Take a look at this exclusive behind the scenes preview of Little Angel Theatre’s adaptation of my book There May Be a Castle! You can buy tickets here.
There May Be a Castle rehearsal video is out!
Category: Books
There May Be A Play!
It has been a long journey but well worth the wait – I am so excited that one of my books closest to my heart, There May Be a Castle, has been adapted for the stage by Barb Jungr and Samantha Lane, with music, and puppets by Judith Hope.
I cannot wait to see it, and hope to see you there…
There May Be Castle
Based on the book by Piers Torday
A Little Angel Theatre production
13 November 2021 – 23 January 2022
On a frozen Christmas Eve, a young boy called Mouse Mallory, and his family, set off across the snow-white valley to visit his grandparents. They never arrive.
When Mouse wakes up, he finds himself in a magical landscape, with only a talkative sheep and a very bossy horse for company. So begins Mouse’s extraordinary quest through a world of wonder. A world of monsters, minstrels, dangerous knights and mysterious wizards; a world of terrifying danger but also more excitement than Mouse has ever known.
A remarkable story about love, loss and the power of the imagination, from award-winning writer Piers Torday, is adapted into a musical puppetry production by the creators of Little Angel’s The Smartest Giant in Town and The Pixie and the Pudding.
Praise for the book:
“Original, ingenious and bold … I am still reeling.” – The Sunday Times
“an outstanding book and a future classic” – The School Librarian
There May be a Castle is aimed at ages 7-11.
Credits:
Based on the book by Piers Torday
Adapted by Barb Jungr and Samantha Lane
Directed by Samantha Lane
Music and lyrics by Barb Jungr
Puppets designed by Judith Hope
Set and costumes designed by Ellie Mills
Lighting designed by Sherry Coenen
Image copyright © Rob Biddulph 2016.
Lockdown Stories Return!
Lockdown time means Storytime is back!
I will be reading The Dark Wild, the second book in The Last Wild trilogy, out aloud at 2.30pm every weekday from Weds 6th Jan, a chapter a day, live on Instagram, or catch up later on my YouTube channel, until we’re out.
Hope to see some of you there.
Prequel to The Last Wild announced!
Delighted to announce that, eight years later, there will be a prequel to THE LAST WILD.
THE WILD BEFORE will be published on August 19th 2021 with Hachette Children’s.
Drawing on themes of climate change, hope and friendship, The Wild Before returns the reader to the world of the beloved The Last Wild series, before the redeye virus has taken hold of every animal in the land, years before the events of The Last Wild have unfolded. The Wild Before tells the story of a young hare who is the world’s only hope of saving the legendary Mooncalf and avoiding certain disaster.
And I can’t wait for you all to read it!
Artwork: Thomas Flintham
National Writing Day Challenge
For #NationalWritingDay here is a mini story competition!
Send your children’s responses to story@pierstorday.co.uk
The best one wins set of my books signed + £100 book token!
Maximum 2 sides A4, please send as typed Word documents if possible.
Competition closes 24/07/20, winner announced 30/08/20, the judges decision is final.
Ideas to entertain lockdown children from Katherine Rundell!
Here are some brilliant ideas to entertain lockdown children.
Award-winning children’s author, Katherine Rundell, has edited The Book of Hopes: Words and Pictures to Comfort, Inspire and Entertain Children in Lockdown , which is completely free for all children and families. The extraordinary collection includes short stories, poems, essays and pictures from more than 110 children’s writers and illustrators, including Lauren Child, Anthony Horowitz, Greg James and Chris Smith, Michael Morpurgo, Liz Pichon, Axel Scheffler, Francesca Simon, Jacqueline Wilson – and Katherine herself.
I’m delighted to have contributed small essay about the beauty of hares in amongst such treasures.
The Book of Hopes aims to comfort, inspire and encourage children during lockdown through delight, new ideas, ridiculous jokes and heroic tales. There are true accounts of cats and hares and plastic-devouring caterpillars; there are doodles and flowers; revolting poems and beautiful poems; and there are stories of space travel and new shoes and dragons.
The collection is dedicated to the doctors, nurses, carers, porters, cleaners and everyone currently working in hospitals. Bloomsbury intends to publish a gift book based on the project to be published in the autumn in support of NHS Charities Together.
“A few weeks ago, I began a Hope Project; I emailed some of the children’s writers and artists whose work I love most. I asked them to write something very short, fiction or non-fiction, or draw something that would make the children reading it feel like possibility-ists: something that would make them laugh or wonder or snort or smile. The response was magnificent, which shouldn’t have surprised me, because children’s writers and illustrators are professional hunters of hope. I hope that the imagination can be a place of shelter for children in the hard months ahead and that The Book of Hopes might be useful in that, even if only a little.”
Katherine Rundell
Reading Stories Aloud
It’s wonderful that so many of you want to continue reading my books out to your class online during the school closure. Normally this is more complicated than it sounds due to copyright issues (my publisher holds the audio book rights) but owing to the exceptional circumstances we find ourselves in, Hachette Children’s Group have generously granted an open license to September 30th, and you can find the details below.
