Martyn Bedford Inspires Students at Stretford High

By Naeemah Salloo and Iqra Malik, Year 9, Stretford High School

'Have you ever thought that something was straightforward till you met someone and realised it wasn't?'

On Tuesday 15th March, we were lucky enough to have the amazing author, Martyn Bedford visit our school.

The talk, led by the author of multiple adult and teenage fiction books, allowed us to emphasise with a real life author and have an insight into his life. It's one thing to read a book, visualise the words in your head and care about the characters that the storyline revolves around, but it is another extraordinary experience to meet the person who put the words on the pages and created this entire fictional masterpiece.

Every student was silent, hanging onto every word of Martyn Bedford as he narrated his journey on the way to writing and publication all the way from his high school days when he was the same age as us and hadn't even began to imagine life as a writer. It could even make us think - could we be like him in however many years time, standing with several published books and delivering a speech to many young people, inspiring them? The thought was rather interesting.

After a reading of Bedford's new novel, 20 Questions for Gloria, we had a Q&A session, a workshop was then led for selective students. Of course, the exciting workshop was led by none other than the author himself.

Even if you had no dreams of writing and hadn't ever constructed a work of fiction, this workshop allowed you to. Bedford had taught us a key piece of detail from his own writing experience- characters. During the workshop, we all created our own characters using postcards as stimuli which then led on to us beginning to develop our own story. Who knows; perhaps Martyn Bedford has inspired the next generation of eloquent writers?

***

This blog has been written by Naeemah Salloo and Iqra Malik, Year 9 pupils from Stretford High School. Martyn Bedford visited Stretford High School courtesy of Walker Books to talk about his latest book 20 Questions for Gloria. Books were provided by Urmston Bookshop. The Manchester Children’s Book Festival work with a number of authors and publishers to bring authors into schools. If you are interested in hosting an author event in your school please contact mcbf@mmu.ac.uk

L.A. Weatherly Celebrates World Book Day With MCBF

 

 

World Book Day on Thursday 3rd March saw Manchester Children's Book Festival visit local schools with author L.A. Weatherly, to talk about her fantastic YA novel Broken Sky.

Lee and MCBF Director Kaye Tew visited two Manchester schools, armed with boxes of books supplied by Urmston Bookshop and destined for the school libraries and into the hands of eager readers.

Broken Sky is set in a futuristic world where there is no war. Carefully controlled fighter-plane duels decide disagreements, which means the world can live in relative peace, but all is not well. Though the book is set 2000 years in the future, it has echoes of 1940s America and, like the world of 1940's America, there is a dictator hell-bent on ruling the world.

London-based American author, Lee, talked lucky pupils, first at Whalley Range High School for Girls, and then at the brand new Dean's Trust Academy on Stockport Road, Manchester, through the process that led to Broken Sky being written. She talked about her inspiration for the characters and how they developed and also about the starting point for her idea - WW2 Spitfire planes. Lee knew that she wanted the planes her fighter pilot heroes to fly to be like those flown by pilots in WW2. So her research led flying-phobic Lee to actually go up in the air, not once, but twice, to get a real sense of how it actually feels.

Year 7 pupil Belkise shared a blog post on the event commenting, 'One paragraph from her book changed my world on how I saw writing. I have learnt so much in two hours, it’s like every word from her books started to fly around me and inspired me to write. Thank you Lee!’ You can read Belkise's full blog here.

Pupils from both schools asked fantastic questions. Teacher Laura Mason from Whalley Range High School for Girls said, "Thank you again for the brilliant experience with L.A. Weatherly last week, the girls have all been raving about how much they loved it and so many are reading her books – just the sort of response we wanted!"

 

***

This event was made possible by Usborne Publishing. Manchester Children's Book Festival work closely with publishers to offer author visits to schools. Usually, these are free, with author expenses covered by the publisher. We simply ask that schools provide a good-sized audience and agree to purchase books (either by inviting pupils to buy, or by buying a class set for the school library).

 

We have a number of authors lined up to visit schools in May and June. Please contact mcbf@mmu.ac.uk if you would like to organise a visit to your school.

