Oxfordshire Book Award 2012 - cake and five questions with Patrick Ness and Nadia Shireen

This year's Oxfordshire Book Award ceremony took place on October 4 at Abingdon School, and we were once again very honoured to be running the bookshop on the day. Here are the covers of the books from the three winners: Patrick Ness for 'A Monster Calls', Tony Ross illustrator of Gangsta Granny, and Nadia Shireen, author and illustrator of 'Good Little Wolf':

 

Hold on a second, those aren't books - that's CAKE! 

Yes, one of the great traditions of the Oxfordshire Book Award (as well as the Carnegie Shadowing Forum) is the most fantastic cakes produced - and eaten by children from the ten schools attending.

As usual, we set up whilst the ceremony was going on - and then authors and children piled into the hall, signing tables were hastily set up - and children got to meet the authors that attended.

Below you can see all the authors that attended - from the top, Patrick Ness, Nadia Shireen, Tony Ross, Katherine Langrish lurking behind Sally Nicholls and finally Jo Cotterill at the bottom:

(We interviewed both Sally and Jo at last year's Oxfordshire Book Award - and Jo has written a fab account of this year's awards here).

Pupils pose with Patrick Ness...

...whilst students from Henry Box School show off their signed copies...

We grabbed a few minutes with two authors at the event - and in time-honoured tradition asked them five questions about their writing life...


Five questions with...Patrick Ness' Writing Life


1.    What are you working on at the moment?
A bunch of short stories.

2.    What is the best writing tip you’ve ever been given?
Write a book that you, yourself would like to read. You’ll be surprised that a lot of people don’t.

3.    What’s the best thing and the worst thing about being a children’s writer?
Best – as a children’s writer, you have the best readers in the world. The worst thing is not being to go to every school that requests you come.

4.    Do you have a writer’s survival kit, eg a place, thing or snack essential before you can start work?
I write a lot in the London library. I take my laptop and write there.

5.    What was your biggest breakthrough?
'The Knife of Never Letting Go'. It was really when that book took off, which was a delightful surprise!

Next we talked with author and illustrator Nadia Shireen...


Five questions with...Nadia Shireen's Writing Life


1.    What are you working on at the moment?
My third picture book which is due out next year.

2.    What is the best writing tip you’ve ever been given?
Keep plugging away, and don’t worry about what everyone else is doing. You should please yourself first, because if you are not enjoying it, you can tell in the drawings. But it can be hard!

3.    What’s the best thing and the worst thing about being a children’s writer?
Best: being paid to do what you love. Worst: there isn’t really a worst. I used to commute to a job, and now this is so much more enjoyable. I guess loneliness can be a problem, but you could work in a studio with other artists if that was a problem.

4.    Do you have a writer’s survival kit, eg a place, thing or snack essential before you can start work?
I always have music. Music is hugely important to me. It helps me relax, gets me in a drawing frame of mind.

5.    What was your biggest breakthrough?
Pure luck. I was spotted at a graduation show, people liked my work.

3 4 Friday: Grotesques, Gatekeepers and Grisly Tales, signed (but not in blood!)

Yesterday we took part in the annual Oxfordshire Book Award, one of the highlights of our year. A full report shortly - but at left is a sneaky pic of the attending authors signing books for pupils from the ten schools that attended.

That's Patrick Ness at the far end, then Nadia Shireen, Tony Ross, Katherine Langrish, Sally Nicholls and Jo Cotterill signing away.

Full blog post - involving author interviews and cake (!) - shortly, but for today's '3 4 Friday' #FridayReads we thought telling you about some very special signed editions was very much in order...

Firstly, you would have to have been at the South Pole not to notice that there is a new David Walliams book out. 'Ratburger' is another gross, grotesque and very funny tale involving our hero Zoe, her pet rat, and a very nasty burger restaurant owner. Inspired (if that's the correct word) by a late-night trip to a burger van, the book contains fantastic illustration by Tony Ross.

And as we were very honoured to meet Tony Ross yesterday, we were extremely pleased to arrange things on the signed copy front. What this means is that - for a limited time only - we have copies of Ratburger signed by both David Walliams and Tony Ross...how cool is that?

 

Of course, someone who has recently been to the South Pole (well, Antarctica) researching his latest book is 'Stormbreaker' and 'Power of Five' author Anthony Horowitz. To the many children (and some adults) who have been coming into Mostly Books since book four was published, we can now categorically confirm that book five 'Oblivion' is out...

We were lucky enough to meet Anthony Horowitz at an event in Abingdon last year, and we are even luckier to have a (very few) signed copies of 'Oblivion' in stock. The cover is a work of beauty, and the book will certainly not disappoint fans who have waited quite a while. Epic in its scope, with suitably apocalyptic battles and the same strong characterisation that has had fans chomping at the bit for its publication (and boy, do we know), it ensures the Power of Five series finishes on a definite high.

Finally, we have some beautiful, signed hard back editions of one of our favourite books of the year: 'Wolf Princess' by Cathryn Constable. In this beguiling tale, orphan Sophie dreams about ice and snow, dreams in which she is running away. Always fascinated by Russia, the chance of visiting on a school exchange is irresistible. But where they are staying isn’t quite what she and her schoolfriends expect. They find themselves in a winter palace, an atmospheric place mostly derelict, but with only a few very sumptuous rooms, where the few servants are badly treated in a bizarre mix of poverty and majesty, presided over by a wicked princess who tells them bloody stories of the last days of the Tsar. And when she starts to act particularly strangely towards Sophie, the girls realise their adventure is putting them in danger...

The atmosphere is fantastically created and it’s good to find a teen read that’s set in the present day, but with such a great historical context.