Our visiters

The New Librarian is over from Sweden. She came with a group of 25 librarians to check out our libraries. To be cynical, it’s good they came while there are still libraries to check out. It’s a EU thing, apparently. They have been travelling all over the place to see and learn stuff.

Son and I went into Manchester on Tuesday evening to eat pizza with her. It was nice to see her here again. We do see her in Sweden, but it’s been a while since she popped over to Manchester on a regular basis to hear outlandish bands in concert. We’re dreadfully cool.

They had done Oldham; the main library and one branch. Today they are covering a university library and one other. Tomorrow it’s a new library in Birmingham, followed by one in London on Friday.

Before the New Librarian Mrs Pendolino called, to make us beautiful again. That was very necessary.

And in between the two ladies we had Spiderman come round. It’s not something that happens often. I wish it did, because he’s a real tonic.

He was, of course, Steve Cole. I could tell, because he didn’t have his mask on (presumably it’s harder to drive a car if you can’t see). He’d been doing some school events in our neck of the woods, and a bookshop signing. When he was done, he texted to tell me to put the kettle on. (Politely, obviously.)

It was a flying visit, but a very nice one. Son and I gave him tea and a raspberry muffin, which he found hard to grip with his Spidey fingers. And I hadn’t really considered the questionable wisdom of pouring tea down the throat of someone who might well not have been out of that suit since some kind lady zipped him in that morning.

Steve is touring schools to talk about his new book, Magic Ink. He brought me a copy, and a postcard. I will read it and come back to you. We didn’t talk as much about it as I’d expected. It was more about Steve’s 96 hour deodorant and the comic book he made as a boy, and David Tennant’s Doctor Who ties.

Before setting off to drive home, he struggled out of his Spiderman outfit (in the shower room) and then spread it out on the floor so he could fold it up neatly.

I’m sure Steve had no actual need to visit Bookwitch Towers while flying around the country like this. But it’s much appreciated that he did. I’ll probably go round grinning for days. As for Son, he had simply not been able to imagine such a crazy, funny person.

(Yes, I can spell.)

Bookwitch bites #92

Thank goodness for these bites where I can complain on a variety of subjects almost every week. Occasionally I have lovely news as well. Let’s see if I can find some.

I don’t often (like never, obviously) receive invitations from the Canadian High Commission in London, but this week I had to make myself say ‘no thanks’ to them. But as Disney’s Cinderella says, what could possibly be nice about a visit to Canada House? (Only all of it…)

Came across the programme for Book Week Scotland at the end of November. Can’t go, even though I can be found north of the border that very week. So no Frank Cottrell Boyce. No Debi Gliori and no Steve Cole. Nobody.

Offspring are my reasons for travelling, and Son had some news this week, relating to the literal translation he did earlier this year. We are finally able to say it was Strindberg, for the Donmar at Trafalgar Studios. The Dance of Death. Will get back to you on that.

Before leaving Scotland, let me just mention the Grampian Children’s Book Award 2013. Apart from Patrick Ness who is on every single shortlist these days, the shortlisted authors are Barry Hutchison, Cathy MacPhail, Mark Lowery, Dave Cousins and Annabel Pitcher. Tough competition.

South to Newcastle, where the good news is that Seven Stories can call themselves National Centre for Children’s Books, as the only ‘national’ place in the Northeast. Well done to a special place!

Actually, I am coping with the happy business, after all. We’ll finish with a decisive jump across the water to Ireland, where they have The Irish Book Awards. You can vote, but you might want to follow my example and only vote in categories (they have so many!) where you have read the books. Luckily I didn’t have to choose between Declan Burke and Adrian McKinty. Not quite so lucky with Eoin Colfer and Derek Landy, though.

A witch can always flip a coin.

Rain and fizz

Were you scared? Could you work out that Spiderman was really – only – Steve Cole? See, nothing to worry about.

Steve came out of his lunchtime event fizzing. So did his Pepsi. All over the signing table. Hence the ‘handy-with-a-cloth’ Spiderman you can see here.

Most unusual sight. Make the most of it.

