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Roald Dahl Funny Prize 09
Posted Tuesday September 8th 2009
by Rebecca WilkieThe funny books we read as children are often the ones we remember best and perhaps that’s why Roald Dahl’s books have endured. I can remember shaking with laughter as a child when I read and re-read Dahl’s account of the great mouse plot in Boy and his Red Riding Hood from Revolting Rhymes, who ‘whips a pistol from her knickers’ to calmly defend herself against the wolf, still raises a smile today!
The shortlists for this year’s Roald Dahl Funny Prize feature books which continue the Dahlian tradition of anarchic humour. Chosen by a panel of judges chaired by poet and former Children’s Laureate, Michael Rosen (whose own collection, Quick Let’s Get Out of Here, used to reduce my class at junior school to bouts of near hysterical giggles) and including comedian Bill Bailey, authors Mini Grey and Louise Rennison and last year’s winner Andy Stanton, the books on the 2009 shortlists are sure to amuse even the most stony-faced reader.
Animals abound in the funniest book for children aged six and under category; there’s the story of a space-bound elephant in the pop-up Elephant Joe is a Spaceman! by David Wojtowycz and a crocodile who loves…
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In praise of ... Richard Ford
Posted Wednesday September 2nd 2009
by James SmithIn the first of an occasional series about authors we admire, Booktrust website editor James Smith tries to explain why he loves Richard Ford's books so much.
How did I first stumble across Richard Ford? It’s hard to remember, but I think I plucked a copy of Wildlife – minus its back cover – out of the ‘damaged’ box of the bookshop I was working in at the time. It had a horrible jacket design, but once I’d got past this I was drawn in by Ford’s visceral prose style – what later became known, thanks to Granta magazine, as ‘dirty realism’, a catch-all phrase that encompassed a lot of American writing at the time.
Later, I tried another, The Ultimate Good Luck: more gritty grittiness. And then. Then I read something extraordinary, and extraordinarily different, like nothing I’d read before; a novel called The Sportswriter, the first of what eventually became a trilogy of books about a New Jersey man by the name of Frank Bascombe.
Here was the life of an ‘ordinary’ suburban man, struggling with work, bereavement and the collapse of his marriage, told in the most beautiful, tragic and yet unpatronising way. For me, the heartbreaking…
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Come explore Booky's world in our magical new area for families
Posted Wednesday August 26th 2009
by Emma CampbellOur new web pages especially for families are coming soon to www.booktime.org.uk.
Join the Booktime mascot, Booky, to explore a whole book-inspired world of giant robots, interactive stories, castles, dinosaurs and fun activities for families.
We’re very, very excited about all the great new games, stories and activities you’ll find online, so we thought we’d share a sneak preview of them with you here.
Story creator
The story creator lets you build your own adventure, starring Booky or the hero of this time's Booktime book, Mr Big. Let your imagination run wild with a whole host of characters and backgrounds!
Interactive story book
Join this year's Booktime author Ed Vere for an amazing, interactive read-through of the Mr Big story book. With animation, music and sound effects, and Ed himself to read the story with you, it's a great way to bring Mr Big to life.
There's much more to play with on the site, and we can't wait until it launches in September. In the meantime, as…
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The pen is mightier than the pin-up [2]
Posted Wednesday August 19th 2009
by Rebecca WoodheadIn her second guest blog for Booktrust, aspiring writer Rebecca Woodhead talks about how she used social networking site du jour Twitter to mobilise an army of literature lovers and 'word nerds' to help her win an X-Factor-esque Twitter contest and raise her profile, for the benefit of her career, and as it emerged, potentially for the benefit of the future of literature in this country as well.
The pen is mightier than the pin-up
With a crop of loyal blog followers to run home to, I decided to dip my toe into the world of Twitter. When I was at university, I had lucked out in the most spectacular way and interviewed Stephen Fry. That couple of hours: the pizza; the chat, and the ‘pinch me, I’m dreaming’ wonder of it all is a gilded memory. I knew it was pathetic but I tapped in my name, surfed to his Twitter page and hit ‘follow.’ Almost immediately, he followed back. Now what?
It seemed likely that Twitter could be used for more than sending direct messages to Stephen Fry. Maybe there was even a literary application. In my bio I wrote ‘word nerd’ as a…
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From post-its to pin-ups – a writer’s journey [1]
Posted Monday August 17th 2009
by Rebecca WoodheadOur Twitter page has put us in contact with diverse parts of the publishing industry, from publishers to writers to book bloggers to parents and carers who benefit from our bookgifting. One of the more interesting personalities on our Twitter feed has been aspiring author Rebecca Woodhead. Author of two books and unpublished, she has been using the internet to her advantage, to build up a loyal following of visitors to her blog and writings. Then she was nominated for Ms Twitter UK, a Twitter competition pitting her against celebrities like Lily Allen and Fearne Cotton and their extensive fanbases.
Mobilising her band of followers, cutely named the Word Nerd Army, and rallying publishers, agents and literary types alike (including Twitter god Stephen Fry), Rebecca won Ms Twitter UK, with the motto 'the pen is mightier than the pin-up', promising to help promote literature and reading and aspiring authors and libraries, all issues close to the heart of Booktrust. Now with a land of opportunities awaiting her following her victory, Rebecca has written two blogs for us, this week on how she came to write her novel and use the internet to help promote it and…
