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Authors Live: Celebrate Burns with Scotland’s Makar Liz Lochhead, National Poet of Scotland

mattlibrarian — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 11:59:29 +0000

Event info:

Date: Thursday 26th Janaury 2012

Time: 11am – 11.40am

Age group: 9-16

Join the Scottish Makar, Liz Lochhead, National Poet of Scotland for a very special celebration of Robert Burns. Liz will be discussing why Burns means so much to her, as well as treating us to some readings of her own poems featured in her collections Liz Lochhead: Selected Works, Colour of Black and White and Dreaming Frankenstein. The event is suitable for P6-S4 (age 9-16) pupils and fans of Robert Burns, Liz Lochhead or just poetry in general!

Author biography:
Scottish poet and playwright Liz Lochhead was born in Motherwell in 1947. After studying at Glasgow School of Art she taught at art schools in Glasgow and Bristol while working on her poetry. She is a Fellow of Glasgow School of Art, an Honorary Doctor of Letters of Glasgow University, a Fellow of RSAMD and of Glasgow Institute of Art, and is an Honorary President of the Scottish Poetry Library. She was named as Scotland’s Makar in 2011. Liz firmly believes that poetry can transcend age boundaries and enjoys reading her poetry to a wide range of people.

Her poetry collections include Dreaming Frankenstein (Polygon 1984), True Confessions and New Clichés, Bagpipe Muzak, and The Colour of Black and White: Poems 1984–2003. Her plays include Tartuffe, Mary Queen of Scots Got Her Head Chopped Off and the Saltire Society Scottish Book of the Year Award-winning Medea. Liz Lochhead lives in Glasgow.

Click here for more details

Young Human Rights Reporter of the Year 2012

mattlibrarian — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 11:53:25 +0000

The Young Human Rights Reporter (YHRR) Competition is an annual competition for young people run by Amnesty, in partnership with the Guardian Teacher Network and MA Publications, publishers of SecEd, Headteacher Update and Primary Teacher Update.

The award encourages young people to become human rights reporters, to investigate what’s going on in the world and bring human rights abuses to light.

The 2012 competition is now open and will close on 31 January 2012.

The Gentlemen Press Writing Competition

mattlibrarian — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 17:26:17 +0000

From the 12th September 2011 to the 31st January 2012 The Gentlemen Press, a new independent publisher based in Birmingham, West Midlands, is running a young writers’ competition. It is aimed at 13-21 year olds based in the UK and the winning short stories will be published in an anthology.

The judges will be Jean Ure, for the 13-15 category, Nine Arches for the 16-18 category and David Belbin for the 19-21 category.

For more information visit www.gentlemenpress.comYou can also see guest blog posts by some YA authors including Sherry Ashworth and Hayley Long.

The Gentlemen Press is an independent publisher based in Birmingham, West Midlands which is interested in producing inspiring publications. While the first anthology produced will be aimed at young adults there is the potential to branch out into other genres.

T S Eliot Prize Shadowing Scheme Launches Today

mattlibrarian — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 13:13:40 +0000

The T S Eliot Prize Shadowing Scheme provides an excellent opportunity for students to engage with the best new poetry by shadowing the judges of the T S Eliot Prize for Poetry. Two poems from ten collections shortlisted for the T S Eliot Prize will be available to download from www.poetrybooks.co.uk/projects/15 from 1 November.

The Shadowing Scheme is run by the Poetry Book Society in collaboration with the English and Media Centre. Students are encouraged to read the poems and to take part in a poll to vote for their choice of winner.There will also be a competition for individual ‘A’ level (or equivalent) students to write the best 500 word rationale for their choice of poet.

Prizes for the winning student include tickets to the T S Eliot Readings and the award ceremony in January 2012, with the chance to meet the winning poet, and a complete set of the 10 shortlisted titles.

For further details, please visit the Poetry Book Society website at www.poetrybooks.co.uk/projects/15. The Scheme will start on 1st November and a teachers’ guide will be available on the emagazine website at www.emagazine.org.uk.

