Authors Electric

What happens when you take a brilliant book ... No, not the Neil Diamond song of the same name - although it is a favourite of mine - but rather a reference to having been doing some re-reading recently and enjoying getting reacquainted with some old friends. One of them was Noel Langley's The Land of Green Ginger: it's one of those marvellous books that you never really grow out of. And what's not to love about a book which kicks off with "... I bring you a Tale of Heroes and Villains, just as in Life; Birds and Beasts, just as in Zoos; Mysteries and Magic, just as in Daydreams; and the Wonderful Wanderings of an Enchanted Land which was never in the same place twice.  As long ago as Long Ago, and as Long Ago Again as That ..." It is the book which at a tender and impressionable age introduced me to such fabulous names as Prince Tintac Ping Foo, Rubdub Ben Thud, Sulkpot Ben Nagnag and Boomalakka Wee, not to mention the idea that you could incorporate real ...

I really don't want to be the spectre at Authors Electric's feast but for the second time I find myself writing about the death of someone with an awesome reputation in children's books and also with an amazing tale to tell about a life well lived. And, like Jim Riordan last year, he was a good friend of long standing.    The death of Robert Leeson robs the children’s book world of a popular and prolific novelist, a tireless fighter for children’s rights  and a fairer society for them to grow up in.  Perhaps, despite the roll call of wonderful novels and stories, his most influential work was Reading and Righting (1985,) a magnificent polemic which identified books as means of human – and especially children’s – liberation and empowerment in a society which denies voices to many of its members. Sadly, this is still a message which needs to be heard: I'd love to see a new, updated edition of this important book. Bob believed that books are both symbols...

After twenty years in the US, my uncle finally returned to the country of his birth for a visit. He spent a lot of time grumbling: the cars were smaller and the roads narrower than he remembered them, the pubs more crowded, the beer warmer, and far from enjoying the traditional white Christmas which the weather had laid on, even the snow was apparently far colder than in days gone by! But worst of all for him was how much the places he so fondly remembered from his youth had changed and in some cases vanished entirely...  JLS Happily, you can revisit a book and it won't have changed at all. The problem is that while the book will be the same, you may not be ... I recently picked up my battered copy of Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach. As an angst-ridden teenager I thought this was just the coolest, the most profound book ever: as an adult, I found it ... well, let's not go there. No longer t...