The Youth Libraries Group are delighted to be part of the blog tour for Amber Lee Dodd's The Thirteenth Home of Noah Bradley.  The book sees the Bradley family besieged by a curse which results in every house they live in being destroyed.  On moving to his thirteenth home, Noah is determined things will be different...  Throughout the blog tour, Amber has been exploring different curses as they appear in fiction and history.  Here she discusses Beauty and the Beast.

This was one of the very first movies I ever saw. I remember loving the teapot and being ever so slightly scared of the beast. Beauty and the Beast is another classic morality tale. With a curse created to punish and teach a character a lesson. During a storm, an old beggar woman arrives at a castle during a ball. She offers the host, a cruel and selfish prince, a rose in return for shelter. When he refuses, the old woman reveals herself to be a beautiful enchantress. And then swiftly punishes the Prince for his selfishness by transforming him into a terrible monster and his servants into household objects. She casts a spell on the rose too and warns the prince that the curse will only be broken if he learns to love another, and earn their love in return before the last petal falls, or he will remain a beast forever. Spoiler, it all ends alright, much to my younger selves disappointment. I remember being very upset when the lovely talking teacups turned back into boring people and the scary beast ended up being a standard handsome prince.

Explore some of the other curses Amber has been discussing and don't forget to check out her brilliant new novel The Thirteenth Home of Noah Bradley.

Sharon Creech was the first ever American winner of the CILIP Carnegie Medal with her novel Ruby Hollerin 2002.   We were delighted to have the opportunity to gain an exclusive insight into her new novel, Saving Winslow, which publishes with Guppy Books in May 2020. Cover design, cover illustrations and chapter heads are by Sarah Horne.  

What can your readers expect from Saving Winslow?

This is the story of 10-year-old Louie, determined to save a tiny, orphaned donkey, and of quiet, quirky, unintentionally hilarious Nora, who is drawn into the cause.

Saving Winslow sounds wonderful, what was the inspiration for the story?

My grandchildren have rescued several orphaned lambs, bottle feeding them day and night in their home. I’ve been inspired by witnessing their tenderness and growing empathy as they cared for these fragile creatures, but I chose to write about a donkey instead of a lamb in case my grandchildren wanted to write their own stories about their lambs.

Family is at the heart of many of your books, including Saving Winslow – why do you think it’s a theme you come back to?

My own large family has always been important to me and I’ve always been curious about other people’s families, whether large or small, close or fractured. Families launch us and shape us in so many ways.

You were the first American to win the Carnegie Medal with the Ruby Holler in 2003 – what did this mean to you?

I was deeply honored to receive the Carnegie Medal, an award from my adopted country (I lived in England for twenty years) and selected by librarians. The award brings attention to books and readers. It is because of dedicated librarians and teachers in the U.K. and U.S. that I am able to continue writing books, and I am forever grateful to them. We need school and public libraries for the benefit of our young people.  

Where do you write?

I write at home, in a large, square, many-windowed room filled with books and with photos of family and fans.  The room overlooks a wooded area where I often see foxes, deer, birds, squirrels and chipmunks. 

Now it is fourth year, the winners of the Laugh Out Loud Awards - popularly known as the Lollies - have been announced tonight.  The awards were created by Scholastic, the children's publishing, education and media company, and recognise the funniest children's books.  The winners of the awards are decided by children and the scheme has a reach across over 6.5 million children.  

The Kids and Family Reading Report: UK edition, found that nearly two thirds of children aged 6-17 chose books that make them laugh to read for pleasure.  There are three categories in the Lollies.

The winners were selected by a shortlist chosen by a panel of judges including Michael Rosen, Alison Leach, Scott Evans and Andria Zafirakou.  Teachers and their classes, parents and children were then encouraged to get involved to read and discuss the books and cast votes for their favourites in each category to determine the winning titles.

The Winners this year are

(1) Best Laugh Out Loud Picture Book

Ten Fat Sausages by Michelle Robinson and Tor Freeman

(2) Best Laugh Out Loud book for 6-8 year olds

The World's Worst Children 3 by David Walliams and Tony Ross

Congratulations to all of the winners!

(3) Best Laugh Out Loud Book for 9-13 year olds

I Bet I Can Make You Laugh by Joshua Seigal and Tim Wesson

Congratulations to all of the winners!

