The Film of the Book - Sally Nicholls

My first book is going to be made into a film.
Actually, that's something of an understatement. 'Ways to Live Forever' is being made into a film right now.
Somewhere up in Newcastle there are about fifty people standing around in the cold holding esoteric job titles like Best Boy and Continuity. There are two women whose job it is to pick clothes for my characters. There are people with clapper boards and three full-time drivers and a catering van and a whole team of producers and even a tutor for the child actors, like something out of Noel Streatfield. And all of this attention is focused on one or two of the actors for something like an hour, in order to produce thirty seconds worth of film.
It's bizarre.
The whole thing is, of course, very, very exciting. Imagine watching a troupe of grown men and women acting out scenes from the back of your imagination - taking silly things you scribbled down on a back of an envelope deeply seriously - playing with lights and colours and camera angles absolutely seriously, to capture something that you only put in to dig yourself out of a plot hole, or to fill in the gap between two important scenes. I've seen some of the early rushes, and the whole thing is going to look gorgeous.
On another level, it is of course not my imagination at all. Nobody looks exactly like I imagined them (although the boy playing Sam comes close) - everyone else looks more like film stars. The house is bigger than I pictured it, and the emphasis has been placed in slightly different places, which makes it very definitely the product of the very talented people making the film, rather than me.
In some ways, this makes it much more interesting to watch. When I was first sent the script, I was too frightened to open the attachment in case the story was very different from my book. When I did read it, the problem was almost the opposite - the film is very faithful, and so much of my dialogue has been used that reading the script was like hearing your own voice played back to you on tape - too raw to enjoy.
The best parts of the script-reading experience were seeing my jokes taken out of context, or visualised, or exaggerated in ways I hadn't expected. I describe one character as looking like a French spy, for example - in the film he's spotlighted, fedora down, in dramatic silhouette.
Another throwaway line nearly made me cry reading the script. A character in the novel remarks that once Sam - my narrator - is dead, he's going to steal all the royalties from his book and go to the Caribbean. It's a funny line in the book, nothing more. In the film, the little scene ends and Felix switches on the film camera and delivers the line face-on. It's unexpectedly poignant, because you know he isn't going to survive the film either.
Seeing someone else make something completely different out of my story is like standing ten paces back from it - almost like approaching it as a disinterested reader. I noticed mistakes in my writing that I never spotted while editing. But the director's characters touched me in a way my own never did.
I can't wait to see the finished thing.

Click here to see the young actors preparing for their roles,

Here to find out more about the film,

And here for my website.

Playing Devils's Advocate: N M Browne

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In an earlier blog post there was the suggestion was that one of the aims of education might be to encourage children to love reading. Now I believe passionately that every child should be taught how to read, but that is about it. This is a dangerous thing to say here, but I’m not sure that people who love reading are actually that much use.
Now I am talking specifically about reading fiction here and not the great jewels of English literature either, because great writing and great thinking is always needed. A small number of precious books have changed the world and every child should have the chance to read them. However, if you walk into any of the (remaining) grand emporia of the written word the greater proportion of material on the shelves isn’t particularly great and I suppose it must be what most of us are reading ( if we are reading at all) or they would be in even worse trouble than they already are. This stuff is the OK stuff with which I have filled too many of my waking hours. The kindest thing that could be said about my writing taste is that it is eclectic.
I was a mal coordinated child, egotistical and narcissistic as all children are and not good at making friends. From the first time I managed to read for myself a whole sentence of story ( written by the much maligned Enid Blyton ) I was hooked as surely as if fiction were crack cocaine and story has been my addiction ever since. I read my way through my infant school, closeted in the book cupboard, I read my way through a whole year of maths in junior school and never did learn long division. I read through most of my adolescence, living only in a kind of lucid dream My children’s infancy were the years of sleep deprivation and door stop fantasy read against the background drone of Ringo Starr narrating ‘Thomas the Tank Engine’. The sound of the theme tune even today induces instant catatonia and dreams of elves. How many conversations have I not had because I was lost in a book? How many times have I been absent when I ought to have been present? In fiction I could be anyone, do anything and what I could do in fiction I didn’t have to do in life. And there’s the rub. Why bother to change the world when you can read about other people doing it (and succeeding,) why bother to change yourself when in fiction you can be anyone you want to be?
My children quite like reading and that’s fine by me, I actively don’t want them to love it. I don’t want it to be for them what it has been for me, my addiction, my obsession, my crutch and my refuge. I want them to love living not reading about it.

