Adventuremice at Bath Kids Lit Fest 2024
When you go to Bath, you expect to see a lot of Regency grandeur. Have a look at our event venue in the Assembly Rooms, you could easily imagine Jane Austen's characters gathered there for a ball. Did Elizabeth Bennett draw pictures of Pedro the mouse on her dance card? Perhaps?
Photo by Grace Lev for Bath Kids Lit Fest
But then you go up and up some small stairs for a quiet curry and realise, once again, you're in a Regency ball room and yes, Jane Austen definitely ate a curry here.
But what did Jane Austen read when she was kid? I can 100% guarantee that it was not Adventuremice: The Ghostly Galleon by Reeve & McIntyre, and that she did not needlepoint any firescreens inspired by it, depicting the Ghost of Captain Cheesebeard. Well, we would have needlepointed firescreens if we had a bit more time, but pencil drawings did suffice. Here are two fine examples from Bath Children's Literature Festival!
If you missed the event, you can learn how to draw the Ghost of Captain Cheesebeard in a video here.) In fact, the chap on the right showed me a bunch of his Adventuremice drawings he'd made when he had a bit more time and they were ace! Here's his drawing of Bramble Isle:
It's taken from this illustration in the book which, to be fair, was quite a challenge me, too! Making sense of that blackberry tangle while still keeping it autumnally wild.
And the detail in this one boggles my mind. Way to go!
In total we did three Adventuremice school events: the two scheduled ones, and an extra one for a school that got the time wrong and we fortunately happened to be signing in a bookshop just down the road. They were amazing, because of the team running them but also because Gill and John McLay who run the festival had decided that they would make sure every child went home with an Adventuremice book. It was a real leap of faith for sponsorship on their part, with their Share the Story scheme, but makes so much sense in closing the reading loop: children come to an event, get inspired to read a book, and then get to read that book. Thank you, SO MUCH, John and Gill, for making that happen!! (Please donate if you can, to help them connect more children with books!)
Besides Adventuremice events, John McLay and Philip did a Mortal Engines event at Waterstones Bath, featuring Philip's brand-new Thunder City.
The room was packed out - his publicist Rachael Phillips and I were perched on stairs at the back.
Quite a lot of the people there, of greatly varying ages, were SUPER FANS, with in-depth questions that showed they knew the world of the traction cities incredibly well. They also asked questions about Philip's Railhead and Utterly Dark trilogies, and similiarities and differences between the books; I loved hearing those great stories resurfacing in conversation.
Some lovely faces in the author lounge: Ken Wilson-Max, our fabulous David Fickling Books publicist Fraser Hutchinson who came all the way to Bath to support us (thank you, Fraser!!), Onjali Raúf, and Megan Whalen Turner, who was over from America and I got to meet for the first time.
And here's AF Steadman and Sarah Currie Dyer with the wonderful team that made everything possible. A HUGE thanks to Gill McLay, John McLay and everyone who made this wonderful festival happen!
Since we were in town for the festival, we paid visits to two other fine bookshops: Toppings & Co, where Caroline the bookseller set us up to do some signing...
And Mr B's Emporium, where Nic and Lottie let us share the author signing corner with Rick Astley (who's slightly wooden in manner but obviously a big fan).
(LOL, you've just been rick-rolled.)
Photo by Grace Lev for Bath Kids Lit Fest
But then you go up and up some small stairs for a quiet curry and realise, once again, you're in a Regency ball room and yes, Jane Austen definitely ate a curry here.
But what did Jane Austen read when she was kid? I can 100% guarantee that it was not Adventuremice: The Ghostly Galleon by Reeve & McIntyre, and that she did not needlepoint any firescreens inspired by it, depicting the Ghost of Captain Cheesebeard. Well, we would have needlepointed firescreens if we had a bit more time, but pencil drawings did suffice. Here are two fine examples from Bath Children's Literature Festival!
If you missed the event, you can learn how to draw the Ghost of Captain Cheesebeard in a video here.) In fact, the chap on the right showed me a bunch of his Adventuremice drawings he'd made when he had a bit more time and they were ace! Here's his drawing of Bramble Isle:
It's taken from this illustration in the book which, to be fair, was quite a challenge me, too! Making sense of that blackberry tangle while still keeping it autumnally wild.
And the detail in this one boggles my mind. Way to go!
In total we did three Adventuremice school events: the two scheduled ones, and an extra one for a school that got the time wrong and we fortunately happened to be signing in a bookshop just down the road. They were amazing, because of the team running them but also because Gill and John McLay who run the festival had decided that they would make sure every child went home with an Adventuremice book. It was a real leap of faith for sponsorship on their part, with their Share the Story scheme, but makes so much sense in closing the reading loop: children come to an event, get inspired to read a book, and then get to read that book. Thank you, SO MUCH, John and Gill, for making that happen!! (Please donate if you can, to help them connect more children with books!)
Besides Adventuremice events, John McLay and Philip did a Mortal Engines event at Waterstones Bath, featuring Philip's brand-new Thunder City.
The room was packed out - his publicist Rachael Phillips and I were perched on stairs at the back.
Quite a lot of the people there, of greatly varying ages, were SUPER FANS, with in-depth questions that showed they knew the world of the traction cities incredibly well. They also asked questions about Philip's Railhead and Utterly Dark trilogies, and similiarities and differences between the books; I loved hearing those great stories resurfacing in conversation.
Some lovely faces in the author lounge: Ken Wilson-Max, our fabulous David Fickling Books publicist Fraser Hutchinson who came all the way to Bath to support us (thank you, Fraser!!), Onjali Raúf, and Megan Whalen Turner, who was over from America and I got to meet for the first time.
And here's AF Steadman and Sarah Currie Dyer with the wonderful team that made everything possible. A HUGE thanks to Gill McLay, John McLay and everyone who made this wonderful festival happen!
Since we were in town for the festival, we paid visits to two other fine bookshops: Toppings & Co, where Caroline the bookseller set us up to do some signing...
And Mr B's Emporium, where Nic and Lottie let us share the author signing corner with Rick Astley (who's slightly wooden in manner but obviously a big fan).
(LOL, you've just been rick-rolled.)