Young Journalism Prize Winner Announced!

While we were out at Whalley Range High School with author LA Weatherly on World Book Day, we took the opportunity to present a special prize.

Last year, children from all over the North West were invited to write about their favourite books, poems and authors and to submit their work to the Manchester Children's Book Festival Reading and Writing Relay.

Hundreds of fantastic articles came flooding in, with lots of brilliant writers telling us all about their favourite stories and poems and what they love most about the festival. The best of these were published on our blog.

The MCBF team had a very tough job deciding which articles they liked best but we are very pleased to announce the title of 2015 MCBF Young Journalist of the Year has been awarded to… Zainab Imran!

Zainab, who goes to Whalley Range High School in Manchester, really impressed the MCBF team with her enthusiasm, fantastic articles about the festival and her amazing interview with Time Riders author, Alex Scarrow.

Lee Weatherly presented Zainab with £100 of Amazon vouchers. Fellow Whalley Range pupils also attended MCBF events and wrote for the blog. Taha Haque, Areeba Ahmed and Atiya Mahboob were each presented with £20 vouchers by Lee for their joint article about the MCBF Multi-Cultural Day.

Other runners-up for the MCBF Young Journalist of the year and whose work was also published on the blog were:

Joss Abbs-Brown, aged 11

Josh wrote a fantastic review of the festival that he and his family visit every year and also wowed the judges with the wonderful poem he wrote about his experiences called ‘A Writer’s World’.

Jonathan Clarke, aged 11

Jonathan wrote about his love of reading and how much he enjoys visiting his local library.

Thomas Clarke, aged 8

Thomas also wrote some fantastic book reviews for our blog including one of JRR Tolkien’s The Hobbit.

All runners-up have received £25 Amazon vouchers.

The work of these fantastic young writers can be seen on the MCBF blog. If you'd like to see your writing published on the MCBF blog send your reviews, opinion pieces or creative work to mcbf@mmu.ac.uk

If you fancy attending any MCBF events, with a view to blogging or vlogging about it, we're very happy to arrange tickets. Talk to your teacher, or email the team.

Check out the Manchester Children's Book Festival 2016 programme for upcoming events. You can watch Zainab interviewing Alex Scarrow - a masterclass in interviewing technique below:

 

Best-Selling Author Visits Whalley Range High School for World Book Day!

By Taha Hague, Year 9, Whalley Range High School

Last Thursday, at Whalley Range High School, we were greeted by an incredible author, L.A. Weatherly! The author of the best-selling Angel series came to stop by, to talk to us about her new book: Broken Sky, to a group of Year 7s and to the Creative Writing Club.

The author began with talking about the plot of the book and what inspired her to write the story. The book is set in the 1940s in America and is a breath taking first book of the trilogy. Central character, Amity, is in a ‘perfect’ world where peace and harmony rule and where war is illegal. Everything is not what it seems and when Amity wants to help people, in keeping name of her father, she discovers that nothing is perfect. In a world so broken, who can Amity trust? Find out by reading Lee’s first book which is available for purchase and be tempted to read all the books in the ‘Broken’ trilogy.

She later explained how the thought came to her about the concept of this fantastic story. She said:

"I was out one night, with my husband, and he was discussing a few things with me. I was completely zoned out and an idea immediately popped into my head! I had to tell someone and because my husband was sitting opposite me, I told him! He’s used to these kind of things, living with an author who constantly blurts out ideas and shares them, he has no problem. So I sat there talking about these brilliant ideas and what I could do with them!”

Later, she read out a snippet from her new book which grabbed the attention of the audience and made us engage immediately. Personally, I thought it was quite depressing but she assured us that throughout the book, it wasn’t entirely miserable and gloomy! She showed us a few impressive front covers of the book and how the front cover is now from what it used to be. Did you know that the original title of Broken Sky was Firegirl?

