Authors Electric

Recently, a headline in The Times caught my eye:  Make boys read books with girls in says Chocolat author Joanne Harris .  At the Hay Festival , Harris announced: ‘We’ve got to stop giving them the message that it’s wrong for a boy to read books about girls, because even schools are giving them this message.’ The Tragickall History of Henry Fowst by Griselda Heppel Ante's Inferno by Griselda Heppel As a children’s author, this is an attitude I wrestle with. I don’t consciously create characters to suit a supposed readership; they spring to life according to the needs of the story.  My first book, Ante’s Inferno , had a 12 year-old heroine, Ante, while in The Tragickall History of Henry Fowst , the main character is a boy. The Fall of a Sparrow by Griselda Heppel With The Fall of a Sparrow , I was back to a female protagonist, Eleanor, and arguably taking an even greater risk of limiting my readership by setting the story in a girls’ boarding school, as this meant the ...

One of my Facebook friends is sharing her childhood diary with us, with comments from an adult perspective on the life of a ten year old. It’s fascinating stuff.  I started keeping a diary from the start of 1977, when I was almost 13 (my birthday is in January). I wrote pretty much daily until the end of 1985, by which time I’d left university and home and gone to work in my first job in London. Clearly real life was more exciting then as the entries tail off. My last entry was 1988 as I was about to get engaged to Andy – by husband now of over 30 years!  So 6th April 2021. What was I doing on this day over the years of my childhood …  1977   Went to the cinema today and saw 101 Dalmatians , also saw Ride a Wild Pony . It was ace. The pony was called Taff and was a palomino. I was 13 and in the typical teenage girl pony phase. I can't remember what age I started riding lessons but most of these years were spent obsessing about ponies, reading pony stories and despera...