Kids Lit Quiz Final by Marie-Louise Jensen

Apologies for a second post on this topic, but I’d written this before I saw Lucy’s piece. And it was my first Kid’s Lit Quiz event, so I wanted to give my impressions.

I was one of the many authors privileged to attend the final at Oxford town hall yesterday, to watch the final 15 teams battle it out for a place at the Edinburgh world final on the 14^th of August.

The rounds of questions were very varied, ranging from mythology to super heroes, to contemporary fiction and back to classics. The teams guessed books from opening lines, pinpointed authors from details about their lives and identified characters from ancient Greek tales. Their knowledge was impressive and what was even more awesome was the speed at which they buzzed and gave their answers – often before my brain had even taken in what the question was. It was wonderful to see such a hall full of knowledgeable, well-read and quick thinking 10-13 year olds.

Each school had been allocated two authors from those present and had been in communication with us with email author questionnaires beforehand. It was exciting to cheer for the school I’d been in touch with (City of London School for Girls in my case) and even more exciting to see them come second and win a place representing England at the final.

The event was brilliantly organised and run by a dedicated team, led by Jacky Atkinson, and we were all treated to tea, rolls and cakes afterwards too –  a chance to meet children, librarians, authors and supporters. All in all, a wonderful afternoon, with a real buzz (forgive the pun) around children’s literature. Congratulations to all the competitors and the organisers.

Banging the Drum for Kids' Lit Quiz - Lucy Coats

I make no apology for the fact that I am posting much later than is usual, because all this week, (and especially today), I've been involved in something marvellous and important for children's books, and I wanted to share it with ABBA readers. (picture is of Oxford KLQ author team members Lucy Coats, MG Harris, Dennis Hamley, Julia Golding, Mark Robson and Quizmaster Wayne.)

Let me introduce you to the phenomenon that is Kids' Lit Quiz. It was all started 19 years ago in New Zealand by Wayne Mills, a senior lecturer at the University of Auckland , who in 2008 was awarded the Margaret Mahy Medal for services to children's literature. For all this time, Wayne and his amazing posse of volunteers have organised this annual quiz for students aged 10-13 years in New Zealand, South Africa, China--and Great Britain. 370 UK schools take part, and this last week I have been a member of two of the author teams taking part in heats for Central England and Oxford. I haven't had so much fun for ages. After all, what could be more fun for a children's author than answering questions on books she knows and loves--and in my case on mythology too? The kids were brilliant--and incredibly knowledgeable about children's books. They didn't quite beat the Central authors--but in Oxford, Wheatley Park School (of whom more later), beat the authors by 1 point to score the 2nd highest ever total in the competition. We were all stretched and challenged by the wide ranging and often difficult questions set by Quizmaster Wayne.

Today was the National UK Final, held in Oxford Town Hall, compered by comedian Harry Enfield. 15 schools--all winners of their regional heats--came from every corner of England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales and Northern Ireland, filled with enthusiasm and armed with many mascots. There was huge applause when Cockermouth School in particular arrived. They made it to Oxford on time despite the challenges they have faced during the terrible floods of the last week. Thirty-two authors were there to cheer them on, and each team was allocated two authors to support them. These questions were MUCH harder than those in the heats--and opinion among the authors was that this time we would certainly have come last. The eventual--and very well-deserved winners were local favourites Wheatley Park with a team of four very well-read boys. They--and their school librarian--deserve many congratulations, and I was surprised and shocked to hear that the school is subject to 'special measures', especially since this week other pupils there have won a prestigious regional award for geography. I did ask why the school inspectors had made this decision, and I have no hesitation in sharing what I learned. The inspectors had an issue with the identity badges for some of the staff, citing that they did not have the right documentation. The school was apparently given no chance to correct this, simply being told--and I paraphrase here--'You've failed. Tough.' I have no reason to disbelieve this--and I think it is disgraceful (yes, disgraceful is the word I want to use here) that this should be so. Identity badges have absolutely nothing to do with the quality of education a school gives--and from what I have seen today, where reading is concerned, the school is triumphing, not failing at all.

