We are delighted to welcome Joy Court to the blog, our expert Conference Manager.  Joy generously answered our questions on this year’s Youth Libraries Group conference which will take place in Torquay, 17 – 19 September, Representations of Place: New Lands and New Ways of Looking.

Can you tell us about your role with conference

As Conference Manager it is my job to find a venue that is within our budget. We decide as a group, steered by the Chair who will be the host, which area to search in and we also try to move around the country to give our members a chance to try us out as a day delegate if they live locally. 

 I liaise with the Chair over theme - usually something they suggest and then we all jointly seek out speakers. We invite pitches from publishers and proactively seek sponsors and then I try to piece together the  jigsaw to amke an engaging and relevant programme from all those ingredients.

I do all the liaison with the venue over menus and set up of rooms and manage all the bookings. During the conference it is my job to ensure everything runs smoothly and troubleshoot any problems. Luckily there is an Exhibition Manager to specifically look after that complex operation and a Conference Secretary to organise session chairs and look after our speakers. 

The theme this year is around representations of place, can you tell us what delegates can expect?

 We have interpreted place very broadly- feeling at home in your body for example or exploring the past as a different country but also the importance of representation and ensuring that everybody has a place at the table. We have a fantastic range of speakers- authors who are sharing their experience and passion for these themes, academics sharing research, industry partners showing us the way forward and  practitioners sharing their expertise and good practice. Delegates can expect to meet and network with all of these and during the weekend find colleagues who are as passionate about children and young people's reading as they are! The there is the famed Publisher's exhibition - time to make contacts and connections and find out about all the great books coming up and the equally famed Norfolk Children's Book Centre shop where Honorary YLG superstar Marilyn Brocklehurst will have any book you could possibly want and more!

Which sessions do you personally feel most excited by and why?

That is like asking which is your favourite child! From the opening keynote from Michael Morpurgo to the Robert Westall Memorial lecture on Sunday by Anne Fine to amazing panels with Geraldine McCaughrean, Philip Reeve and Frances Hardinge discussing imagined worlds or Hilary McKay and Phil Earle sharing their views on WW2 or Brian Conaghan, Melvin Burgess and Jason Cockcroft discussing masculinity - there is so much to get excited about!

Do you remember your first YLG conference?  When was this and what sticks in your mind?

 This would be a long time ago... early 90's..I remember feeling so much in awe of the giants of our profession who were leading the sessions and starstruck by the authors and  revelling in all the books, but thinking this is my special place- everyone here shares my obsessions! 

In your experience, how do delegates benefit from attending conference?

I think I have already alluded to finding colleagues who share the same passion. This is particularly important for school librarians who are often sole practitioners. You will go away with a headful of inspiring ideas and a suitcase full of exhibition giveaways - proofs/ posters/ competitions etc. You will probably be exhausted but in a very satisfying way!

Do you have any tips for people wanting to make a funding case to their employers to attend

Everyone should recognise their entitlement to CPD - they are worth it! Employers should recognise this and the crucial benefits that attending conference will bring. Nowhere else will provide training directly related to specialist children and young peoples librarianship.   Nowhere else will you find opportunities to develop crucial book knowledge and  keep up to date with current library and educational trends and pick up practical and inspirational ideas to improve your library service to young people

Conference wasn't able to take place physically last year, what steps will be being taken to keep attendees safe?

The conference hotel takes its COVID 19 security very seriously. This page details exactly what steps they take to ensure your safety

https://www.theimperialtorquay.co.uk/coronavirus-update

Even if the 19 July release date is further extended we are confident that the conference can be delivered  successfully under current restrictions.

A big thank you to Joy for the interview and to her and the whole of the conference team for their exceptional work against a really challenging backdrop.

On the fourth day of our fantastic Pop-Up blog takeover to celebrate the publication of 10 Stories to Make a Difference, a collection of stories marking the 10^th anniversary of Pop UpFestivals, it is a real pleasure to introduce readers to Eleanor Cullen.  Eleanor was one of four writers that won the Pop Up writing competition.  Her story A Match for a Mermaid is illustrated by the inimitable David Roberts.

When I began planning my first picture book, I knew I wanted it to have two things. The first was mermaids, since my niece loves them, and the second was LGBTQ representation, since I felt characters belonging to that community were missing from the picture books I had grown up with. It was combining those two elements - an appreciation of a mythical creature and a desire for more diverse picture books - that led to the creation of A Match for a Mermaid.

