I'm off to the Hay Festival later today, which is one of the events I really look forward to. It's a real privilege to be invited to these festivals, and I love the opportunity they provide to meet children and their families.
Sometimes, however, as a writer, you don't get immediate feedback from children as they read your books. You just have to hope that they are enjoying them! So it was really great to receive this email , out of the blue, on Saturday night...
"My daughter, aged 7, and on page 142 of Baddies, Beasties and a Sprinkling of Crumbs! after only being given the book from the library yesterday evening, has asked me to "contact the author" to let her know that she loves the book: "I love it! It's really exciting because it has some adventure in it. And I really want to find out if they stop the Unstoppables!".
Thank you from me for such a lovely book - it is SO hard to find a page-turner for a 7 year old with a good reading level, but not into the usual fairies/witches, has a nice size print, some lovely illustrations - and some proper writing - so many authors use words at too high a level or complicated sentence structures that even the grown-ups find hard to follow!
We look forward to the second instalment which we don't want to wait til September for!"
Baddies, Beasties and a Sprinkling of Crumbs! is my first novel for the 8+ age group, so it's great to get such positive feedback.
Off to Hay with a spring in my step now!