Becca Fitzpatrick October Tour of the UK

mattlibrarian — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 13:07:44 +0000

Tues 18th

LONDON 6:30pm
Talk & Signing at Foyles Bookshop
The Gallery space
Foyles
Charing Cross Road
London
WC2H 0EB

Talk & signing.
FREE. Reserve a place online at Foyles or phone the store on 020 7437 5660

Weds 19th

BOSTON 7pm

Talk & Signing with Waterstones Boston
Blackfriars Theatre
Spain Lane
Boston
PE21 6HP

Entry by ticket only. Tickets £3, available in-store or tel:
01205 360002

Thurs 20th

IRELAND 6pm
Talk & Signing: Eason
40 Lower O’Connell Street
Dublin

To reserve a place tel: 00 353 (0) 1 858 3800

Sat 22nd

BIRMINGHAM

9am-12pm

Signing at Eternal Twilight 6
Hilton Metropole, Birmingham NEC

Full details and tickets available from http://massiveevents.co.uk/eternaltwilight6/

2pm
Signing at Waterstones Birmingham24-26 High Street
Birmingham
B4 7SL

To reserve a signed copy (subject to availability. Reserved copies may not carry a dedication) phone the store on 0843 290 8149

Sun 23rd

BIRMINGHAM

9am-12pm

Signing at Eternal Twilight 6
Hilton Metropole, Birmingham NEC

Full details and tickets available from http://massiveevents.co.uk/eternaltwilight6/

Mon 24th

LONDON / SOUTH

11am
Talk & signing at Waterstones Windsor Windsor Library
Memorial Hall
Straight Road
Old Windsor
SL4 2RN

Entry by ticket only. Tickets available from Waterstones, 20-21 Peascod Street, Windsor, SL4 1DU, tel: 01753 856456

3pm
Signing at Waterstones Bromley 100 The Glades
Bromley
BR1 1DJ

To reserve a signed copy (subject to availability. Reserved copies may not carry a dedication) phone the store on 020 8460 6037

6.30pm
Talk & signing with Waterstones Crawley
Crawley Library
Southgate Avenue
Crawley
RH10 6HG

Entry by ticket only. Tickets £3 available from the library tel: 01293 651751, or in-store at Waterstones, 83-84 County Mall, RH10 1FD, tel: 01293 533471

Tues 25th

LONDON

1pm

Signing at Waterstones Bluewater
West Village
Greenhithe
Bluewater
DA9 9SE

To reserve a signed copy (subject to availability. Reserved copies may not carry a dedication) phone the store on
0843 290 8159

Scott Westerfeld’s Uglies has been given the Graphic Novel treatment

mattlibrarian — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 19:35:54 +0000

Hey wow!

I just found out the Dystopian novel Uglies by the always awesome Scott Westerfeld has been turned into a graphic novel!

Del Rey will be publishing four manga-inspired Uglies graphic novels, outlined by Westerfeld and adapted by artist Steven Cumming.

This story will be told from Shay’s perspective.

mattlibrarian — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 19:14:14 +0000

The Stan Lee Excelsior Award has a brand new website!

WHAT???

You do not know what the Stan Lee Excelsior Award is?

That is (as the French say) Incroyable!

Not to mention totally beyond the pale!

To remedy this sad lack of knowledge I have shamelessly taken this text explaining the award from their website:

The Stan Lee Excelsior Award is an exciting new book award for graphic novels and manga – where kids aged 11-16 choose the winner by rating each book as they read it!

In 2011, 8 graphic novels were on the shortlist, 17 UK secondary schools took part and 842 ‘Rating Forms’ were returned! The overall goal of this scheme is to encourage reading amongst teenagers. However, its secondary target is to raise the profile of graphic novels and manga amongst school librarians and teachers. This storytelling medium has been a largely underused resource within education for many years. The Stan Lee Excelsior Award attempts to highlight some of the amazing books that are out there – books that fully deserve to be in our school libraries alongside regular fiction!

The award was founded and is organised by the excellent Paul Register – who I may actually have met at a SLA conference in 2010 (but I could be wrong).

To find out more about the Award and Stan Lee himself co-creator of Spiderman and other eX(-Men)cellent super heroes click on the massive logo above or follow this link: Excelsior!

Under 14′s Only @ My Favourite Books

mattlibrarian — Sat, 02 Jul 2011 11:08:47 +0000

This is the second year My Favourite Books blog will be hosting Under 14’s Only Month. We were approached by some of our local librarians last year and told – confidentially – that a lot of younger readers are feeling very left out when it comes to books for the younger age group, as everyone seemed so focussed on all the teen novels coming out. Which they of course could not read as these were in some cases too mature for them.

This really worried us and as we are always happy to fight for a cause, we established Under 14’s Only Month to review both old and brand new books that are out there for this large age-group. The publishers have been amazing and have inundated us with a variety of books for all ages within this broad spectrum we’ve chosen to showcase. Between the three of us – Mark, Sarah and myself – we are hoping to highlight some great books and authors in July. I have roped in fellow bloggers and reviewers to make their case for their favourite books for younger readers and I’ve got interviews with authors set up to talk about inspirations, monsters and other shenanigans.