So, back to KLQ. If you have a school near you which is not taking part, please ask them why not, and direct them to the website so they can enter. It is a chance for young readers everywhere to show what they are made of, to meet authors--and to show, above all that books are cool. It should be on every school's calendar, in large red letters. The World Final is taking place in August in Edinburgh, during the Book Festival--and I hope that the BBC (who didn't bother to turn up today) get their act together and give it some publicity. My goodness, it deserves it.

What is a Children's Book? - Linda Strachan

Following on from Katherine Langrish's excellent blog a couple of days ago Writing for children - is it difficult? I thought it might be worth exploring what exactly is meant by a children's book.

As children’s writers we know what it means, almost instinctively, but to the wider world out there I think there is a lot of space for misconceptions. This can be confusing for aspiring writers who want clear definitions, and who can blame them. It reminds me of a comment made to me recently by a chap who can't cook. He said the problem with most cook books is that they are written by people who know how to cook and forget that people like him don't even have the most basic skills.

Many adults see children's books as a single category, books for people who are not adults! This reaction is one which almost all writers for children have encountered at some time, and shows the level of ignorance that does exist in the general population in this regard. (Oh, you write for children, how nice! But when are you going to write a proper book - one for adults?) They never seem to stop and ask what kind of children's books - picture books, novels, mid range?

Some dedicated children’s book awards have different age groups -such as the Royal Mail Awards for Scottish Children’s Books, where the categories are Picture books/ younger readers 8-11 and older readers 12-16. But where children’s books are represented along with awards for adult books the short list is almost invariably novels, and often novels that are generally on that fine line that they could be what some publishers call ‘crossover’ books.

So does that mean that picture books or books for younger readers are not worth considering along side these 'almost adult' novels - it might seem from these awards that in some adult readers' view they are not really important enough? Perhaps 'important' is not the best choice of word, but I am sure you know what I mean!

I realise it is almost impossible to compare a picture book with a 50,000+ word novel, any more than it is possible to compare apples and bananas. But where they are looking at the skill involved in use of words, and the creativity... I know many writers of novels who retreat in haste at the thought of writing a picture book. They understand that 'short' is not just another word for easy!

I know no one reading this blog is likely to think that this is the case but it was interesting that in the comments on Katherine's blog was this one 'Any writing has a target audience.' This is even more so for children's books where, for the younger children especially, levels of reading ability and understanding of the world are among the first criteria to be considered - which is not to say the story idea does not come first, but somewhere in the back of your mind there is the knowledge that this particular idea would find it's best home in a particular age range or length.

I firmly believe any good and well-written children's book should be just as entertaining for adults who read them and this goes for picture books and younger books just as much as novels.

But when we talk about novels for children, what makes them for children not for adults? Some writers of novels are adamant that they do not write particularly for children - but if so why do they consider themselves a children's writer and not a writer for adults? Why are their books published primarily for children by a publisher who (although happy to market them to adults as well) is a children's publisher? It is a very difficult question to answer and I would love to hear what you think. I think this is a question that many aspiring writers ask because they are not quite sure where the line is or if there is a line at all.

I would suggest that it might be that we have an inner almost instinctive feeling for what works or doesn't work for children (even older children) which becomes more imbedded in our minds as we gain experience, but perhaps it is that almost always a young person is at the heart of the story.

Linda Strachan is the author of Writing for Children a writing handbook for aspiring and newly published authors. See more information on her website www.lindastrachan.com

Why our children need electoral reform - John Dougherty

An odd title, I know, for a post on a blog to do with children’s books; but bear with me. It’s entirely relevant to the ABBA brief. And please, forgive both the length and the polemical nature of this piece; but I’m angry, and I’m concerned, and I need to get this off my chest.

A primary school literacy co-ordinator recently told me about a project she’d done with her previous class which had been extremely successful - and, in terms of today’s primary system, quite radical: firstly, she’d gone off-timetable for the week; secondly, believe it or not, she’d used a book (yes, an entire book, not just snippets!); and, thirdly, and most daring of all, she hadn’t used any learning objectives.

For those of you unfamiliar with the idea of learning objectives: the prevailing orthodoxy in what passes for education in UK plc is that, even for quite young children, the teacher should begin her planning for every lesson by deciding exactly what the children are going to learn, and then devise a lesson whose aim is to teach it; she should at the beginning of the lesson put the learning objective (or objectives) on the board so that the children know what they are supposed to learn from this lesson; and at the end of the lesson she should have a way of checking whether or not they’ve actually learned it. Job done, box ticked.

