We had a fabulous weekend at the Cheltenham literature festival. A lovely atmosphere with excited kids keen to hear from their favourite authors & in turn such generous authors & illustrators, taking the time to really listen to the children, answering their questions and putting on entertaining shows.
Bryn & I started the weekend at the Etherington brothers talk who gave great writing tips as well as being hysterically funny & entertaining. So entertaining Bryn fell of his chair laughing. They had tips about genres, characters, settings all the ingredients for a great stories. My favourite analogy was making stories like a of bowlful mixed cereal where every spoonful is a surprise. I wasn’t sure how much Bryn understood but he clearly got the concept ofcreating a world for your story. His creation was conker world, mountains & buildings made of conkers. He went home with the excellent puzzling Von Doogan and the Curse of the Golden Monkey, which proved to be more preferable than watching Tangled with his sister.
The next day started with Chris Judge who read a couple of his books, drew a robot with direction from the audience & gave a master class on drawing the Lonely Beast. I remember seeing a spread from his latest book Tin months ago, from the design & exquisite colour palette I knew I had to have this book. It was therefore a relief to discover it was the total package beautiful illustration & a fun tale, a favourite in the house from just one reading.
We got our book signed & a highlight for Freya was getting a high five from the author after showing her drawing as well as her robot voice for Tin.
The show that was a hit with the entire family was Michael Rosen. An hour of funny anecdotes and poems,
which we were still chuckling over days later. I remember buying a book of Michael Rosen poems, Mustard, Custard Grumble Belly & Jelly, for Bryn on holiday when he was 3. The CD of poems was requested endlessly for the whole week & he proudly took the book into nursery to share with everyone & recite his favourites.
The day ended with Bryn & I going to see Cressida Cowell talking about how she started writing & all the things that have inspired her. As with all the talks Bryn was transfixed soaking everything in. He was especially pleased when he was picked to ask his question, he asked whether it was the writing or the pictures that came first. Bryn has devoured the How to Train your a dragon series & the excitement of hearing the author speak led to him to spend the long car journey home planning his own series of books. A series involving 100 books about time travelling dragon hunters in space.