At the end of the author’s visit, she announced the prize winners for a blog that a few year 9s wrote at last year’s Manchester Children's Book Festival. Zainab Imran, won the overall prize with a massive £100 voucher. Myself, and my two friends (Areeba Ahmed and Atiya Mahboob) won runners up, with a £20 voucher each and we were all welcomed on stage by the author. Can I just say, that I SPOKE to her! She is such a genuinely wonderful person who gave each of us delightful advice that we will all carry with us into the future.

L.A. Weatherly Visits Whalley Range High School

 

By Belkise, Year 7, Whalley Range High School

 

Last Thursday, we walked to the hall with excitement building in our throats and our happiness growing larger and larger with every step.

 

As we got there and sat down, eyes were everywhere, waiting from the author. Silence. There was only one person on the stage: L.A. Weatherly was her name. I took a glance at the book covers and it was the same name! Students went wild as she introduced herself. She has written two new books, Broken Sky and Darkness Follows.

 

As she was talking about how she wrote the book, my interest in writing grew bigger and bigger every second of her speech. She read a paragraph of her books and my excitement grew even bigger too.

 

One paragraph from her book changed my world on how I saw writing. I have learnt so much in two hours, it’s like every word from her books started to fly around me and inspired me to write.

 

Thank you Lee!

 

***

This blog has been written by Belkise, Year 7, from Whalley Range High School. L.A. Weatherly visited Whalley Range High School with publicist Liz Scott to talk about her latest book Broken Sky and Darkness Follows. Books were provided by Urmston Bookshop. The Manchester Children’s Book Festival work with a number of authors and publishers to bring authors into schools. If you are interested in hosting an author event in your school please contact mcbf@mmu.ac.uk

Poetry Together: Behind the Scenes with our Poets - Fiona and Louisa

By Fiona and Louise

Fiona (41) and her daughter Louisa (9) were among the first entrants to the Poetry Together competition. MCBF thought it would be a great idea to ask them to talk about why they entered and to share with other entrants the challenges and rewards of writing a poem together. They also had some questions of their own for the judges.

We decided to write about a subject that is associated with childhood. We went for the broad theme of fairy tales and talked about all the things associated with that and our poem developed from there. So, our poem developed from a conversation. Louisa wanted it to rhyme - because 'poems should be catchy and memorable!'

We shared our writing process - we wrote at the same time and shared ideas, which helped with the structure our poem.

I'm an English and Creative writing teacher at A level so I have done lots of writing in the past - I've recently taken it up again and started to enter a few competitions - I ran the 'Poetry By Heart' recital competition last year and as a result went to Cambridge University and took part in some writing workshops, - it was fabulous and I did some free writing for the first time. I also run creative writing workshops in my local independent bookshop for kids during the school holidays.

Louisa loves writing - she's writing a book(!) and loves writing poems - the latest one was when her sister gave her 5 words that she had to include in a poem and it resulted in a great poem about a fish that wears a tie! 'Poetry Together' is great for me because it stopped me thinking about 'writing a poem' as such and just allowed creativity to rule - the mind of a child is fabulous because it's not constrained by 'the rules of poetry' and as a result I think the ideas generated were original because they weren't hampered by trying to be original - Does that even make sense?

I was surprised at how easy Louisa found it to be creative - she wasn't constantly second guessing and questioning herself - which was a real lesson for me.

I also think as adults we write about sadness and disappointment quite a lot (or maybe that's just me!). I find a cheerful poem a challenge - Louisa doesn't!

We decided to enter after seeing the flyer in The Portico Library and In Louisa's words because "We enjoy Poetry and we love each other!"

We decided on the title after we had completed the poem.

Louisa would like to ask the judges who inspires them and how old they were when they wrote their first poem?

Martin: I think any poem in which a fish wears a tie would inspire me! In terms of who inspires me, I’d have to say that a lot of the time it’s my own daughter. I’m not sure how old I was when I wrote my first poem, but I was definitely at primary school. I’m pretty sure it was after I saw some parakeets settle in a tree in the playground. I can’t remember if I was in a lesson or not. I probably shouldn’t say this, but they would have been much more interesting to me than what the teacher was saying…

If you have any questions for the judges or would like to share how you wrote your poem, get in touch at Poetrytogether@mmu.ac.uk.