We know how hard librarians, parents and teacher work to get kids reading and to keep them reading – if we can hook readers young, we stand a great chance that they remain readers, especially the reluctant readers, be they boys or girls. We have received some great titles from Barrington Stoke, Macmillan Kids, Walker Books, Bloomsbury, Simon & Schuster, Random House Kids, Templar to name but a handful of publishers taking part in this. Their enthusiasm blew my mind and now all we ask for is an audience to share these amazing books with. Please come and visit the blog and comment and recommend us to everyone you know who may benefit from reading the reviews. And remember there is a chance to win two boxes full of books at the end of July. We are always hungry to hear about more titles and new authors we’ve overlooked. Come visit us for the month of July and enjoy our Under 14’s Only Month celebration of fiction for younger readers.

Liz, Mark and Sarah of My Favourite Books Blog

Capturing the Voice

mattlibrarian — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 23:44:43 +0000

On Thursday evening I was fortunate enough to be invited to the Free Word Centre to attend the Capturing the Voice event hosted by The Reading Agency and Bounce! Templar Publishing, Barrington Stoke, Piccadilly Press and Catnip Publishing.
Anthony McGowan chaired an author discussion with Colin Mulhern (author of Clash), Isla Whitcroft (Trapped) and Stephanie Burgis (A Most Improper Magick). Anthony McGowan needs no introduction but the other three are still fairly new additions to the YA writing market. I am a massive fan of Clash so it was a pleasure to meet Colin, it was the first time I had come across Isla and Stephanie’s works. I had the opportunity to chat to Isla before the talk started and have added Trapped to my TBR list – it is an adventure story about Cate Carlisle – School’s Out and sixteen-year-old Cate Carlisle lands a job on board a gorgeous yacht, moored in the south of France. She’s working for the glamorous supermodel, actress and pop star Nancy Kyle! But mysterious, terrifying events keep happening around her. Soon Cate’s resourcefulness is the only thing keeping her, and the smuggled animals she discovers, from a terrifying fate. .
A Most Improper Magick is a YA Regency period novel about sisters and a lick of fantasy Kat’s father may be a respectable vicar, but her late mother was a notorious witch, her brother has gambled the whole family into debt, and Kat herself is the newest target of an ancient and secretive magical Order. Anthony also has a new book out with Barrington Stoke – The Fall which is based around events from McGowan’s own school-days – Mog is one of nature’s worriers, a loser hanging out on the edges of school society with an array of misfits. When cool, tough Chris Rush drifts into the gang, Mog finds a hero and a best friend. When pond-scum Duffy is drawn into Chris’ protection, though, Mog’s jealousy starts a chain of events that will change them all forever.

The stories are a mix of grim, gritty and unremitting teen life as well as aspirational storytelling and a pinch of fantasy but each tale has a core of hope

Created with flickr slideshow from softsea.

I did find a book trailer for A Most Improper Magick:

New York Times Bestselling Author Becca Fitzpatrick inks Graphic Novel Deal with Sea Lion Books

mattlibrarian — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 21:42:40 +0000

Sea Lion Books to publish Becca Fitzpatrick’s Hush, Hush as a graphic novel.

ATLANTA, GA – March 31, 2011 – Sea Lion Books announced today the acquisition of the comic book and graphic novel rights to Becca Fitzpatrick’s New York Times bestselling Young Adult novel Hush, Hush. A romance laced with intrigue, it is the story of a young girl torn between desire and suspicion in her love for a fallen angel. A true psychological thriller, Hush, Hush was the first book in a trilogy, with the story continuing in Crescendo and concluding with the forthcoming Silence, which is scheduled for release in October 2011. The series has a worldwide following, with sales of more than 1 million books in 35 countries.
“Becca Fitzpatrick is a huge bestselling author,” said Kuo-Yu Liang VP Sales & Marketing for Diamond Book Distributors. “I think this series is a great addition to Sea Lion Books line up of projects and should be a major hit for them”.

Hush, Hush is the story of Nora Grey, a studious sixteen-year-old girl from Coldwater, Maine. It has been a year since her father’s murder and she is not interested in much other than her schoolwork. Then she meets Patch, a bad boy—and fallen angel. Though unwisely attracted to him, Nora finds herself caught in a battle between the fallen and the immortal. Choosing the wrong side could cost Nora her life.

Becca Fitzpatrick is delighted to have her book brought to graphic novel form. “Hush, Hush was my first book, and it’s so thrilling that it has been embraced by so many readers. I’m delighted to be working with Sea Lion to tell Patch and Nora’s story through graphic novel format!”
Sea Lion Books shares the delight in working alongside the bestselling author on the adaptation, and feels that Becca Fitzpatrick’s Hush, Hush series is a fantastic addition to its graphic novel line.
Hush, Hush #1 is scheduled to debut in winter 2011. The creative team on the project will be announced at a later date.