'The new master of books for children' The Times
For #NationalWritingDay here is a mini story competition!
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.
Katherine Rundell
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:
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
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:
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.
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
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!
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
Curiouser and curiouser…announcing that I have been invited to revisit one of the great children’s books of all time, Alice in Wonderland, by Macmillan – who published the original story.
Joining other authors including Robin Stevens and Swapna Haddow, we have all have written stories based on Lewis Carroll’s Wonderland for Return to Wonderland, published in June, Peter Bunzl, Pamela Butchart, Maz Evans, Patrice Lawrence, Chris Smith, Lauren St John, Lisa Thompson and Amy Wilson have also contributed and each story re-imagines Wonderland from the viewpoint of one of Carroll’s original characters.
My story is about the Cheshire Cat, and how he got his smile….
Return to Wonderland will be illustrated by Laura Barrett and published in hardback on 27th June, ahead of Alice Day on 4th July.
Alexander Macmillan, co-founder of Macmillan Publishers, met Lewis Carroll in 1863 and published Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland in 1865. He published nine different editions in the subsequent 35 years until his death, including French, German and Italian translations.
The Lost Magician is shortlisted for the inaugural Biblio-Buzz Alexandra Palace Book Awards, formerly Haringey Children’s Book Awards.
Chosen by librarians in my local borough of Haringey, the full shortlist in alphabetic order, is:
Child I Tasane, Steve
Kat Wolfe Investigates St John, Lauren
Kick Johnson, Mitch
The Lost Magician Torday, Piers
Tin Kenny, Padraig
Will You Catch Me? Elson, Jane
Schools and groups of children across the borough will now read and discuss these 6 books, culminating in the participating children voting for their favourite at the ceremony on Tuesday 2nd April at Alexandra Palace.
Congratulations all my fellow nominees and thank you once more, the librarians of Haringey.
…in an astonishing number of publications. The response to this book is overwhelming. I’m so happy that so many have taken the story and its message to their hearts.
As well as featuring in many end of year /Christmas round ups in by numerous children’s book, teacher and literacy blogs, The Lost Magician is a Children’s Book of the Year in:
Completely delighted to learn that There May Be A Castle has been longlisted for The People’s Book Prize 2018 (Children’s)
The People’s Book Prize is a literary competition aimed at finding, supporting and promoting new and undiscovered works – decided exclusively by you, the public.
And you can vote here – it only takes seconds and no need to register