All of my titles are available as audiobooks on Audible.
And I will also be reading all of my titles out loud, daily on weekdays, at 2.30pm every day, on Instagram Live (@piers_torday), a chapter a day, beginning with The Last Wild. The chapters will be available on Instagram TV for 24 hours.
Happy Reading and Listening! #unitedinbooks
Hachette Children’s Group: Open Licences and Permissions for Online Story-Time and Classroom Read-Aloud Videos and Live Events – information
In order to encourage reading and classroom read-aloud experiences, and to support schools, bookshops and public libraries forced to close by the COVID-19 situation, Hachette Children’s Group is permitting authors, illustrators, teachers, librarians and booksellers to create and share story-time and read-aloud videos and live events on closed educational platforms or streamed temporarily on a live platform.
GUIDELINES FOR EVERYONE
Teachers, librarians, booksellers, authors and illustrators providing content for children during the period 19th March to 30th September 2020:
- Should announce the title of the book and the name of the author and/or illustrator as part of each video
- Should notify us via email (addressed to HCG.editorial@hachettechildrens.co.uk) when they post or stream a story-time or read-aloud video or live event, providing the following information:
- Name and address of the library, school, or shop
- Title, author and ISBN of the book that is read
- Contact information for the individual responsible for the reading
- The educational or social media platform on which the video or live event is posted or held and a link to that video or live event
Financial gain
For clarity, permission is granted only for free use of the readings. If you are planning to charge for any use of these recordings, you should contact HCG.editorial@hachettechildrens.co.uk in the first instance, seeking formal agreement, which may not be granted.
Guidelines for educational settings
- School story-time or classroom read-aloud videos in which an Hachette Children’s Group book is read aloud and the book is displayed may only be created and posted to closed educational platforms
- These storytime and classroom read-aloud videos may be hosted on the educational platform until the end of September 2020, after which they must be removed from the educational platform, unless this permission is extended by formal agreement
Guidelines for public libraries and bookshops
For authors, illustrators, booksellers and librarians who wish to provide a story-time reading or other read-aloud experience to young people who would otherwise visit the library or bookshop in person:
- Story time or read-aloud live events in which an Hachette Children’s Group book is read out loud and the book is displayed may be streamed live, in real time, on social media platforms such as YouTube, Facebook Live, Twitter, and Instagram
- These story time or read-aloud live events may not be maintained in the archive of the social media platform and appropriate measures should be taken to ensure that videos of the live events are not retained. Because these platforms automatically archive live events by default, when your event has concluded, please locate the recorded live video in your account (YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.) and delete it.
Our guidance on the percentage of content to be recorded for hosting on open platforms, is usually to follow standard permissions practice, specifically designed to protect IP. However, we acknowledge that we are not operating in normal circumstances, so are happy to allow authors or illustrators, who wish to do so, to host recorded content of themselves reading their book/s on open platforms, until the 30th September.
If you are sharing your content with a third party platform, please do let us know so we can support this activity online and please do make a note to ensure the content is taken down by 30th September. Of course, no one knows how long the current situation is going to go on for, so it may be that we decide to extend this date and we will of course let you know.
Corona Virus – Update
I hope everyone is keeping safe at this challenging time for us all.
Sadly all my school and public events are either cancelled or postponed, check back for details in due course.
If you want to stay entertained during the outbreak, many independent booksellers and so far most branches of Waterstones remain open, and are scaling up their delivery services.
All my titles are available as e-books from the usual online retailers, links on my book pages.
All my titles are available as audio books from Audible, links on my book pages.
I will shortly be sharing classroom resources for all my books, from this website.
And soon, I will be doing readings of my books on Facebook and Instagram, as well as creative writing tutorials to help with the home schooling, check my social media channels for details.
Stay well!
Piers
Happy National Writing Day!
It’s National Writing Day 2019 and I am celebrating with the fantastic creative writing centre The Ministry of Stories.
Catch my video of writing tips below, or download their FREE Last Wild creative writing resource for use with your young people – discover where writing can take you!
The Frozen Sea – cover reveal!
I am delighted to reveal the cover and title of the next instalment in The Lost Magician series…
THE FROZEN SEA!
It is 1984 and forty years since Simon, Patricia and Evelyn and Larry first stepped through a magical library door into the enchanted world of Folio. When Patricia’s daughter, Jewel, makes a mysterious discovery in an old bookshop, she begins a quest that will make her question everything she thought she knew. Summoned to Folio, she is sent on a perilous rescue mission, helped only by her pet hamster and a malfunctioning robot.
Their mission to the Frozen Sea will bring them face-to-face with a danger both more deadly and more magnificent than they ever imagined.
What Jewel discovers will change not just who she thinks she is, but who we all think we are…
The book is due to be published on the 5th September 2019 and you can pre-order from Waterstones here
And enter a competition to win a proof giveaway here