In 2018, UCLan Publishing, in partnership with The British Interplanetary Society, set up the inaugural STEAM Children’s Book Prize. It’s a unique award as it is the first book prize to focus solely on STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Maths) in children’s literature, from Early Years to Young Adult. It covers all genres, with the 2020 list of nominated titles including a wide range of subject matter in four categories: Early Years, Middle Grade, Young Adult and Information.

As a librarian, I value any educational initiative which removes barriers and promotes inclusion. By highlighting the importance of STEAM subjects, this prize recognises children and young people benefit immeasurably from developing critical thinking skills and having the opportunity to explore their own creativity and ability to innovate. Asking why and how, and learning to problem solve effectively, is at the core of STEAM and is celebrated in each of this year’s shortlisted titles, including The Longest Night of Charlie Noon by Christopher Edge, overall winner of The STEAM Children’s Book Prize 2019 with The Infinite Lives of Maisie Day.

STEAM Children’s Book Prize 2020 shortlists

 Early Years:

Arty! The First Artist in Space                      William Bee                                                       Pavilion Books

Why Do We Poo?                                         Harriet Blackford                                              Boxer Books

Lifesize Dinosaurs                                        Sophie Henn                                                     Egmont

Suzy Orbit Astronaut                                    Ruth Quayle & Jez Tuya                                   Nosy Crow

A Place for Pluto                                          Stef Wade                                                         Raintree

Astrogirl                                                        Ken Wilson-Max                                               Otter-Barry Books

Middle Grade:

The Train to Impossible Places                    P.G. Bell                                                             Usborne

Mega Robo Revenge                                   Neil Cameron                                                     David Fickling Books

Fire Girl, Forest Boy                                     Chloe Daykin                                                      Faber & Faber

The Longest Night of Charlie Noon              Christopher Edge                                               Nosy Crow

Wildspark                                                      Vashti Hardy                                                      Scholastic

Race to the Frozen North                            Catherine Johnson                                              Barrington Stoke

Lightning Mary                                             Anthea Simmons                                                 Andersen Press

YA:

Beauty Sleep                                                Kathryn Evans                                                    Usborne

Earth Swarm                                                 Tim Hall                                                              David Fickling Books

The Quiet at the End of the World                Lauren James                                                     Walker Books

The Starlight Watchmaker                            Lauren James                                                     Barrington Stoke

Nowhere on Earth                                         Nick Lake                                                            Hodder

The Chaos of Now                                        Erin Lange                                                          Usborne

Information:

The Usborne Book of Planet Earth             Megan Cullis & Matthew Oldham                       Usborne

Science You Can Eat                                   Stefan Gates                                                      DK

The Beetle Collector’s Handbook                 M.G. Leonard                                                    Scholastic

Science is Magic                                           Steve Mould                                                      DK

The Marvellous Adventure of Being              Dr. Max Pemberton                                          Wren and Rook

Engineering Scribble Book                           Eddie Reynolds & Darran Stobbart                   Usborne

I was honoured to be invited to judge The STEAM Children’s Book Prize 2020, alongside fellow judges Dom Conlon, Ros Harding and Ralph Timberlake. It was a difficult choice to whittle down a brilliant selection of over 70 nominated titles, but we managed to arrive at shortlists which exemplify the best of the best: from the lives of renowned English palaeontologist Mary Anning and Arctic explorer Matthew Henson, to fusion bananas (only the creative genius of P.G. Bell could dream this up) and books about dinosaurs, digestion, dung beetles and otherworldy marvels, I’m sure we’ll all enjoy our next few months of reading. I encourage school librarians and teachers to explore these books with pupils and incorporate them into their teaching and learning across all key stages.

The winners will be announced at the Lancashire Science Festival at the end of June 2020. In the meantime, it’s full STEAM ahead!

At the start of National Libraries Week we are delighted to welcome Sibeal Pounder to discuss her approach in researching and writing Beyond Platform 13, the brilliantly imaginative novel that re-enters Eva Ibbotson's magical world.  Sibeal also discusses the Easter Eggs she interlaced through the story, how many are you able to spot?

I read the The Secret of Platform 13 for the first time when I was nine years old and fell in love with Eva Ibbotson’s stories. When I was asked to write a sequel it was incredibly surreal and very important to me that I got the heart of the book right – that it felt as much like an Eva book as possible – and that I developed the characters and world in a way I believed Eva would.

