Maeve Friel.com

Spring trip

Today I am on a bit of a nostalgia trip. This morning I am visiting the international school St Michael’s in Tenbury Wells, in Worcester.  My husband was once the principal here.

Originally St Michael’s was a Cathedral school, training choristers for cathedral choirs throughout England but for the last twenty years or so, it’s been an international boarding school.

It’s quite an amazing place, a bit Hogwartian in appearance, with its arched gothic doors, cloisters, wood-panelled library and dining-hall.  You wouldn’t be at all surprised to look out a lead-panelled window and find a game of quidditch taking place on the playing fields.

In fact, there is a magical connection for its interiors were used in the BBC tv series of The Worst Witch (by Jill Murphy).

In the afternoon, I’m off to Ludlow, “the prettiest town in England”  where we lived for a couple of years and where I set  my historical novel The Lantern Moon. I’m looking forward to seeing all the locations I used in the book – the castle, the river Teme and Dinham Bridge, Dinham House where Annie worked as a maid for Prince  Lucien Bonaparte and Quality Square where William worked as an apprentice hatter.

Then I’m meeting up (for the first time) with Beccy Blake who illustrated the three Felix books, Felix on the Move, Felix and the Kitten and Felix Takes the Blame.

And then tomorrow, it’s off to London for a meeting with my agent to discuss a new project…

Filed under: Authors and Illustrators, Children's Books, The Lantern Moon by Maeve Friel
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And when the bookshop closes…

Have you ever wondered what happens at night when the bookshop staff close up and go home?

Well, take a look at this video made by the owners of the Type bookstore in Toronto, Canada.

Filed under: Bookshops by Maeve Friel
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New Year’s Day on Segarria

Goats and sheep strolling among the almond groves…#

… and the view from the top.

Filed under: Spain by Maeve Friel
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Eating the grapes in Benimeli

the belltower of Benimeli

Tomorrow night I will seeing out the old year (nochevieja) and bringing in the New Year in the little village of Benimeli (pop. about 350). Just before midnight, everyone – the grannies and granddads, the babies in their prams, the teenagers, everyone – leaves their homes to congregate in the main square in the heart of the village. Each of us will be carrying a little bundle of twelve white grapes and a bottle of cava.

As the first dong of twelve o’ clock rings out in the bell-tower, we start to eat the grapes – one for each strike of the bell. The idea is that if you manage to eat all twelve grapes, you will have a new year of good luck and prosperity – it is much harder than it sounds – in fact, I don’t think that I have ever managed to do it, which may partly explain why I have not been enjoying a run of good luck recently. (No new book published this year! No big lottery win!)

Grape-eating over, it is then time for a mass popping of cava corks, joyous bell-ringing, random kissing and hugging and lots of wishes for a Feliç Any Nou or Feliz Año Nuevo.

Wherever you may be tomorrow, I wish you all a Very Happy New Year and I look forward to seeing you all back here in 2012.  Thanks for your support this year. Hopefully I will be back with some good news soon!

Filed under: Authors and Illustrators, Spain by Maeve Friel
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Russell Hoban

I have just heard the sad news that children’s writer, Russell Hoban, has died at the age of 86.

Famous for the most beloved philosophical tale A Mouse and His Child, Hoban also wrote the amazing dystopian Riddley Walker, set in a post nuclear war England.

My favourite of his books for younger children is Bedtime for Frances.  I still have an old grubby copy which was enjoyed by my children and now by my grand-daughter. My husband and I used to use – and still use – the expression  Bedtime for Frances? as code when we agreed it was time to close things down for the night.

First published in 1963, it is still fresh and funny and affectionate, a perfect read for both a child seeking reassurance and a tired parent who just wants some peace.

It tells the story of Frances the badger who doesn’t want to be alone in her room and can’t settle down.

She finds endless reasons to get up and tell her Mother and Father about the tiger in the corner, the giant in the chair, the crack in the ceiling - ”Maybe something will come out of that crack,” she thought. “Maybe insects or spiders. Maybe something with a lot of skinny legs in the dark. She went to get Father.”

Then the curtains start blowing.

“I do not like the way those curtains are moving,” said Frances. “Maybe there is something waiting, very soft and quiet. Maybe it moves the curtains just to see if I am watching… she went into Mother and Father’s room to tell them.”

The illustrations by Garth Williams are wonderful too.

Filed under: Authors and Illustrators, Children's Books by Maeve Friel
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A Blue Horse, A Lost Beetle and A Smoking Dragon

The Artist Who Painted a Blue Horse is a fabulous new book from Eric Carle and is the perfect choice for all the young artists that you know. It is a celebration of creativity, of colour, an affirmation of the artist’s and the child’s  right to do their own thing, to picture the world  just the way they want.

“I am an artist” it begins, and “I paint… a blue horse, a red crocodile…”

Each double spread is filled with glorious paintings of unusually coloured animals, including a black polar bear, even a polka-dotted donkey. It is a wonderful book to share with children, talking about the animals, what’s different about them, what’s funny about them.  Are they wrong? Enjoy the book and then get out the paints!

In an afterword, Eric Carle explains how the book was inspired by the German painter Franz Marc, famous for his series of blue horses. Marc was killed in the First World War and his work was banned by the Nazi regime as “degenerate”.

Billy’s Beetle by Mick Inkpen is not new – it’s been around for twenty years – but it is so entertaining it will never date.

Billy’s beetle has gone missing from his matchbox so he sets out to find it with the help of a girl, a man with a sniffy dog, a hedgehog, an oompah brass band…  As more and more people and animals join in the hunt,  children will have a hoot searching for Billy’s lost pet and spotting the secret concealed on each page.  Really entertaining with witty fold-out pages full of detail.

