Category Archives: middle grade
Disaster Diaries: The Worst Holiday Ever
Daffodil is eight years old and the youngest in her family. She loves:– Capybaras (which are a kind of GIANT guinea pig)– Nirmal-Next-Door (who is her best friend because they agree about most things)– Bobby dazzlers (which means brilliant ideas)– … Continue reading
Posted in Fiction, middle grade
Leave a comment
More Worst Class and this time it’s TOTAL MAYHEM!
There are two more adventures for class 4b on their way. This time best friends Stanley and Manjit didn’t LITERALLY mean to get covered in newt pond water just before the Class Photo. And they really didn’t LITERALLY mean to … Continue reading
Posted in creative writing, Fiction, middle grade, Reading
Leave a comment
Come on, Carnegie!
We got pipped at the post for the Little Rebels Award, but hot on the heels of being shortlisted for the UKLA Prize and the Tower Hamlets Book Award, I’m beaming with pride to find out No Man’s Land has … Continue reading
Posted in Fiction, middle grade, Uncategorized
Tagged carnegie, Cornwall, Dystopia, fascism, Joanna Nadin
Leave a comment
Time to get Radical
No Man’s Land was born in the aftermath of the Brexit vote, and Trump’s rise in the US. As a former political adviser, I wanted to be back doing something to change the mess we were heading towards and found … Continue reading
World Book Day is going to be LITERALLY brilliant!
Last February, I had the kind of email a writer dreams of; the kind that comes from their lovely editor and begins with ‘CONFIDENTIAL’ in shouty capitals. It was telling me that Rikin and I had been chosen to be … Continue reading
Posted in Blog, creative writing, Events, Fiction, middle grade, Reading, Uncategorized
Tagged Joanna Nadin, Matt Lucas, MG, Michael Morpurgo, middle grade, Nadia Shireen, Simon Farnaby, WBD, World Book Day, Worst Class
Leave a comment
Sense and Sensibility (with bells on)
Firstly, a confession: until I came to be offered the opportunity to rewrite Sense and Sensibility, the closest I had come to Jane Austen was TV reruns of Mr Darcy emerging wet from a lake, and a reluctant trudge around … Continue reading
Posted in middle grade, Reading, romance, Teen, women's fiction
Tagged Dashwood, Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility, Willoughby
Leave a comment
Welcome to 4b: The Worst Class in the World
Schools might be closed for most of us, but for one long-suffering teacher, Mr Nidgett, the classroom is packed with shenanigans. That’s because he’s in charge of 4b, who are LITERALLY The Worst Class in the World, at least according … Continue reading
Posted in creative writing, Fiction, middle grade, Reading, Uncategorized
Tagged Bloomsbury, Funny, humour, Joanna Nadin, MG, reading, Rikin Parekh, school
Leave a comment
‘Hull, Nadin!’
Let us set aside for a moment that the University of Hull’s barrel of ‘notable alumni’ was small to start with, and is now very much scraped, and appreciate that I have wanted to do this for more years than … Continue reading
Posted in creative writing, Fiction, middle grade, women's fiction
Tagged Hull, Lucy Beaumont, Paxman, Tracey Borman, University Challenge, University of Hull
2 Comments
All cheer for Alan
Every so often, a commission gets you thinking. And thinking. And thinking some more. But learning binary? Caesar shifts? How to operate an Enigma machine? This biography of Alan Turing was one of my biggest challenges and delights to write … Continue reading
Posted in creative writing, middle grade
Tagged Alan Turing, binary, biography, ciphers, code, Enigma, World War 2
Leave a comment
My BAFTA-Winning Boy
This is how it started. A small boy I’d glimpsed on a street in Peckham, his sleeping bag on his back like a nylon snail. From that came pages of notes about a boy called Tom, who eventually turned into … Continue reading
Posted in creative writing, Fiction, middle grade, Teen, YA
Tagged BAFTA, Beryl Richards, CBBC, Daniel Frogson, Joe All Alone, Liani Samuel, Nadine Marsh-Edwards, Zodiak Kids
Leave a comment
Joanna Nadin 