 It began with research ­– and I started by reading and listening to every interview with Eva, and re-reading the book, hoping to find clues. I had a two-pronged approach for the initial research, which involved looking at two key areas. The first was to find any clues that hinted at how she would develop the world and characters. For example, in the The Secret of Platform 13, she adds in a throwaway about the gumps and writes that every country in the world has one. To me this felt like a classic world building mechanism, which would allow her to expand the world in a sequel should she wish to return. There is the possibility that, as she was published internationally, she added it in as a way of being inclusive, so her fans around the world would read the book and although they were not based in London, they would know that somewhere nearby was a gump to be discovered. It’s difficult to know, but I feel it’s deliberately placed to accommodate a potential return, and the reason she never did go back to the Island of Mist was, I believe, more to do with external factors – things that would set her writing on a different course.

The main event that would set her on a different course was a truly heartbreaking one for Eva – her beloved husband Alan Ibbotson passed away. Afterwards, she commented that she just didn’t feel like being funny anymore, and so she turned to writing a different style of children’s fiction and Journey to the River Sea was born. It became one of her bestselling books, along with The Secret of Platform 13, and won the Smarties Prize for children’s fiction.

I felt I had enough evidence to support the idea that when writing the first book she engineered a framework that would allow her to return to the world, so I used her throwaway comment about the gumps as the basis for expanding the world in the sequel.

The second element of my research was to go back in order to go forward. I think authors, subconsciously or otherwise, create characters with similar characteristics to people they know in real life, so I wanted to figure out who the characters might be loosely based on. If I could do that I’d have a better understanding of where to take the characters – and crucially, would be able to establish where Eva would not take them.

One of my favourite parallels I uncovered in my research is to do with the character Ben. He is an interesting one in terms of development as he is the prince of the island and so wields much power. He was on my list of characters to evolve and potentially corrupt, so I wanted to figure out exactly how Eva saw him.  I had a suspicion that he was in many ways Alan Ibbotson – he’s incredibly kind and gracious and gentle and loves the natural world and all creatures. These were all qualities Eva mentioned when discussing her husband.

In the book Ben creates a den for the mistmaker creature and hides him under his bed. In an interview Eva mentions her husband had an ant farm and he hid it under his bed! I loved that detail and the parallel with Ben. It convinced me that there were enough similarities between the two and therefore Ben was good to his bones and not someone she would ever think to corrupt in the story. So that was very helpful in guiding the development of Ben.

The Ibbotson family were so wonderful in being available on email, and her son Justin was incredibly kind and told me to stop in for tea any time I was passing by. One thing I decided not to do was mine the family for information. At first I was conflicted, because they knew her best, but I felt uncomfortable for reasons I couldn’t initially put my finger on. I think authors share a lot in their work, but they also hold things back for the people in their life – I can imagine this is especially true if you have children. Not every special moment or tradition goes into a book. Not everything in real life is to be plucked for fiction. I really wanted to respect that boundary that Eva would’ve established and I worried how I would distinguish where that boundary lay if I dived into her private life as a way of informing the fiction.

Luckily I had to write a very detailed synopsis before I started writing, and this was to be approved by her children. In order to write the synopsis I had to do most of the research, and one of the things I found was an interview with one of her sons in which he discusses Spludger cake. This was no ordinary cake and it was very famous in the Ibbotson household – she would make it for their New Years Eve parties and it was a real feature. I loved the name, and I loved the idea of Eva making it for her family every New Years Eve. I decided to use Spludger cake as a test. I added it to the synopsis and highlighted it, explaining where I got it from. Interestingly, the only hard no from her children was a note asking me kindly to please not include Spludger cake. 

That confirmed for me that the way I was going about my research was the most respectful to Eva and her children. I still haven’t found any instance where she mentions Spludger cake – I think it was something she kept just for them.

I also had fun adding in Easter eggs for super fans. I wanted the book to read on multiple levels, for those who were discovering Eva’s world for the first time, all the way up to those super fans who know her and her work so well. I won’t list all the Easter eggs as it’s fun to see if people spot them, but one I love is Netty, the new hag in the story. She’s called Netty as a nod to Newcastle, where Eva lived for many years and raised her family – it’s Geordie slang for toilet and I felt it was perfect for a hag. Another one I like is Eva once commented in an interview that if she got stuck when writing a story she would add an aunt in, so when Lina is physically stuck some ghostly aunts appear to help her. There is also a scene when Lina makes a big speech, only to realise her microphone is round the wrong way – that is a nod to Eva’s Smarties prize acceptance speech for Journey to the River Sea. She later spoke of how she held the microphone at the wrong end and no one could hear her. I knew she would keep hold of that to use in a story one day.