We’d heard about the suit. Seeing it was almost better than the anticipation. Didn’t see much of the squirrels, though. Those that weren’t appropriated by the audience had already been stashed into a bag. (And they looked like teddies!)

Let’s see how long we can spin out our last weekend in Charlotte Square. There will be more detailed reporting on events, but the general goings-on come first.

We began by getting the first train out of Stirling, in order to go to Michael Grant’s morning event. It was worth it. Once you’re actually out of bed and dressed and all that, it’s not too bad.

He had a very long signing queue, but after more than an hour we were permitted to drag Michael behind the tent to the dustbin area for a private photocall.

We hung on for Steve Cole’s signing, having found two well positioned chairs to watch from. I couldn’t help but admire the ‘Cole Mothers’ who were still smiling after over an hour waiting with their children.

Julia Donaldson sat on her chair for a considerable time, and her ‘Gruffalo parents’ were very patient indeed. Her event was on first, and she was still there, signing away, hours later. Julia’s trusty musician entertained the crowds, and the Gruffalo did his bit.

A lovely message came via facebook, with the news that Jenny Colgan – who doesn’t know us at all – had managed to find Daughter a ticket for her Doctor Who talk that evening. It made our day.

We trailed after Steve back to the yurt, where everyone jumped at the chance of seeing him jump. He jumped for a solid ten minutes for Chris Close while director Barley watched, along with Ian Rankin, Denise Mina, Patrick Ness, Melvin Burgess and many more, who happened to be passing.

Found Holly Webb in the children’s bookshop after her early morning event. Very long queue.

Once things quietened down, we sat out in the yurt ‘garden’ again, until I spied Theresa Breslin and Nicola Morgan and we ran over for a signature in Theresa’s new book, Spy For the Queen of Scots. I made the mistake of telling the Guardian’s Michelle Pauli it wouldn’t rain. Hah.

Back to photocall with Peter Englund of the Swedish Academy. He was bemused to be getting instructions in his own language on how to turn. In typical Swedish fashion he shook my hand. I suspect that is as close as I’ll ever get to a Nobel Prize. Oh, well.

As we ran to get to his event, we spied Philip Ardagh, so stopped to chat briefly. That’s when he decided to lean on me. Someone will have to tell him it’s not good manners. Besides, the cool red shoes of 2011 are no more. He’s back to black brogues.

Philip introduced us to Mr and Mrs and Baby Wigtown, which was nice of him. Apparently they have nine star hotels in Wigtown. (Like I believe that!)

Then we ran on, and after Peter’s event the heavens opened. It’s a most effective way to make people take cover. If they have a cover to take, that is. We really, really needed to go and eat lunch, seeing as it was coming on for five pm, so covered all our techie stuff in polythene, looked at the one umbrella between us, and panicked. All was not lost. In the entrance we found people covered in some delightful white bin liners with the words The Guardian on the front. We bought an Observer and got ourselves two ‘free’ bin bags to wear, and the afternoon was a little drier. So were we.

On second thoughts, we could have sheltered under Ardagh’s beard. Should have.

Post lunch we returned for Daughter’s eight o’clock Doctor Who talk, which she very much enjoyed. A quick chat with Jenny Colgan over signing, followed by a dash for a train.

We are now officially back at Bookwitch Towers.

Silly Sunday

Spiderman called in at Charlotte Square on Sunday. (Sunday. What a joke. First we were lured into believing the weather would remain dry and bright. And then it rained… Have you any idea quite how soggy a blue carpet can become?)

Anyway, Spiderman’s Scottish cousin Mac turned up. (I consider it cheating to wear a kilt over such a nicely clingy pyjamas.)

What can I say? I never should have allowed it. I knew Philip Ardagh to be cruel, but I never imagined it would go this far.

A day of politics

I’m afraid we swapped allegiance by going to the Scottish Parliament on Saturday morning, instead of to our intended event in Charlotte Square. (It was sold out, anyway, so we weren’t missed.) Theresa Breslin was talking in Parliament about The Importance of Reading to Children and to Society, along with a few others, and had invited us along.

