Friday, June 13, 2008
The link - or rather the not-link - below
I've been trying to make it a link but tragically it won't do it, so you'll need ot type it in with your own little fingers if you want to see it.... it's worth it....
This is so FABULOUS... dear Lionlovers, if you ever thought a Lion couldn't really love a boy, watch this....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xr1pWzoLvT8
The story goes, they bought the lion at Harrods department Store, in the exotic pets dept, and he lived with them for a year in the King's Road in London, before growing too big, when they sent him back to the wild..... They were warned he probably wouldn't recognise him.......
I'm secretly thinking the Young Lion would be like this with Charlie...
Thursday, June 12, 2008
COMPETITION WINNER!!!! YES This means you, KATIE WRIGHT!
We have a winner for the competition!
Yesterday we all met up in Newcastle, at the exceptionally lovely Seven Stories centre, which is seven storeys tall, and full of interesting things about children's literature, including, yesterday, the full Zizou (ie Isabel and I); Louise from Puffin Books, and our winner, Katie Wright from Wakefield, with her mum Wendy, her dad Cal, and her brother Elliott, known as the Alien, and a big bunch of very nice Newcastle schoolkids too.
There were more than 5000 entries for our competition, and production of books at Puffin ground to a halt while the entire staff stopped working in order to read them all. They sent the best ones over to the Zizou Canoe, where Isabel and I retired to our hammocks to give them some serious consideration. They were exceptionally good.
The reason we chose Katie's was because it was a complete perfect little story, and it fitted exactly on to one page....no, really. A lot of the other pieces of writing were interesting and exciting and well-written and all, but were actually the beginnings of much longer stories, or bits of novels, or scraps of genius, or almost poetry... and we were looking for a story.
I'm going to ask Katie if we can put her winning story here on the page for you all to read, so we can see what you think. Also, we've got some photos of her sitting in the special Authors' Throne they keep in their Reading Attic at Seven Stories, and I'll get hold of those too.
Oh yes, so, yesterday, we had this lovely celebration to give Katie her prize - a Puffin Book a week, for a year. She went off clutching the catalogue, with her little pen ready to tick off the ones she wants, beaming like an extremely happy bookworm.
Also, we signed and presented to Seven Stories a GIANT BOOK OF NEBO. Tragically we weren't able to arrange the magic which would fill the book with every story ever written, and whichever one you want when you open the book, so instead we filled it with.... the best of the stories entered in the competition! We are going to have to go back to Newcastle in order to sit down for a week and read them all again in the luxury of the Authors' Throne. And to research the ghost story. 'What ghost story?'I hear you cry. Ah, well...you'll see.
So yesterday was a good Zizou day. Today we are back to walking the dog and taking French exams (yes Zizou has a dog now as well asall the ducks and the lizard and the dead tortoise. She is called Luna, she's black and shiny with pointy ears which stick up when she's excited and she has vertical take-off, which means she can just jump straight up off the floor, all four legs at once, just like that, about four feet in the air - four feet off the ground, in both senses of the phrase. When she does it inside the front door she is really funny, because you can see her bouncing in and out of view behind the glass window. I'll try to get a picture of her doing it. She is a lovely lovely dog.)
The seat of the pants must now return to the seat of the authorial chair. Ancient Greece is waiting for me.
By the way,anyone read Cosmic, by Frank Cottrell Boyce? It is a work of unadulterated GENIUS.
Yesterday we all met up in Newcastle, at the exceptionally lovely Seven Stories centre, which is seven storeys tall, and full of interesting things about children's literature, including, yesterday, the full Zizou (ie Isabel and I); Louise from Puffin Books, and our winner, Katie Wright from Wakefield, with her mum Wendy, her dad Cal, and her brother Elliott, known as the Alien, and a big bunch of very nice Newcastle schoolkids too.
There were more than 5000 entries for our competition, and production of books at Puffin ground to a halt while the entire staff stopped working in order to read them all. They sent the best ones over to the Zizou Canoe, where Isabel and I retired to our hammocks to give them some serious consideration. They were exceptionally good.
The reason we chose Katie's was because it was a complete perfect little story, and it fitted exactly on to one page....no, really. A lot of the other pieces of writing were interesting and exciting and well-written and all, but were actually the beginnings of much longer stories, or bits of novels, or scraps of genius, or almost poetry... and we were looking for a story.
Stories! That's what we like! Stories!
I'm going to ask Katie if we can put her winning story here on the page for you all to read, so we can see what you think. Also, we've got some photos of her sitting in the special Authors' Throne they keep in their Reading Attic at Seven Stories, and I'll get hold of those too.
Oh yes, so, yesterday, we had this lovely celebration to give Katie her prize - a Puffin Book a week, for a year. She went off clutching the catalogue, with her little pen ready to tick off the ones she wants, beaming like an extremely happy bookworm.
Also, we signed and presented to Seven Stories a GIANT BOOK OF NEBO. Tragically we weren't able to arrange the magic which would fill the book with every story ever written, and whichever one you want when you open the book, so instead we filled it with.... the best of the stories entered in the competition! We are going to have to go back to Newcastle in order to sit down for a week and read them all again in the luxury of the Authors' Throne. And to research the ghost story. 'What ghost story?'I hear you cry. Ah, well...you'll see.
So yesterday was a good Zizou day. Today we are back to walking the dog and taking French exams (yes Zizou has a dog now as well asall the ducks and the lizard and the dead tortoise. She is called Luna, she's black and shiny with pointy ears which stick up when she's excited and she has vertical take-off, which means she can just jump straight up off the floor, all four legs at once, just like that, about four feet in the air - four feet off the ground, in both senses of the phrase. When she does it inside the front door she is really funny, because you can see her bouncing in and out of view behind the glass window. I'll try to get a picture of her doing it. She is a lovely lovely dog.)
The seat of the pants must now return to the seat of the authorial chair. Ancient Greece is waiting for me.
By the way,anyone read Cosmic, by Frank Cottrell Boyce? It is a work of unadulterated GENIUS.
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