The story follows Princess Malu the Mermaid, who is about to become queen of the whole ocean, but who is a little scared of ruling entirely on her own. To ease her nervousness, she recruits her best friend Brooke to help her find a merman to be her king. Brooke obliges, willing to do anything to make Malu happy, but Malu can’t imagine herself marrying any of the potential suitors she meets. Some are too loud, others have hair she doesn’t like, and one is perfect in almost every conceivable way, yet she still finds fault with him! It’s only then that Brooke suggests Malu marry her instead, since she possesses none of the qualities Malu disliked in the rejected mermen. Malu loves that idea, and the story ends with the two mermaids being crowned queens together.

With this ending, I hoped to show that a same-sex union is just as valid and easy to accept as any other. Malu chooses to love Brooke because she has every quality she was looking for in a spouse, and that’s all there is to it. She never thinks that the fact they’re both females means their relationship can’t progress past friendship, because that thought never occurs to her. She just wants to marry someone she could love, and she knows that someone is Brooke and definitely none of the men she has met. I hope that children, and even adults, who read this ending can understand Malu’s thought process and realise that coming to terms with your sexuality doesn’t necessarily mean you have to struggle or agonise over your feelings; if it feels right, it probably is.

There are countless stories and books which end differently to mine, with a princess finding her prince, or vice versa, and most of them are amazing. Some of them are even my personal favourite tales. What I’ve noticed, however, is that there are far fewer stories about princesses finding princesses or princes marrying princes, and I can’t help but think that’s a shame. I know that, when I was growing up, I would have benefitted from reading about relationships which differed from the usual boy meets girl trope, even if it would have just made me realise sooner that same-sex relationships were as deserving of celebration as heterosexual ones. With that in mind, I can’t help but think that other children would benefit from the same thing: from reading about diverse characters and relationships just as easily as they could read about the same characters and relationships which most books represent. That is why I hope that my story, which celebrates two gay main characters and a same-sex wedding and royal coronation, is one that will help children appreciate the beauty of being different.

Being a debut author is incredibly exciting, and being a debut author with a book which celebrates diversity is something I am very grateful for. I’m especially thankful since David Roberts’ beautiful illustrations in A Match for a Mermaid give every character, no matter how small the part they play is, a personality and a unique look. I think he made the book into an even bigger, and greater, celebration of humanity than I could have imagined, and I know that many children will be able to look at his pictures and appreciate characters who may look like them (despite their tails or tentacles) or who they can admire for their own reasons. 

As well as David Roberts, I have Pop-Up Projects to thank for bringing my story and characters to life. Because of them, Malu and Brooke have the opportunity to teach children that loving someone is brave, especially when you love someone the world doesn’t expect you to love. They can also preach the fact that being open about who you love can change your life!

Pop-Up once described A Match for a Mermaid as a fairytale with a twist, and I have remembered that description with pride; as someone who has always loved fairy stories and classic romantic narratives, I am honoured to think that I created a story which is worthy of the fairytale label, especially since it revolves around two LGBTQ characters. With the confidence bestowed upon me from Pop-Up believing in me and my story, I hope to release more children’s books which celebrate diversity and differences whilst they inspire and entertain young readers.

A big thank you to Eleanor Cullen for the blog to Pop Up Festival for organising the innovative project and to Nicky Potter for the opportunity with the blog.

It is a huge pleasure to welcome Jamila Gavin to the blog for the second day of our Pop Up takeover.  Jamila’s first book was The Magic Orange Tree, a collection of short stories.  Jamila won the Whitbread prize with her novel Coram Boy and her Grandpa Chatterji books were turn into a television series.  We are delighted to welcome Jamila to the blog.

You could argue that every story you write, every act you make, makes a difference – good or bad. That’s why Dylan Calder’s brief to his ten writers: to write a story about “difference,” was so brilliant, and thought provoking.

Dylan wanted to celebrate ten years of his amazing Pop Up charity, whose sole aim is to bring authors and their books together with children – and going that extra crucial step – to put a book into the hands of every child that attended one of their sessions.

Many of us who have been brought up with books from the cradle, will go to the grave in the company of books, but it is astonishing to know that there are children, in whose households there are no books. For Dylan, every gift of a book was a gift of making a difference.