So down to Holyrood we went, subjecting ourselves to airport style security to be allowed in. Found Mr B in the foyer, and he wished he’d stayed in bed an hour longer. I think we all did, but this was a good cause. As we lined up to go in, Daughter asked me who the people behind us were. She could recognise their voices. I turned round to look (why didn’t she do it herself?) in order to tell her she was hallucinating and why would she know anyone in Edinburgh?

The voices turned out to belong to Linda Strachan and Julie Bertagna, so she was right and I am an idiot. Sigh.

There is a convenient bus between Parliament and Charlotte Square, and we got back fairly painlessly for an afternoon with Lee Weatherly on the subject of Angels. After her signing, and before she rushed off home, Lee posed for photos for us.

We had intended to go ‘home’ after Lee’s event, but when we found that both Steve Cole and Joanna Nadin were taking part in the Amnesty International reading, we went and got tickets and joined them.

Afterwards it struck me that it’d be a good thing to take some photos of Jo (Steve very wisely disappeared…), so we walked over to the yurt area. It turned out to be covered with photographers taking pictures of Seamus Heaney, and there was simply no room for us.

My bright solution was to invite Jo round the back, as it would be empty. Which it was, and we got started. The famous Irish poet must have been quick though, because soon the full set of paparazzi were upon us, and more specifically, on Jo. They wanted in as well. (They do have a soft spot for a pretty woman.) So through no fault of her own, Jo turned this way and that way, and posed like crazy.

Once the mayhem we’d caused was over, we hotfooted it out of there. If I’m lucky, Jo will even remain on speaking terms with me.

The Amnesty reading

We had to go round the corner and cry a little after Saturday’s Amnesty International reading at Charlotte Square. The only blessing was that it wasn’t us doing the reading or sitting next to someone doing it. They really couldn’t start blubbing, although I believe Joanna Nadin was close after her reading.

They get four authors to come and read every evening, and by fluke, or by utterly inspired design, three out of the four were children’s authors, mostly known for being funny. Apart from Jo it was Holly Webb and Steve Cole, as well as the perfectly ‘normal’ Oliver Balch.

You don’t know in advance who will be there, but we had inside information on Steve and Jo, which is why we made a point of going. The world is a cruel and unfair place and many writers are treated dreadfully for simply writing.

Steve read three Mexican poems by José Emilio Pacheco, Homero Aridjis and Javier Sicilia. Then Jo read a Guardian article about Razan Ghazzawi by Jillian C York, as well as a blog post by Razan Ghazzawi herself.

It fell to Holly to read the most horrifying piece of the evening, by Turkish journalist Asiye Guzel. I suspect many of us could have happily left then, but since Asiye couldn’t, why should we?

Finally Oliver read Pain by Shi Tao from China. The evening’s readings were introduced by Louisa Walsh from Scottish PEN, who reminded us of the Russian members of Pussy Riot who have just been jailed.

I’m glad PEN and Amnesty do these evenings, and very pleased the visiting authors give up their time for their less fortunate colleagues.

The end of slime

I have been in touch with my inner seven-year-old male self. It/he is in there, I can assure you. I have been reading – and enjoying – The Slime Squad vs The Conquering Conks, written by grown-up boy Steve Cole.

Whereas I don’t for a minute intend my regular readers to read the Slime Squad books for their own entertainment, I can recommend Steve’s slime heroes for young boys. Girls too, but mostly boys. It is really very slimy. And pretty heroic.

It seems like only months since I read the first Slime Squad book, and here we are at the end. (I think the answer is that I came late to this bunch of slime heroes, although Steve does write very fast. But they’ve been around for a year or two.) You know how fond I am of my happy endings, and the excellence of the Slime Squad means Trashland is saved, and the heroes can use their time on other things, once the ghastly conks have been defeeted.

Smelly feet are powerful weapons, but so were the double-barrelled snotguns. This book is full of yuck; the more the merrier. The conks are devious, but Plog and his fellow super-heroes are deviouser. Naturally.

