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Lockdown Library: Addictive, literary, brilliant. I felt the same way on finishing this that I did when I first read A Prayer for Owen Meany: elated and bereft and wanting to start it all over again. #themostfunweeverhadMars. Less whelming than I imagined. And oddly soporific.Lockdown Library: 10/10. Beautiful and astonishing, craft-wise and narrative-wise.Charity shop chic. May have taken it up an inch too much but fuck it. If one can’t get one’s pins out at 50, what’s the point of it all?Thirty-something years on, @frostik1 We turned out okay!JamminTwitter
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Category Archives: middle grade
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
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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
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‘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
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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
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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
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We are BAFTA-nominated… and breathe
A couple of days ago, I found out that the CBBC adaptation of Joe All Alone was shortlisted for the Royal Television Society Awards for Best Children’s Drama. A couple of minutes ago, I found out it’s now nominated for … Continue reading
(Pigeon) seeds of a story
It began with a name, as it so often does for me: The Audacious Birdy Jones. But who she was, what she looked like, what her story was were blurry and inchoate, still lost somewhere in the soup of story … Continue reading
Posted in Blog, creative writing, Fiction, middle grade, Reading
Tagged Billy Bremner, Edinburgh, Leeds, Leeds United, pigeons
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Birdy Jones is all alone
Of all the questions I get asked on school visits, there are several perennials: How old are you, Miss? How much do you earn, Miss? Do you know JK Rowling / Jacqueline Wilson / David Walliams / any other much … Continue reading
Posted in creative writing, Fiction, middle grade, Reading
Tagged Joanna Nadin, Joe All Alone, Leeds United, Liz Kessler, MG, Sean Bean, UKMG
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BAFTA, baby!
On Friday, someone asked me how different my life was a decade ago. And other than the Menace being smaller and markedly more menacing, and my home being two roads away, I said it barely was. ten years ago I … Continue reading
Posted in creative writing, Fiction, middle grade, Teen, YA
Tagged BAFTA, Beryl Richards, CBBC, Daniel Frogson, Joe All Alone, Joe Sims, Liani Samuels, Nadine Marsh-Edwards, Vas Blackwood, Zodiak Kids
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CBBC’s Joe All Alone and the truth about child poverty
Joe All Alone is a book (and, now, BBC TV series) about friendship. It’s a book about family, and what constitutes that today. It’s a book about bullying. It’s a book about difference and acceptance. But beneath all that, it’s … Continue reading
Posted in Blog, Fiction, middle grade, Teen, Uncategorized, YA
Tagged CBBC, child poverty, Daniel Frogson, Home Alone, Joanna Nadin, Joe All Alone, Joe Sims, Vas Blackwood
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