Surrey book festival launches with events for all

Feb 25 2010

March 4 (World Book Day) sees the launch of Surrey County Council's first ever book festival with events in the borough's of Elmbridge Runnymede and Spelthorne designed to get kids of all ages more involved in the literary arts. Throughout March public children's events will be held at libraries throughout the district while scores of schools have arranged talks with popular children's authors in a bid to inspire a future generation of writers. Authors such as Simon Cheshire author of The Curse of the Ancient Mask and Justin Somper author of Vampirates will be looking to promote their work while talking to pupils about their characters, plots and how to become a writer. Other authors and illustrators such as Sally Nicholls and cartoonist James Parsons will be holding workshops. Reporter Tammy Hughes gives her view on the new festival and interviews two published professionals who will be talking and teaching at two of the county's events.

When I was about 10 my little primary school decided that the way to spice up world book day was by launching a hellish two week competition to read as many books as you could within the time frame.

In the end my efforts were fruitless, I had tallied up a mediocre 10 books while class swat and Mensa genius Alice (who in the words of Roald Dahl chose books not looks) had outdone me by reading, unbelievably, 27 books.

Despite being very upset not least because I had tried to make myself read Lord of the Rings, I know that without the push I probably would never have got into reading and in the long term my literacy skills would have suffered.

For that reason I think that government or school initiatives to get kids to pick up a book are always really worthwhile, and this month should hopefully result in lots of schoolchildren doing exactly this.

I spoke to two professionals that will be appearing in North Surrey in honour of the new festival.

Justin Somper who launches the festival today at Magna Carta school spoke to me about his career as a successful children's author and publicist, and his new book released today, Empire of Night.

He said: “Empire of Night is the fifth book my series of Vampirates. The books are set in the future when global warming has caused the sea level to rise resulting in a new era of pirates, the books are about two Australian siblings, who are kidnapped by vampire pirates, hence the name, Vampirates.

“I will be reading from the new book and talking about my favourite characters but I want as much time to be given over to questions as possible.

“I am always happy to give advice to anyone interested in becoming a professional author, but I would say to young writers that they don't want to be in too much of a hurry to get published, there is a lot of freedom to be had if you don't have a publishing contract!”

Cartoonist James Parsons will also be taking part in the festival and will be directing a Manga at the Walton Library on Sunday.

He said: “Manga is the name given to Japanese comics. Comics play a completely different role out there, they are much more mainstream. Twenty-five per cent of all printed material are comics compared to one per cent in England.

“I started out publishing comics when I left university 10 years ago, I did political and celebrity satire at first. I've just finished an interactive comic for children with learning difficulties but I also run workshops.”

James' workshop on Sunday costs £2 per person and is for ages 11 plus.

What's on highlights - see page 2