It’s a very mechanistic approach to learning, ignoring all kinds of teensy-weensy trivial little factors such as, well, what children are actually like, how they develop, how they learn, and the difference between appearing to understand something and actually understanding it. A lot of teachers are unconvinced of the wisdom of this approach, but as they’re equally unconvinced of the wisdom of giving OFSTED an excuse to put on the hobnailed boots of punishment and stamp on their heads, they mostly hold their noses and get on with it.

This brave teacher, though, decided - just for the week - to do it differently. So: the class read a chapter, they talked about it, the discussions drove the next bit of learning, and so on for the rest of the week. And, she told me, the writing the children did for her during that project far, far surpassed anything else they produced in that year.

But, she went on, she can’t do that often. Instead, she has to spend precious time telling her class the meaning of phrases such as ‘subordinate clause’ - not because she believes that at 10 they need to know what a subordinate clause is, but because their writing has to use subordinate clauses to be marked at Level 5 in their SATS, and the only way to ensure they do this is to tell them (a) what a subordinate clause is and (b) that if they don’t use them they won’t get a Level 5.

There are not words to describe how furious, how utterly, impotently enraged I am that good teachers are forced to reduce the beauteous thing that is language to a series of components that, if assembled according to the Official Plan, will tick the correct box on some faceless, brainless imbecile’s clipboard. This is wrong. It’s stupid. It’s the same thinking that is now leading culture-free, drivellingly anti-intellectual philistines to suggest that it’s possible and even desirable to programme a mindless, soulless, heartless, garbage-in-garbage-out computer to recognise and mark good writing.

But that’s not all. The same week, a librarian told me of how she had gone off to buy new stock for the children’s library and was, on her return, asked by her boss: “But did you get what the children want?” By which, apparently, was meant: shelffuls of pink sparkly fairy books and countless copies of Horrid Henry. Not that I’ve got anything against Horrid Henry or fairy books as part of a balanced reading diet; but if I want to see shelves full of nothing else I’ll go to Waterstones or WH Smiths. I don’t need my library to look exactly like a branch of a bookstore chain; in fact, I want it to look quite different. I want to find there the books that Waterstones won’t take a chance on, the books that may not make a fiscal profit but that it will profit me to read.

And when libraries are trying to compete with bookshops to get the latest will-be-bestsellers in, regardless of merit or quality or anything but marketing budget and celebrity name on the front, but can’t get me a copy of Ovid’s Metamorphoses - and I don’t mean they don’t have it on the shelves, I mean my local library couldn’t find a copy anywhere in the library system - then something’s badly, dangerously, civilisation-threateningly wrong.

I suspect that it’s down to those by-our-lady tickboxes again. Libraries are measured not on the service they provide, but on how many people they provide it to. I’ve visited at least one library where they have a counter that notes how many times the automatic door opens in a day, divides it by two, and makes that the measure of success. What idiot, what absolute dummy-sucking moron thought that was a good way to measure our public library service?

Then there’s the publishing industry. It’s a business, and you can’t blame publishers for trying to make money - especially in these rather crunchy times - but it does sometimes seem that the sales and marketing people have more power than the editors to decide what to publish. As Philip Pullman once argued, though, books are not an ordinary commodity, and to treat them as such, putting all efforts into chasing the Next Big Thing (or, more often, the Same As The Last Big Thing) and the celebrity branding, will have a negative effect on the quality and range of what’s available for young readers.

All of these issues have been concerns of mine - and, probably, of yours - for quite some time; but it was only when I found myself having conversations about all of them within a short space of time that it really, forcibly struck me:

Reading is important. Books are important. Good books are important. They help to develop basic and advanced literacy skills, thinking skills, value systems, critical and logical faculties, imagination and creativity... The list is probably endless. If we want what’s best for our children, then we want them to learn to love reading. And so we need a culture which enables and encourages that love.

But if what we have is a school system which reduces reading to a set of mechanical decoding skills, then fewer of our children will learn to love reading. And if those children who somehow begin to learn that love of reading then find that both libraries and bookshops are filled with the same narrow range of books, which - if nothing is done - is more and more likely to be the literary equivalent of junk food, then how is that love of reading ever going to develop? And what will that mean for our society in forty years’ time? It doesn’t bear thinking about - but we have to think about it, and we have to do something.

So: what has all this to with electoral reform?