Eight books is pretty short for a series, but maybe the rubbish ran out, and no doubt we’ll soon see another series of books for the reluctant (but not for long!) boy reader. Steve knows what they like, and you can’t beat snot and killer tissues. How will anyone get small boys to blow their noses ever again?

Before I leave you, I must declare a certain bias.

It’s my first. And probably my last. But as Steve said, to be in at the end of the Slime Squad is quite appealing.

Now where are those killer tissues when you need them? I have a suspected water leakage in the eye department.

Becoming a little retrospective about mcbf 2012

At the safe distance of nearly a week, I feel almost ready to re-visit mcbf. How about the rest of you? I guess that even James Draper might have finished sleeping by now.

There are things I didn’t do, apart from author events I just had no stamina to attend. I didn’t make it to Cornerhouse for a screening of The Witches. And it would have been so very suitable too. (Swedish witch, and all that.)

I still have the war books exhibition at the Imperial War Museum North in mind, and will do until it ends.

James had a hard eleven days of it. At one point I thought he would have to finish the festival wearing espadrilles, when his pointy shoes gave up the ghost. And was it tired eyes that caused the spectacles to emerge one day?

Kaye did all right, wearing some lovely outfits and still seeming to feel up to starting to plan mcbf 2014.

There were others who did a wonderful job as well. Claudia travelled all over Manchester, and Kevin smiled in the face of exhaustion whenever I met him. Duncan was elegant in his suit until the bitter end, and Iris continued with her bright spottiness. Anyone else I’ve omitted mentioning will just have to forgive a confused old festival-witch.

I’ll leave you with some more photos, chosen with no plan or reason whatsoever.

‘Go well into your Saturday’

I am borrowing the above quote from Jackie Kay. It’s what she wished us when we left her, after a very enjoyable poetry session. This lovely Glasgow poet taught us (well, not me, obviously) what a Sassenach is, and she was excellent on audience participation. Jackie read us a selection of poems, interspersed with chatty comments about all sorts of things from the perception of Count Dracula in China to her son’s conversations with the bath plug hole.

We began the mcbf fun day with Curtis Jobling, who managed to fill the large lecture theatre with some very young fans. They were vocal as well, leaving poor Curtis shouting down his (working) microphone. It was only Raa Raa the noisy lion who temporarily silenced his audience, some of whom started to remove the decorations even as he spoke, mere inches away. (James was dreadfully alarmed by this, and wondered what happened to him being the one in charge of older people.)

After he had read from several of his picture books, Curtis gave us a lesson in drawing, and I have to say I did a pretty passable Bob the Builder. Curtis told the same Scarecrow with a parsnip nose joke as I’ve heard before, and it’s still funny.

Post-lunch (actually, for us diehards it was more a case of munching our sandwiches as quietly as possible during the author talks) it was Liz Kessler’s turn, and she was a little taken aback by the number of cameras pointing at her from all corners of the lecture theatre.

Liz got out her bag with ready made questions for the children to ask her, and they still had energy for some of their own, including what the best thing about the book festival is (her immediate reply was being able to stay at the Midland Hotel). Her more considered answer is that mcbf doesn’t just ask people to come to them, but they go out to meet people were they are. This garnered the question whether ‘she just said that’ to sound good… They are growing up, those children!

Having overcome her airhostess dream, Liz now glues her careful plot plans before writing, and if she needs to remove a giant, then she will. The next time-travel novel is North of Nowhere, and her next book to be published will be the fifth Emily Windsnap, from which she read us a taster, shark and all.

Then Curtis was back with a talk for teenagers about his Wereworld books. That didn’t stop him from showing us his animated Curious Cow who repeatedly finds new ways to kill itself in 30 seconds. He drew us a werewolf, before reading from the first book, in this series of four books, which has now grown to six.

I did my best to dismantle the decorations in the theatre as Steve Cole started the last talk for the day. Talk. Well, I suppose he did talk a lot. He also jumped and waved and shouted and made faces and anything else you can think of. But no chonster, much to the photographer’s disappointment. Personally I quite liked his Werecumber, which proceeded to bite him.