When Dylan asked me to be one of his ten writers, a book which I had written years ago, The Wormholers leapt into my head. It was about Sophie, a non-verbal quadriplegic who had gone down a wormhole into a parallel universe and found freedom as a whale.

For me, her story wasn’t over. Sophie had continued to live inside me.

In The Wormholers she had been free to explore different time zones and universes; her body had found water, and been in its natural element. Yet, at the end, she chooses to return to her family in her own world, with all its difficulties. I had left in her wheelchair at the top of the stairs, with her bewildered parents asking, “How did you get up there?”

The chance to explore the next stage, albeit in just 3000 words, was something I couldn’t resist, especially when the request from Dylan came with an illustrator, Jacinta Read.

And so, we started work on In Her Element. Jacinta began to send in some wonderfully imaginative depictions of Sophie, and her room- mate, and the sea, and whales and, most gloriously, the colour blue.

 Sophie’s story, isn’t just about finding the place or home where you feel you belong, it’s about the extreme difficulties of disability being an obstacle to acceptance in the mainstream world. I felt it was also a metaphor for a wider range of obstacles to being part of society and belonging.  Issues of race, colour, and “otherness,” were themes which had always been at the heart of most of my writing from the very beginning. I was continually interested in where one felt “at home.” For so many, it will be where they were born and brought up, yet for others, it’s as though they were born into, if not the wrong universe, but another parallel universe.

When writing The Wormholers, I had become fascinated by the theories of Stephen Hawking, and his work on Time, other universes, parallel universes, imaginary numbers, and “wormholes.” As someone who had a phobia for numbers in school, and had soon been separated from the sciences into the arts, it also disguised my imaginative interest in such things, even without the aptitude.

But my initial interest in how people with such disability communicate, began with the story of Helen Keller. Born in America’s deep south in Alabama in 1880, she became both blind and deaf at the age of nineteen months, possibly due to scarlet fever. Her future looked bleak, as her speech too would undoubtedly be affected, even though she had already spoken her first words around the age of one. She seemed destined to be deaf, blind and, consequently, mute.

She was a frustrated and unruly seven- year old, when Anne Sullivan came into her life, sent to be her teacher by the Perkins Institute for the Deaf. This remarkable relationship of teacher and pupil was inspiring and even more so, because it revealed what a highly intelligent young woman Keller was. It was thanks to Anne Sullivan’s extraordinary belief in her that she grew up to go on to Harvard and on to a distinguished career as a writer, lecturer and campaigner. Most importantly, it made me realise that people can have all sorts of apparently debilitating afflictions, but which can cover a totally functioning and intelligent brain. I had noticed how people with disabilities could be treated as infantile:  they were spoken to as rather stupid, with louder voices as if they were deaf, even when they were not deaf. 

Perhaps we should be less judgmental about children being absorbed with screens.  For so many children, and especially those like Sophie, technology makes a massive difference. It can mean an independence almost undreamed of thirty years ago. It means that not only can a present- day Sophie lead an independent life, with access to the written or spoken word, but she can write her own stories too.

It’s a privilege to be joined on the blog by Nicola Davies, Jackie Morris and Cathy Fisher to talk about their books and, in particular, their stunning illustrations. Later this month, they will be discussing their creative practices and the importance of the natural world as part of two exciting free events, live from Jackie’s kitchen:  ‘Picture Perfect’ and ‘Marking the Page’.

Nicola, Jackie and Cathy – welcome and thank you for taking the time to join us on the blog.

Your books are absolutely stunning, not only in terms of the illustrations, but also the perceptive use of vocabulary and the additional imagery they conjure in the mind of the reader. In your opinion, what makes picture books so special?

Nicola: SOOO many things! Picture books are a unique art form very undervalued and underestimated by most adults. They can speak about the most complex and difficult issues in ways that reach out across barriers of age and culture. The subtle marriage of picture and words communicates through mind and heart and makes a sum much greater than its two parts. We focus so much on literacy that we forget about that other very important kind, visual literacy, and the way information and emotion can be carried pictorially. I would argue very strongly for schools and parents to keep reading picture books to children - and adults - across all ages.

