Interview with Helen Limon, winner of the Frances Lincoln Diverse Voices Childrens Book Award

Helen Limon was recently announced the winner of the 2011 Frances Lincoln Diverse Voices Childrens Book award. The award is for a manuscript that celebrates cultural diversity in the widest possible sense, either in terms of its story or in terms of the ethnic and cultural origins of its author. Helen’s winning manuscript, Om Shanti, [...]

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My top five interview questions for Cristy Burne

Head over to Booked Up HQ to check out the great books available and explore their super new website. I have a guest post on the Booked Up blog this week, about writing Takeshita Demons and being a writer, and hope that lots of kids will ask me lots of questions. See you there! xxx

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Interviews with shortlisted writers

Over the last few weeks Tom Avery, the winner of the 2010 Diverse Voices Childrens Book Award, has interviewed writers shortlisted for the prize. The interviews give a great insight into what goes on behind the scenes in a writer’s life, and include some great advice for anyone keen to break in to the childrens [...]

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Filming for the Booked Up DVD

Exciting times! As part of the Booked Up program, WalkTall Media are producing a DVD introducing the 19 books on the Booked Up list. Each book is introduced by its author, then reviewed by a Year 7 student. And to keep things short and sweet, each segment is only 30-40 seconds long.  So…I was asked [...]

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Interview with Tom Avery, winner of the 2010 Frances Lincoln Diverse Voices Children’s Book Award

So by now you might already know: the winner of the 2010 Frances Lincoln Diverse Voices Children’s Book Award is Tom Avery with Too Much Trouble. But who is Tom Avery? And what was he doing before the Frances Lincoln Award team got their hands on his manuscript? Well, I’m glad you asked, because…..I’m lucky [...]

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Interview with children’s book specialist Geraldine Brennan

I’m rejigging my website in the leadup to the release of Takeshita Demons. I’m deleting some bits and adding others, and one of the things I rediscovered was this interview conducted by children’s book specialist Geraldine Brennan shortly after I won the 2009 Frances Lincoln Diverse Voices Children’s Book Award with Takeshita Demons. That was [...]

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Witch doctors, crocodiles, magic and treachery: The Gift by Gemma Birss

Gemma Birss’ The Gift was Highly Commended in the 2009 Frances Lincoln Diverse Voices children’s book award. Gemma is a fabulously warm and energetic writer who has lived in Iran, Kenya, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Japan, France, India and England. She says she has “millions of stories from different countries and cultures in my head, all [...]

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Interview with Jane Donald, senior designer for Frances Lincoln Children’s Books

Jane Donald is senior designer for Frances Lincoln Children’s Books and the visionary behind the awesome Takeshita Demons cover. What makes a cover work? How are covers born? What do you need to recognise a great cover: do you need to be an artist? a sales professional? a book lover? We caught up with Jane [...]

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The Queen of Sheba’s feet: interview with Clare Reddaway

Today we publish an interview with Clare Reddaway, an accomplished writer of plays and short stories who earned a Special Mention for her book, The Queen of Sheba’s feet, in the 2009 Frances Lincoln Diverse Voices book award. The Queen of Sheba’s feet follows the adventures of Bilkis, the Queen of Sheba’s handmaiden. Bilkis is [...]

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80,000 words in a week: Alexander Gordon Smith

What a champion! The endlessly energetic Alexander Gordon Smith took some time out from working on his new series to talk to us about getting his big break, marketing kids books,  running a publishing company and film company, and writing 80,000 words in a week. It’s exhausting just reading this interview: inspiring stuff! Take it [...]

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