Suddenly She Turned Into a Gerbil

Hello, this is Chris and i am happy to be back in the blog-seat. This is a blog about last week, last week was brilliant...

Last week was a brilliant brilliant week!Firstly, my bro and his wife rushed off to hospital to have twin baby girls (both very cute and tiny), which left me looking after my 4 year-old nephew. He is great fun and he took great delight in soaking my shorts with the hose while we were supposed to be watering the plants, for my revenge I beat him at draughts. Like every wee lad he is going through a cheeky-phase and is calling everyone Mr or Mrs Poopy-face, so it’s especially hard not to laugh when he calls the check-out girl in Sainbury’s Mrs Poopy-face (a silent chuckle from me instead).

It is Wednesday already and for our final Big Issue event of the 08-09 school year we thought we would try something a bit different: rather than us going into the school we thought it would be great if schools would come to us. So out went the invites, in came the responses and finally in came the pupils from Newcraighall, Burdiehouse Primary and Leith Primary School.

John Fardell talked about his latest exciting novel, The Secret of the Black Moon Moth, before guiding the children through the art of storytelling, imagination and illustration by asking them to think of what happens next and getting them to draw their suggestions. All of this happens on the flipchart at the front of the stage and it always reveals a mad story, crazy character and even crazier plot twists “suddenly she turned into a gerbil”!

Philip the photographer for The Big Issue then gathered the pupils around John for some group shots before Jane (Big Issue’s wonderful reporter) interviewed a small group of the children for the magazine feature which should be out in about a month or so. John’s events are always such a pleasure to be involved with because his enthusiasm and love of writing/illustration shines through and it is infectious – a little like swine flu only without the nasty side-effects!

Ok, so where are we now, Wednesday afternoon. Following our Big Issue event is was time for me to leave the office and take my shiny new car on its first road-trip: 3 hours north to Aberdeen. What was waiting in Aberdeen for me? One ticket to go and see rock icon, Neil Young with my dad! The gig was truly brilliant, loads of great songs, big-,loud riffs and outros that just went on and on and on and on – watch highlights of his Glastonbury set to see what I mean. Stayed with my cousin at her nearby cottage then up at 6am back in the car and back at my desk by 9ish to start another day - well worth the early start and the 6hr round trip.

Thursday, a peaceful but busy day back in the office tying up most of the loose ends of our Highland Tour in September with Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell- we are officially now good to go. All we need is somewhere to rest our heads each night, some places to fill our tummies and to get our stars up to the Highlands and back to London.

Finally Friday night, work is over for another week and it’s time for another gig – this time it is part of the Edinburgh International Film Festival and sees 3 local bands (Eagleowl, Meursault and Found) scoring music to some archive film footage; a lovely piece about a fishing boat, the postal service and Laurel and Hardy visiting the Playhouse in Edinburgh (they were the Brangelina of their day).

The event made me feel nostalgic so as well as reading Fergus Crane by Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell, I picked up Michael Rosen's Sad Book off my shelf and read it repeatedly as well as Days Like This from the Scottish Book Trust as its full of people’s memories. Apart from spilling an entire pint of Guinness down my jeans I had a great time and it was a perfect way to end a brilliant week.

Over and out.

John Fardell: Lucky Friday the 13th

John Fardell was with us on Friday 13th March for the launch of his new book. Here he blogs about how it was for him:

I had a fun time at the Scottish Book Trust doing a launch event for my new book, The Secret of the Black Moon Moth, which was attended by groups from three different primary schools.

I talked a bit about my new book, and the old ones, and showed some of the illustrations projected on a screen. Mostly, though, I did what I generally do at my author events, and got the children to make up a story of their own through building up pictures on a flipchart (as you can see in the photo above).

The chidren all joined in and came up with a fantastic story, full of inventive ideas and great action pictures. And they had some interesting questions in the Q and A section at the end of the event. You can see more pictures in a slideshow here.

It was a good day to be at the Scottish Book Trust as, for Red Nose Day, they'd decided to do something yummy for money and had all brought in home baking. I don't think the visiting school children were actually let in on the secret that certain rooms in the building were piled high with cakes and biscuits, but I'm told that the Book Trust staff had managed to polish off the lot by the end of the day anyway without any outside help (apart from mine).

This came at the end of a busy two weeks for me, with various author visits to Montrose, Brechin, Arbroath, Leith, Ratho, Livingson, Mid Calder, Glasgow and Linlithgow, and a wee launch party that my publisher, Faber and Faber, kindly held for the new book in the West End Waterstones on Edinburgh's Princes Street. All a lot of fun.

Fabulous Dahl-ing

Hello there, I'm Paul, previously referred to on these very pages as both a 'guru' and a 'master', which is very flattering, but perhaps not quite true. I do a lot of Scottish Book Trust's web work; adding content, maintaining this blog, posting videos, adding Days Like This stories, and yes, much much more. Last week I was unshackled from my keyboard though, and allowed to roam free for a few hours in support of our Dahl Day event at the Mitchell Theatre in Glasgow.

It was great fun, as you'll know if you were there, with a pretty funny video all about Dahl's life and work, as well as some great guests, including the wonderful Matthew Fitt, who read brilliantly from The Eejits. I got to be a 'roving mic' person during the Q&A section, where various pupils were able to ask Brough Girling - who was a close friend of Roald Dahl's when he was still alive - and Amelia Foster, director of the Roald Dahl Museum, any questions they wanted. Here's me in action:




<--- dreaming of X Factor?


You know, holding a mic is not as simple a responsibility as it might first seem: when you're standing in the middle of 400 kids, all of whom have thrown their hand up in near unison, each desperate to ask a question, the last thing you want to hear from the stage is "why don't we let our able assistants choose..." The pressure's too much I tells ya! So, what I'm saying is, if you didn't get to ask the question you wanted despite feeling sure that you really were the first one with your hand up... I'm sorry!

There was also lots of discussion on the day about favourite Dahl books, and I realised that my far-and-away favourite is Fantastic Mr. Fox. I'm not sure exactly why, but I think it's just the character of Mr. Fox - what a hero! When I grow up I hope I can be just as chivalric and daring as he is. But in terms of the most popular overall, it seems that The BFG and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory win most votes (in Glasgow at least). So what's your favourite Roald Dahl story? And did you know he wrote stories for adults too? Have you read any of them? They're pretty twisted... Anyway, add your comments to this blog if you have any answers or thoughts on these questions!

Until next time...

Paul G
Website Development Officer


Best serious piece of funny news this week
Also on the Roald Dahl theme, our friend Michael Rosen has set up the Roald Dahl Funny Prize to tie in with Dahl Day, shortlisting various authors in different age categories who continue with Dahl's spirit of silliness. You can see the full list here, but we're particularly delighted that Manfred the Baddie by John Fardell is nominated in the 6 and under group, cos we love it.