Like the boy he is, Steve said bad things about vegetables and fruit, and discussed ‘dinonauts’ and terrible sailors and poo-fish. According to his wife there is nothing remarkable about him. I don’t know how she can say that, because Steve knows about binocular-owning potatoes, and he wears (or so I understand) gold lycra shorts.

Steve is writing a new standalone book – his first – and he is running late. His fastest Cows In Action book took him three and a half days to write, but usually he writes an Astrosaurs book in three weeks. No need to worry about the future of his characters, however, since his audience told him about some sequels they are writing for him. ‘We are all authors.’

Then this fun day was over. We hung around to chat to Steve a little, and he did that very nice thing; gave me my very own dedicated book, signed and everything.

Because it was a very full fun day we never had time for the Animal Stew readings or the smoothies or even the zombie workshop (???). Or most of the rest of everything we could have done had the day been longer. On the whole it’s good it wasn’t because there wasn’t much left of poor James as it was. The photographer and I hobbled up Oxford Road to catch our train home. But we’ll be back for more, once we’ve recovered.

(Photos Helen Giles)

New Guy – to me, anyway

Ladies and gentlemen, there will be a 24 hour interval, during which you can recover from your recent Indian ordeal.

‘Hello, I had barely heard of you when I was invited to come here today. Sorry. I hope you will tell me about yourself in your talk?’ This is roughly what I said to Guy Bass at MMU on Friday morning. He took it well, but I really didn’t require such a detailed account of his nappy years. I mean, there is only so much public pooing a grown witch can take in her stride. It was actually much more suited to eight or ten-year-olds.

Hang on! The MMU lecture theatre was full of children. Could it be..? Maybe Guy did it for them? I’m so relieved. He was getting rather carried away with his nappy contents.

This was another early taster for schools from the Manchester Children’s Book Festival. I was assured Guy would give a good performance, and he certainly did, in a Steve Cole kind of frenzied style. He performed with his whole body, standing on a chair and crawling on walls (he wants to be a superhero), pretending to cut his trousers up with scissors, and generally tried to avoid noticing how disappointing grown-up life can be for wannabe superheroes.

He’s a comics fan, and read fairly few books as a child. His favourite was Thomas Bakes a Cake. I was sitting some distance away, but I could still see this was the excellent Gunilla Wolde’s work. Good Swedish quality stuff. Guy’s parents had to read it to him every night for two years. His other old favourite was Roald Dahl’s George’s Marvellous Medicine, on how best to poison your grandma. So, great Nordic taste there for our Guy.

His own first book was Dinkin Dings, which put him in touch with illustrator Pete Williamson, and they then went on to plan Guy’s idea for his latest series about Stitch Head. He actually brought Stitch Head along. It was he who hid under the sheet (not a dead body, after all) until Guy woke him. Stitch Head was introduced to a girl in the audience, but unfortunately his hand came off. Then the other hand, soon followed by both legs. Oh well, accidents happen.

Guy finished by reading a very early story of his. So early was his Nitemare Pigs in 3D that the ‘book’ was a mere cardboard book. The moral of the tale is to have cheese in your pockets. Just in case.

Everything went down well with the children. That includes the pink pirate bunting which Guy himself was disgusted with. I thought it was quite fetching, if you like that kind of thing.

The audience was clearly into books and reading, and bought a lot of books afterwards and queued to have them signed. One boy even inquired about the book I’d brought to read (the new Shirley Hughes, Hero on a Bicycle, out in May).

I was feeling sleepy, having got up early, but that was nothing compared to mcbf’s James. Grateful that he thought of me as he got dressed, however, and wore these lovely socks. So I won’t mention what the rest of him looked like after Thursday night’s poetry event. (I knew there’s a reason I’m wary of poetry.)

He even had the nerve to suggest I go and sit at the back. Wouldn’t have dreamed of it. This kind of lecture theatre – a great hit with the children, btw – requires me to sit at the front. There is method in my madness.

And now I know who Guy Bass is. Blue Peter award winner. Nice Guy. Funny. And because he brought  his friendly publisher Paul along, I have a book to read, too. One that Guy scribbled in, so now it’s ruined…