Cathy: Picture books are absolutely vital. I’ve been very lucky to illustrate Nicola’s stories as all her stories are fabulous, inspiring, beautifully written, thoughtful and have important messages. Good pictures add layers of visual narrative and meaning to a story and can make it more accessible. Good picture books for young children are the beginning of a love for stories, a growing imagination, a love for reading and appreciation for art - all vital for our well-being.

Jackie: It’s the space between the images and words, where the reader lives, with their imagination. That’s what makes the picture book a special country to visit.

As a society, we view picture books as being predominantly for young children yet your work seems to challenge this concept. Are picture books just for children or are they as equally important across all generations?

Jackie: Picture books are for anyone who wishes to read them. They can deal with challenging subjects, leaving space for conversations to arise around them. In many ways they are art books, or the best of them are anyway.

Nicola: Picture books speak across ages. They cut out the noise and get to the heart of what really matters. The Day War Came was used to lobby MPs who had voted against the Dubs Amendment; just as children’s clear sense of fairness sometimes calls adult morality to account, so picture books can offer a clear lens through which we can all see the world as it is and how it could and should be. 

Cathy: It’s my belief that picture books should be for all ages. I wish there were more good picture books for young and old. As an illustrator I don’t think pictures for a story should be trivialised or over simplified for young children - ’dumbing down’ an illustration is an insult to their intelligence.

Nicola, as an author, many of your books include sensitive and important messages, not just about the natural world but also about emotional experiences. Perfect addresses disability, The Pond focuses on the loss of a loved one, The New Girl depicts exclusion and acceptance, whilst Last awakens readers to the importance of extinction and conservation. Why has it been so important to you to utilise the picture book format to portray these stories?

Children are often excluded from conversations about big things, things that affect their lives. Adults exclude them to protect children from the darkness of the world, but also to protect themselves from having to explain and discuss uncomfortable things. I experienced this as a small child and it was incredibly distressing. So, I’m passionate about openness and inclusion for children. I hope what my books do is open up conversations, support adults to talk with their children and support children to understand and to ask questions. All things can be talked about if you have the right context, framework and language - fears, shames, terrors, monsters, mysteries – they are all better brought into the light and looked at, especially if you have a story to hold your hand.

When you get the first seed of an idea, how do you nurture and develop it into a finished project? Does your creative process focus entirely on the book and the message you want to convey or do you have external influences on the direction of the piece?

Nicola: Sometimes it just comes. I cook it quietly, almost sub consciously, and then the finished text arrives in a very short time; The Promise, Last, The Day War Came, The Pond and Perfect all came that way. But with others like Grow and Lots, where complex science has to be distilled, the process is much longer. The hardest thing with those books is finding the thread, the single most important message that the books must deliver and the idea, image or concept that delivers it. Sometimes that takes weeks and lots of very, very careful word by word construction. As for external influences - well the problem with non-fiction is that everybody has an opinion so the editorial process can be excruciating! 

Jackie: All my writing and painting revolves around either trying to tell a story or trying to understand something. It’s my way of investigating things, from the shape of a kingfisher, it’s colour, its flight, to the meaning of death and loss; apart from Can You See a Little Bear? and the Classic Nursery Rhymes book, which are both just fun.

Cathy, your illustrations are so full of emotion and understanding for the experiences of the characters. I was particularly drawn to the illustration of anger and grief in The Pond when the young boy ran upstairs screaming at his Dad for dying. Similarly, in Perfect there is the sense of frustration in the imagery when the boy realises the new baby isn’t as he expected. What techniques do you use in your illustrative process to achieve this?

I am only interested in illustrating pictures for stories that are beautifully written and inclusive, which open minds and hearts and offer shared conversation for children, adults, parents, and teachers. Books that bring comfort, are supportive, give insight and help readers to express emotions that are often hard to talk about - books that inspire. I pour my own emotions into the pictures. I use colour, layers of tone and texture and the body language of characters in the stories to express emotion and atmosphere.

Jackie, The Lost Words was awarded the Kate Greenaway medal in 2019 and was also recognised as the most beautiful book of the year by UK booksellers. It is a collaboration with Robert Macfarlane about the loss of nature words from the lives of children, but has become a much larger discussion on the loss of nature to the whole of society. The large-format and style of the book is exquisite and emphasises not only the spell-like qualities of the poetry inside but also that books like this should be on proud display. What techniques did you use in your illustrative process when developing the book and why do you think it has been so successfully received, not just by the Greenaway judging panel, booksellers and children but by society as a whole?

