Find out what's new on our websites, where we've been, what's on our minds and the things we're doing.
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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 Author of two books and unpublished, she has been using the internet to her advantage, to build up a loyal following of visitors to her blog and writings.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…
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Booktrust Early Years Awards shortlists
Posted Monday August 17th 2009
by Rebecca WilkieThe shortlists for this year’s Booktrust Early Years Awards have just been announced and I think it’s the strongest in recent years. Animals of all shapes and sizes appear in books across the categories, from Ed Vere’s colourful, pop-up Chick to Emma Dodd’s Miaow Said the Cow, which features a farmyard full of mice mooing, hens oinking and, yes, a cow miaowing!
All the books, selected by a panel of judges including Bookstart founder Wendy Cooling and Radio 1 DJ (and new mother), Edith Bowman, are perfect for sharing.
There is a great mixture of authors and illustrators both emerging and established to choose from, including Babette Cole, who many readers will recognise from the now classic Princess Smarty Pants and Mummy Laid an Egg, who appears in the Pre-School category illustrating Richard Hamilton’s funny tale of a father and daughter swapping lives, If I Were You. Kate Greenaway Medal winner and Big Picture Best New Illustrator, Catherine Rayner is also nominated in this category with Sylvia and Bird; Mara Bergman and Nick Maland with their third rhyming story about Oliver Donnington Rimington-Sneep: Oliver Who Travelled Far and Wide, make the list too.
The shortlists for the other categories are…
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Everybody Writes
Posted Wednesday August 12th 2009
by Anna McKerrowIt’s been a busy year for Everybody Writes – www.everybodywrites.org.uk; we have really seen the project lift off and reach more teachers than ever.
We see our task as being inspirational: providing teachers with inspiring ideas for writing projects that respond creatively to the unique conditions of their schools.
Everybody Writes is a project that aims to help teachers create writing projects that:
> take writing outside the classroom
> provide a real audience for children’s writing
> provide cross-curricular opportunities for writing
> provide a real stimulus for children’s writing
So, for instance, projects might include children placing letters to playground wildlife under rocks and plants and receiving replies; creating a cookbook with their parents and the local community; writing a monthly school newsletter that is distributed to parents, or creating original poetry inspired by the school and making an LED sign in D&T lessons to display it in the library.
The best projects we have seen so far are not necessarily the ones that were the most complex or expensive to conduct, but the ones that sensitively responded to the issues in the school. One of my favourites is Weston Park Junior School’s letter writing project.…
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Pretty Pictures
Posted Thursday August 6th 2009
by Nikesh ShuklaBooktrusters, I have a confession. You ready?
I'm Nikesh Shukla and I still read comics.
Every Thursday, I head to Avalon Comics in Clapham Junction and I buy comics: anything Spider-man, Daredevil, Batman or X-Men. I love it.
There, I'm glad I got that off my chest. Phew, the air feels fresher, the light is brighter. But seriously, even if you can't bear the intense obsessive comic-ment of a Thursday trip to your local comic shop, there's always graphic novels.
As worthy as highbrow literature, as action-packed as a Sly Stallone film and sometimes as politically relevant as the Daily Show with Jon Stewart, the graphic novel is a medium that explores everything from the expanse of the human mind and unknown universe to the minutiae of everyday life. We've provided you with a diverse list of graphic novels to start with, some now films you may have seen (Ghost World, The Watchmen, Persepolis), some funny, some action-packed – all perfect for your introduction into the world of graphic fiction. Perfect if you're just getting back into reading, or want something different, the marriage of pictures and words is a powerful medium. Certainly, our children's laureate, Anthony Browne,…
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The Man Booker stronglist
Posted Wednesday July 29th 2009
by James SmithThe longlist for the Man Booker Prize was announced last night. It's an embarrassment of riches: novels by Hilary Mantel, JM Coetzee, AS Byatt, Colm Toíbín, and William Trevor for starters, with the addition of some of the finest young writers currently gracing the shelves of your local bookshop – and a ‘biography’ of Tarzan’s simian friend Cheeta, to boot.
I’m particularly pleased to see authors who have won – or been shortlisted for, or judged – Booktrust prizes in the past. Sarah Hall, who won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize in 2007 for The Carhullan Army (the same title that – inexplicably in our view – never made the Man Booker list that year) and was a judge for the prize in 2008, has been longlisted for the wonderful How to Paint a Dead Man; Sarah Waters was a judge for JLR in 2005 – her books are hugely popular among Booktrust staff; Adam Foulds was shortlisted for JLR last year for The Broken Word, his narrative poem about the Mau-Mau uprising; and Samantha Harvey was shortlisted for the Orange Prize (which is administered by Booktrust) and makes the Man Booker longlist for the same book.
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