Crowvus Book Blog

 Welcome back to Middle Grade Monday! Today, I'll be discussing how to deal with adults in middle grade fiction because, and I hate to break this to you, kids just don't want to read about adults stealing all the fun. Consider your favourite books from when you were younger. Mine was The Moon of Gomrath by Alan Garner. It's a story about a brother and sisters - kids, of course - who have magical adventure in the English countryside. There's danger, magic and battles. What's not to love? And yes, there are adults. But they are kept on a very short lead by the author. The most powerful character in the book, debatably, is Cadellin. He's a wizard who has a startling knowledge of the secret world of magical beings. He would find it so much easier to win in the end, but it has to be Susan and Colin (the kids) who are the centre of the book. So, what can you do with adults in middle grade? How can you make sure they get out the way? Some authors take the orphan option...

  Happy Monday and welcome back to our Middle Grade Monday series: genres! Today, I'll be sharing a couple of hints and tips for writing science fiction for children. I'm not a sci-fi author, so I'll be addressing this mostly in terms of being a primary teacher. When teaching about genres to children, it is often a struggle to explain the difference between fantasy and science fiction and, in fact, these two genres often get muddled together in awards and libraries etc. The explanation I landed on was to say that fantasy was things that cannot happen. Science fiction, on the other hand, is things that cannot happen... yet! That all important word at the end leads to my first tip. 1) Science fiction needs to be believable. You need to convince your middle grade reader that it could actually happen, perhaps to them! You do this by explaining anything that may seem magical or far fetched. This, in turn, leads onto the next tip... 2) A knowledge of science really helps! When do...

 We're always growing as authors. When I go back and look at my first book, Day's Dying Glory , I can see how my writing has evolved - and certainly my books have grown, by some 10,000 words! This year, my historical fiction journey is taking quite a nerve-racking turn as Autumn will see the publication of my first book for children... This is something which is scary for a couple of reasons. Firstly, most of my books feature the sort of events I wouldn't want children reading! The continued debate about trigger-warnings on books rages on and, while I do not write about these things graphically or gratuitously, those dark events are as much a part of my books as they are of history. You can't shy away from them, and they are what give the characters that push into becoming who their destiny - and the story! - demands. We can't delve into some of these events in a children's book. But neither can we ignore the dark events which happened - eeek! Dilemma! Secondly,...

This is a lovely story about Norman, a little bat who is perfectly happy with his “particularly average life” until he accidentally ends up going on a series of amazing adventures. He is kidnapped, he goes into space, he is trained to save the world! It’s a great thing to teach children about how exciting things can happen despite modest beginnings! Throughout the book, he meets friends like him and others who are very different, a fantastic thing to encourage children to embrace friendships with others from various backgrounds. The story is enhanced by exciting illustrations which show the variety of characters as they undertake their adventures. I absolutely fell in love with the Overwatchers, and the villains were wonderfully dastardly! The tone is perfect for 5-7 year olds, but the language used in the story is really advanced for a child to read themselves. It is somewhere between a picture book and a chapter book. I would recommend it as a book for an adult to read  to  ...

When I’m asked who my favourite author is, I also tend to consider who my favourite writers have been at various stages of my life. When I was very young, Roald Dahl could not be beaten. Like many children, I found his sense of mischief combined with superlative storytelling and Quentin Blake’s glorious illustrations irresistible. In my angsty teenage years, I must have re-read JD Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye  about 20 times, dreaming of leaving boarding school and running off to the States with just a rucksack on my back (which I actually did for a year when I was 17. I wasn’t quite as rebellious as Holden Caulfield though. It was all above board.) But the writer who has stood the test of time with me most, and was taken from us far too soon, is Iain Banks. I love the twisty intrigue of Complicity , in which my hometown of Langholm has an early cameo. I adore the assault on the hypocrisies of organised religion that lie at the heart of Whit . In my teens, I was traumatised in a c...

When people say they’re doing something “on the hoof”, it generally implies they’re making it up as they go along. When it came to writing my first book, I did so on the hoof in more ways than one. The photos that feature in Craggy the Coo Wants a Place to Call Home  were snapped all over Scotland, from the top of mountains to the surface of Loch Ness. But the words that accompany the pictures were largely concocted near my hometown of Langholm in Dumfries and Galloway. I’m relatively notorious in these parts for embarking on epic walks of 20-30 miles around the surrounding hills. And while most people would carry their phone to chart their route or maybe listen to music, I used mine to put words to my pictures. Having all the photos of Craggy’s travels on my iPhone meant I could weave a clear narrative together based on where he happened to be, and what could be seen in each image. So I would set off on a long walk armed with all I needed to create the verses and his direction of ...

Craggy the Coo was given to me as a Christmas present by my mum way back in 2017. She knitted him from scratch, using her own artistry to produce the woolly mammal who – almost three and a half years later – is about to be unleashed to a brand new audience. I can’t really remember how Craggy’s evolution began. But I remember thinking from the moment I held him in my hands that I ought to repay my mum’s creativity and generosity in kind. The wee coo whose adventures are documented in my first ever book took his first steps out of my hometown of Langholm, Dumfries and Galloway in early January 2018, and he’s never looked back. I’ve packed him in the coo-themed case (well, wash bag if I’m honest) that keeps him safe on each trip I’ve taken around Scotland. And he got to experience some of my favourite parts of the country, in order that I could share those places with a generation of young readers. The idea of travelling widely, armed with a healthy dose of curiosity but a sense that some...