This week, we finally managed to install our new (not new ) item of furniture - a mid-18th Century grandfather clock. It's not bright and shiny like more modern ones, but a dark oak with a warm patina which the beeswax polish is drawing out. In order to set it up, we had to do a certain amount of research - how to hang the pendulum, where the weight went on the endless chain - and it got me thinking... where and when did certain divisions of time come from? The time periods which I have written either had household clocks or didn't, I have not written novels from the time of their invention. Clocks have been around for a long time, and the obsession with measuring time in an ordered fashion dates back to at least the ancient Sumerians. It was they who established a circular reading of time and, I imagine, the sixty seconds/minutes came about as much because it was an easy way to divide a circle as anything else. But it wasn't until much later that the precision of seconds ...
Why is it that, when you're teaching genres to children, you go through historical, fantasy, science fiction, adventure... and so on... and then... non-fiction. You go into detail about all the wonderful types of fiction, and then non-fiction gets lumped in together. Perhaps because there are too many genres of non-fiction to count. I can't even name them all. So, with that in mind, I will attempt to write a single blog post about non-fiction. What is the most challenging aspect of middle grade non-fiction? For me, personally, the most challenging part is making the facts fun and engaging for children. It's a different skill writing facts for children rather than adults. Think back to when you were a child. If you picked up a dry wall of text, it might have put you off non-fiction for life. So, what can we do to ensure our non-fiction books grip children's attention? Fun Language Think Horrible Histories. Some of the facts in those books might not interest some kids, bu...