My argument is this: the prevailing political orthodoxy states that:

• teachers are not trustworthy, and therefore must be controlled and monitored centrally
• the prescriptive, targets-focused methodology which has stripped the creative heart out of our education system is necessary to provide accountability and Raise Standards
  
• libraries should be run according to the whims of the market without any particular thought for knowledge or literature
• the market is always right.

Under the current system, only two political parties have any chance of forming the next government, and both of these apparently hold unquestioningly to this orthodoxy. The barbarians are not only at the gates; they’re in the seats of power. And the only chance we have of unseating them is to reform our electoral system so that our votes actually make a difference even if we don’t live in a key marginal, renewing parliament so that it becomes once more a check on the executive rather than an expensive rubber stamp.

That’s why we need a referendum, and why we need it before the next election - so that we can reverse the decline in our culture before it’s too late. Have a look at the Vote For A Change campaign, badger your MP, do whatever you can to get us a system in which our votes have meaning; and then use that vote to fight against this untrusting market-driven philistinism, while we still have a culture worth saving.

John's website is at www.visitingauthor.com. His latest book is Jack Slater and the Whisper of Doom.

Writing for children - is it difficult? - Katherine Langrish

I’ve been reading an essay by Peter Hunt, a well-known academic and former Professor of English at Cardiff University, author of a number of critical studies of children’s literature. The essay is in a new on-line periodical, Write4Children and begins provocatively:


“Writing for children is more difficult than writing for adults, just as reading children’s books (for adults) is much more difficult than reading adults’ books.”

I read this and blinked. While it’s nice to come across a corrective to the all-too-common view that writing for children is so simple that any celebrity can take a crack at it, this did seem to be rushing to the opposite extreme. Maybe he’s trying to redress the balance? Hunt continues:

“Somewhere in the equation is a child, or the idea of a child, or a group of children, or some amorphous mass defined as children, or a specific childhood, or the culture’s idea of childhood, or the publisher’s idea of childhood. Then there is our relationship with these various childhoods and our motives and our needs and their needs…

“All of these things have to be reflected in what we choose to write, and how we write it. It’s a complex business…”

Blimey! It’s enough to make you wonder how any of us ever manages to write a children’s book at all. The essay is a long and interesting one and deserves to be read in full, but I would like if I may to offer some personal reactions to Professor Hunt's opening salvos.

First off, I don’t find writing for children ‘more difficult’ than writing for adults. I’ve written very little for adults, perhaps a short story or two; and if I found writing for adults easier, I imagine I’d write for adults. And anyway, what does ‘easier’ mean? Hunt appears to suggest that the ‘difficulty’ he sees as inherent in writing for children has something to do with bridging the experiential gap between the child reader and the adult writer – so does he assume that writing for adults is in some way less effortful, involving less mediation and more shared assumptions? I’m not sure that’s a valid assumption. Adult readers are pretty diverse.

Second, I don’t find reading children’s books ‘more difficult’ than reading adults’ books. I love narrative and colour and a certain directness and unfussiness and clarity, and I love these things in literature wherever I find them, and children’s literature happens to be especially rich in these areas. But children’s literature can also be subtle and poetic and complex. I don’t analyse things as I read them – though I may analyse them later. When I read a book for the first time I read it, so far as I can tell, in pretty much the same way as when I was a child – with an open mind and an open heart and a desire to find out what happens…

Hunt’s essay makes it sound as though, before you write a book for children, you sit down and have a good think about who and what they are, how to reach them, what to include and exclude, and carefully examine one’s own motives for writing: ‘the good children’s book comes about from a respectful mutual negotiation of the ground between adult and child, taking into account needs and understandings’. I don’t see how this supposed process can be ‘mutual’ – children are not generally consulted in the writing of children’s books – and you would imagine on hearing this, that writing for children is as complicated as passing a resolution through the United Nations.

I never – consciously anyway – give any thought before writing, or while writing, to who my readers are. I don’t believe in any imperative to do so. It would get horribly in the way, and would feel irrelevant. While I’m writing, I’m focussed like every other writer on telling a particular story as well as I can. I have plenty of technical stuff to consider – how to make the writing sharp and focussed, deciding in what order things should happen, what episodes to include and which to cut – but I can honestly say that I’ve never, ever felt the fact that my readers will be (mainly) children as an added layer of difficulty. I’ve never modified my vocabulary, never worried about my ‘tone of voice’, never felt the need to censor anything. I write ‘for’ children merely because the stories I naturally write happen to appeal to them – as well as to some teens and adults.

