tarzan on TV bore little resemblance to the original book, and Andy Briggs has sensibly gone back to Rice Burrough’s original tale, a book of surprising emotional depth (it's a great love story), and one which sits well with other science fiction writing around that time. Instead of (say) War of the Worlds, which extrapolated modern developments in warfare, Tarzan worked with ideas of identity, race and civilisation that are still very much relevant today.

Briggs stays very close to Burrough's original premise: of a boy adopted by a gorilla, who grows up to become a 'white ape' and Lord of the Jungle. Taught about the outside world by the mysterious D'Arnot, we first meet Tarzan dispatching (in a suitably savage way) three very nasty poachers, against an all-to-realistic backdrop of civil war and environmental destruction.

The main action though begins in an illegal logging camp. Jane Porter is the daughter of one of the loggers, a man who has fled America after losing almost everything of value to him - and when the camp is attacked and Jane disappears, it seems as though he will lost his daughter too. Jane has already been removed from her previous life, cut off from the outside world, sending emails from her iPhone destinated never to arrive by dint of the utter remoteness of her situation in the camp. And when she disappears, a young boy in the camp, Robbie, sets off in hotheaded pursuit.

Thus begins a tense yet thrilling pursuit through the forest on the one hand, whilst on the other hand the relationship between Tarzan and Jane - and the slowly unfolding truth about who Tarzan is - begins to emerge. I particularly liked the nuanced portrayal of everyone - ape or human, father and daughter. No-one is entirely good or bad (Tarzan is certainly no angel) and the nice moral ambiguities work well within the the exciting plot (rip-roaring is an understatement).

Anyway - Andy has pulled off a remarkable book, I hugely enjoyed it, and everyone should take the opportunity to reaquaint themselves with Tarzan (but for fans of the films, a warning: there's no Cheetah!)

We have previously done an event with Andy during the Amazing Books for Boys event with Trapped By Monsters, but I am very much looking forward to taking him to Larkmead School and John Mason School in Abingdon tomorrow. If you are coming along to those events, we'l see you there...