Every parent knows what it’s like when a child asks you to read the bedtime story again.  In Emily Gravett’s “Again!”, Mum dragon is reading Cedric a bedtime story – and every time,  she reaches the end, the baby dragon says “Again!”  It all ends in an incendiary fashion!

Happy reading – and I’d love to hear your recommendations for reading with 3-5 year olds?

Filed under: Authors and Illustrators, Children's Books by Maeve Friel
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Return to Ribblestrop

Andy Mulligan is the winner of the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize for  Return to Ribblestrop.

Here is a terrific interview with Andy Mulligan talking about why so many writers choose boarding schools as the settings for their books – like Malory Towers, Hogwarts or Billy Bunter’s Greyfriars – but Ribblestrop doesn’t sound like any ordinary boarding school (School Motto : Life is Dangerous). It can be very violent and unpredictable, its pupils are a very bizarre bunch of misfits and the excluded, and the adults are hapless or terrifying.

But who says children’s books have to be feelgood?

Mulligan very wisely says:  ”Kids’ books are still that thin string that leads us through the scary maze, but brings us safely home.”

Filed under: Authors and Illustrators by Maeve Friel
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Was that Peter Kay’s handsome little brother?

I have just returned home after a month more or less on the move – first of all, in Ireland, doing Children’s Book Festival visits, and finishing up in Madrid with a fun visit to the British Council school in Pozuelo where I met about 120 bilingual seven and eight year olds and their enthusiastic teachers  - thank you to the school director Gillian Flaxman and all her staff who made my visit such a pleasant one.

Then it was off to COBIS, the conference of the Council of British International Schools, which was being hosted at King’s College, in Soto, on the outskirts of Madrid.  I was leading seminars for KS1 and KS2 teachers but also had the opportunity to meet many of the delegates.  I was delighted to hear the opening address by  Matthew Syed, the inspirational journalist and author of “Bounce – The Myth of Talent and the Power of Practice” and can’t wait to read his book.

I also had the greatest fun I’ve ever had at a conference,  sitting in a baby chair in the hall in King’s College in Chamartin with thirty or forty Early Years teachers, listening to Alistair Bryce, a former headmaster and now author and educational consultant, talking about the impact on their attainment of getting children outdoors.

It was inspirational – I wasn’t sure if I wanted to go straight back into teaching or if I wanted to be a six-year-old again. He described how he got them building “small worlds”,  like the project where the children first built a pretend toll bridge with construction blocks. Then they had to take to their bikes and pass through the bridge, select the REAL money from a bucket to pay their toll while the toll bridge keepers had to give out the right change.  Everyone had a go as a toll keeper and as motorist and had a great day, learning about money and change and mental arithmetic on the sly, while they planned and cooperated on building their bridge.  Alistair was brimming with ideas and had us all laughing like hyenas with his accents and affectionate imitations of the children he meets.  Could he be Peter Kay’s handsome little brother?

On our shared taxi ride back to the hotel, Alistair told me that he has been commissioned to write a series of non-fiction titles for Bloomsbury over the next three years.

Look no further if you need an inspirational teacher/writer to come to your school or speak at your conference.

Spelling Trouble in Russian

There was a nice surprise this morning when the postwoman arrived with copies of the second Witch-in-Training books, Spelling Trouble, which has just been published in Russian  in a lovely little pocket edition.

And now it’s time to get back to my abandoned book about the Wrens, the twins who were not at all like one another.

Filed under: Authors and Illustrators, Children's Book Festival, Conference, Events, Spain, Travel by Maeve Friel
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Jessica is ten again today.

Happy Hallowe’en, everybody. This was the day that Jessica, on her 10th birthday, discovered that she was a witch and started her witch-training lessons with Miss Strega. Unlike the rest of us,  Jessica of course doesn’t get any older. That’s the way that magic works in the witchy world. Every Hallowe’en is her 10th birthday.
Don’t forget – if you are dressing up as a witch tonight, do fly with your twigs in front – in the manner of a modern witch.
That style of flying with your twigs behind you is SO old-fashioned – only witches with iron teeth who eat children for breakfast do it that way!

Happy zooming and moon-vaulting to Jessica and all her fellow witches out there tonight.

Filed under: Authors and Illustrators, Events, Witch in Training books by Maeve Friel
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Faster than fairies, faster than witches…

Faster than fairies, faster than witches,

Bridges and houses, hedges and ditches;

And charging along like troops in a battle,

All through the meadows the horses and cattle;

All of the sights of the hill and the plain

Fly as thick as driving rain;

And ever again, in the wink of an eye,

Painted stations whistle by.

This was one of my favourite poems “From a Railway Carriage” by Robert Louis Stevenson.  You can just hear that train rattling along as you read it aloud. I have always loved trains. In fact, my grandfather was a steam train driver – although I never knew him. He died long before I was born.

I still love trains and since my broomstick is sadly out of action, I am zipping off to Madrid now in the AVE, a high-speed train that will take me from Valencia to Madrid in 90 minutes.  Ninety minutes! This journey took about six hours the first time I ever did it. Even last year before the AVE started, it took nearly four hours.

And since I am going to meet the pupils in the British Council school, I’ll be travelling in my carriage with fairies and witches – Felicity Floss, the Tooth Fairy, Jessica, Witch in Training, and Tiger Lily, my heroine.  One must never travel without something good to read.

Filed under: Authors and Illustrators, Events, Felicity Floss, Spain, Tiger Lily books, Travel, Witch in Training books by Maeve Friel
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