It’s a good thing to recognise children’s literature as worthy of academic attention; it’s important to scrutinise what is being written for children and to distinguish the good from the mediocre, and to celebrate the best. Criticism has its place, the academic approach its interest, but Hunt’s account of the process of writing for children is so constructed, so dry and cerebral, so foreign to my own experience, that I have to wonder who are the people who would find it useful?

If I tried to do it his way, I’d end up like the centipede:

A centipede was happy quite,
Until a frog, in fun
Said ‘Pray, which leg moves after which?’
This raised her mind to such a pitch
She lay distracted in a ditch,
Not knowing how to run.

A Reading Revolution - Anne Rooney

I hope I manage to get this post uploaded – I’m in the wilds of the Wirral (I think), where I’ve been sent for a week to learn how to read. Huh? Not quite. I’m here with eighteen other past and present RLF (Royal Literary Fund) fellows to become accredited ‘reading facilitators’. The course, run by The Reading Organisation, aims to create a ‘reading revolution’ in the country, getting everyone – really everyone -reading. We’ve only had the Sunday afternoon session so far, so it’s too early to say how it’s going to go.

TRO facilitators set up reading groups – but not as we know them. Instead of each person reading the book at home and coming to discuss it, the participants read the book aloud together and discuss any issues (personal, literary, cultural) as they emerge. It takes months to read a long text in two-hour chunks, especially stopping for discussion whenever anyone has something to say. Each session ends with a poem, which they also discuss. It is all about personal response – there is no aim to teach, no literary theory, no right or wrong responses. It’s the kind of reading that writers expect and want for their work, not the kind university departments necessarily encourage.

The members of a group generally have something in common. They may be single mothers, elderly people with dementia, offenders in prison, people with mental health problems… They may also be just people who feel like it.

We’ve already heard from participants, and the stories of other participants. One woman I spoke to so loves her Get Into Reading group that she uses her annual leave to take two hours off every Thursday afternoon so that she can go. She is 34. She said that for a year she turned up and said nothing, and the group welcomed her presence. Finally, she began to take part in readings and flourished. She had been suffering anxiety attacks and was painfully shy, and prone to depression but this looked like an unthreatening social activity to get her out of the house. She no longer has anxiety attacks and seemed full of confidence. Yesterday, she spoke to a room full of strangers, nattering on without stopping. She credited the reading group with the transformation. Other people have coped with bereavement, or difficult children, or recognized their own problems and experiences reflected in literature. There was the woman who realized her husband was Iago, and the violent criminal who would discuss Heathcliff’s behaviour. So far it’s sounding rather like therapy, but the organizers insist that it isn’t. The object, they say, is to enable people to use literature as a tool in their lives, to help them make sense of their experiences and to give them a pleasurable focus to the week. It seems to work.

Most of this is incredibly obvious, of course, and we all do it already. My last post here was about how I turned to books during a terrible (ongoing) time. I buy books for my daughters that relate to or reflect their current concerns and leave them lying around where they may be picked up and read, perhaps helpfully. But many people don’t know books can provide that kind of comfort, endorsement, refuge and lifeline. TRO aims to show them that – and to show them the pleasure reading can bring. There are no concessions: the first text a group tackles might be short, but then it’s straight into the classics. They tackle Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Dickens, Milton – anything and everything. TRO believes that people are not necessarily scared of hard texts, but that they often feel these are reserved for the intellectual elite and are pleased to be allowed to reclaim them. If that’s what it’s about – giving literature back to the people for whom it was written – I shall be proud to be involved.

Before we came, we had to choose ten poems we could use with a reading group, but knew nothing about the make-up of groups or the way the system worked. (The photo is of my poem-choosing session, on Saturday night.) Here, there is flaky wifi, poor mobile signal, no decent coffee (aaargh!), towels like rags and rooms the size of prison cells. There are no shops, no post office, no pub (but there is a bar), no time off – just us and the books. There are quite a few other children’s writers here – some names you would certainly recognize, but I haven’t asked their permission to reveal their whereabouts so I won’t name them (own up in the comments if you like!). One gave a little shriek of joy when she saw her own book listed in TRO’s recommended books for juvenile groups. We are the first group of professional writers TRO has ever trained, so it will be interesting for all of us. I’ll give an update after the week, but just now I have to grab some rubbish coffee go and learn how to read all over again…