The personal history of people from the past intrigues me. What are the major influences in your work and how do you decide on your subjects? Things that would be impossibly expensive to put on film, and too wild for adult books. Things from your wildest childhood dreams. The great thing about children’s books is that the story can be anything and everything you can imagine.
One of those books sold and became Cogheart, my first published children’ s novel. About ten years ago, I started to write seriously for myself, first screenplays, then prose fiction, then children’s books, which I always loved. Both processes are about bringing characters to life through craft and hard work, and both are very time-consuming ways to tell stories!ĭuring my animation career I worked on a lot of projects for other people, but I longed to create my own characters and send them off on their own big adventures. I used to be a professional animator before I became a writer, and I adore both animation and writing. As a kid I wrote and drew my own picture books and comics which I shared with my family and friends. What motivated you to begin a career in writing?
Ask your class to make up their own spell-poems, and read them out in a spell-casting session. The spells in my book are simple poems spoken aloud. What makes a good fairy tale? The storytelling voice, the archetypal characters, the traditional settings? Get students to think about fairy tales they ’ ve read, and how they could turn the elements in these around or transform them to make a unique fairy tale of their own. Many children had no schooling and had to work to survive, while the upper classes lived a life of luxury and grew rich from the profits of slavery.įairy tales. What was life like for children in the court of King George I? Art, knowledge and creativity flourished in those times, but there was also suffering and poverty. There are lots of fantastic learning opportunities to be had while reading Magicborn. How would you suggest primary teachers use this book? I thought: what if those children could do magic and that was the reason they were brought to Kensington Palace to meet the king? That one idea sparked my story. I was intrigued by all those characters in their amazing outfits, especially the children. There are forty-five people in the painting and it is believed to show George I’s favourite servants and courtiers. One day, when doing a school event at Kensington Palace, I was taken to see an amazing mural painted in 1726 by William Kent for King George I.
I love fairy tales and history, and I wanted to write a story that combined the two.
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