The illustrations are worked in watercolour and gold leaf. Each piece was worked as a soul song to the very best of my ability at the time. A soul song. Why it caught in the minds and imaginations of others I can’t say but it is an honour to have one’s work recognised and our readers have taught us many things and told us many stories about our book. The only thing I can do is to continue trying to do the best that I can. I learn from each painting and hope to improve each time. I love to play with different ideas and materials.

The mission of the Carnegie and Greenaway awards is to ‘inspire and empower the next generation to create a better world through books and reading’, something which all of your books do through intricate illustration and powerful, yet accessible narrative. By creating connections to the natural environment in young children, what impact do you hope to have on the future?

Nicola: Well of course I want to bring down the patriarchy and bring about a green revolution! What I hope is that my work is quietly but significantly subversive, strengthening children’s innate fascination with nature, giving them a connection that offers them personal solace and perhaps, just perhaps, inspiring them to become advocates for the natural world. I need to do more. I feel I can never do enough. I have a new novel for older children coming out in November that I hope will more directly inspire green action and change through approaching the subject of capitalism’s assaults on the natural world in clear allegory. 

Jackie: It’s an influence on the now that I am after, not the future. I hope that children will show their parents the books, spend time in the pages, then go out into the world and realise what we stand to lose if we continue to live the way we do.

As well as a shared passion for creating beautiful and profound works of art, you are all very good friends. How does your friendship contribute to the work you produce?

Cathy: I met Nicola because she asked me to illustrate Perfect after seeing one of my pictures. I loved her straight away. I met Jackie through Nicola and loved her straight away too. They are incredible women - deeply imaginative, creative, skilled, knowledgeable, thoughtful, supportive, perceptive, brilliant women. Illustrating their stories, working with them, being in a bubble during lockdown, has influenced my artwork and makes me feel very blessed.

Nicola: Jackie and Cathy are my first audience for things, nearly always. Cathy’s work directly inspires the words I write for her and Jackie’s clear divergent thinking often sparks new thoughts and ideas. We support each other. Publishing is no bed of roses, especially for women and especially for women who are older, who don’t live in London and who do not have sharp elbows. So, we fight for each other when we are not able to fight for ourselves. And we laugh and walk and talk – it’s wonderful to have such friends, such colleagues, such soul mates.

Jackie: We might get more work done if we weren’t such good friends, but it wouldn’t have the heart that it does. The support of friends is what you need in life, in work, always.

I know you are all busy working on lots of incredible projects – what can we look forward to next?

Nicola: I have a new novel The Song That Sings Us (with Jackie’s cover!) coming out in the Autumn. I’m going to work hard to publicise it because it delivers a message about our need to prioritise nature that I really want people to hear. I’m also starting work on an opera based on The Promise. I have a collection of poems three quarters finished for Petr Horacek – I’m writing to his pictures which is a fabulous way to work. The book is going to be wonderful and will really show off Petr's extraordinary art.

Jackie: I’m working on a Book of Birds with Robert Macfarlane and working with Spellsongs on the next album, with a tour coming up in January, all things being well. I have two backlisted titles coming out in October - East of the Sun, West of the Moon and The Wild Swans. I am also still finishing Feather, Leaf Bark & Stone and James (Mayhew) is illustrating Mrs Noah’s Garden. Meanwhile, I have a few illustrations to do for Nicola’s The Song that Sings Us, and a two-book contract with Cathy.

Join Nicola, Jackie and Cathy for ‘Picture Perfect’ and ‘Marking the Page’. Presented by Lancaster LitFest in partnership with Graffeg Books, and hosted by Jake Hope, these events will delight those with an interest in illustration, nature and children’s books, whilst being of particular interest to the Kate Greenaway shadowing groups.

‘Picture Perfect’ is on Thursday 20 May at 12.30pm, whilst ‘Marking the Page’ is on Friday 21 May at 7.30pm.

A big thank you to Nicola Davies, Cathy Fisher and Jackie Morris for the interview, to Graffeg for the opportunity and to Laura Jones for conducting this.

We are delighted to welcome Geraldine McCaughrean, twice winner of the CILIP Carnegie Medal (1988 and 2018) to the blog.  Geraldine is one of today's most successful and highly regarded children's authors. In addition to the Carnegie, she has won the  Whitbread Children's Book Award (three times), the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize, the Smarties Bronze Award (four times) and the Blue Peter Book of the Year Award. In 2005 she was chosen from over 100 other authors to write the official sequel to J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan. Peter Pan in Scarlet was published in 2006 to wide critical acclaim.

Without ever leaving my desk, I have journeyed to many, many countries to gather up their history, flora, fauna, traditions, climate and adventure-potential. Usually, it’s because I have just discovered some morsel of historical fact that has intrigued me into starting a book. I crave to take a reader somewhere they’re unlikely to have been – unlikely ever to go: Antarctica, for instance, or 13^th century Cathay or Noah’s Ark – somewhere that will take both of us out of ourselves and shake us like a rug.

In my latest novel, The Supreme Lie, the tiny country of Afalia is even farther afield in a way, because it’s invented. As its name suggests, it’s flawed, and prey to all those too-familiar faults: rich owners / poor workers, corruption, scheming ambition, too great a split between countryside and city, and an economy based on too few products. The catalyst for the plot is a flood. And a real flood was the historical fact that sparked the novel: the great Mississippi flood of 1928.

However, this time I set myself the task of inventing an entirely fictional country, complete with geography, fauna, a back story and a plausible assortment of residents. It’s the first time I’ve ever attempted it, and I can recommend it as enormous fun! Also, it means that no-one will be able to pull me up on my factual content!

I never set out to include an ‘issue’ or ‘moral’ or ‘life lesson’: all I’m after is adventure, entertainment and interesting characters the reader can love, hate and mind about. But somehow some preoccupation usually creeps out from behind my brain and insinuates itself into the story. This time it was the power of the Press and the fallibility of those to whom we look hopefully for leadership, exemplary wisdom and to keep our best interests at heart. Just so long as Adventure comes first: Adventure and The Cast, of course. The Villain, the Good Guy, the Innocent, the Chorus ... can characterisation really be as bald as that? It doesn’t feel like it. My actors seem to walk into their roles from somewhere else and, from then on, do half the work, take half the decisions, surprise me. It’s the chief joy of writing fiction – for me, anyway.

In this case I’ve even included animals, who provided a different perspective and also did things I wasn’t expecting. When I was at junior school and we were allowed to write stories, we were usually given a theme. But whatever the theme, my stories were always about horses. I was horse mad, but horseless. So, I rode an invisible horse to school, holding my satchel strap for reins. Since then, I’ve rather neglected the four-legged species. So here are Daisy and Heinz, doggedly doggy, town and country, chalk and cheese, destined only briefly to meet.  

You could say, my books come not from experience but from the lack of it, starting off with a lack of horse and moving on through a lack of daring, travel, influence or genius. (Well, look at that! I’m the inversion of Katherine Rundell!)

Oh, but there’s that other place they come from: the other place to which I rode my invisible horse: the Library. Talking to top juniors the other day, I asked them to picture the characters, after dark, descending on ropes from the bookshelves of their School Library – kings and gods, giant apes and sailors, Roman soldiers and Odin’s eight-legged horse. Night time fetches them out from beneath their covers, to fraternise on the Story Mat and for Sleipnir to graze on the carpet pile.

That is how I still choose to envisage libraries: their books the serried rows of beds in which stories lie dozing, waiting for the reader to find them and take them home for a memorable interchange of ideas. While library doors have been closed, imagine the panic of their numberless inmates inexplicably cut off from a career of entertaining and stimulating the young - the bored - the restless – the lonely minds.

I’ll be seventy this year. I never meant to be, but accidents happen, and here it comes, like a charging bull, to toss me out of the way, maybe, and make room for younger authors. Well, it can try ... but it won’t stop me writing. I spent a glorious lockdown writing poems, plays and, of course, another book.  And while those invented characters remain in my imagination – before they slip away from me to pursue their lives in someone else’s head – I shall point them in the direction of libraries and tell them what comrades they will find there, what cross-fertilization, what magic, as the words jumble and tumble from book to book on the long dark shelves, in the dead of night. 

Visit www.geraldinemccaughrean.co.uk to find out more about Geraldine’s work.

Twitter: @GMcCaughrean

The Supreme Lie is available now from Usborne Publishing for readers age 12+ £8.99

Thank you to Geraldine McCaughrean for the blog and to Liz Scott for the opportunity.  Do check out the readers' notes below.