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Saturday  5th March  was World Book Night

I was in Airdrie Library with some excellent young readers.

and we were celebrating a few other things, too!

The start of a new Teen/YA Book Group in Airdrie Library,

The opening of their new teen space within the library and  also the long list of the

Catalyst Teenage Book Award for 2011!

The Catalyst longlist is once again  a pretty amazing list of fabulous teenage/YA novels.  The books that end up on the shortlist, as well as the winner,  are chosen by the teenagers themselves – which makes this a very special award.

SPIDER won the Catalyst Award 2010 in October last year which was fantastic!

I am absolutely delighted to announce – even though the competition is incredibly fierce – that DEAD BOY TALKING is on the  Catalyst longlist for 2011

Check out the Catalyst Blog
to see what other books are on the longlist –

read some of these amazing books – see if you can choose the winner.

It was a great World Book Night – all about books!

March is the month where I seem to be like a Mad March Hare chasing about the country, and this year has been no different.I started my travels on Tuesday 2nd March,  the day before World Book Day.

I set off for Aberdeenshire and the lovely library in Ellon where I was speaking to a lovely group of children and parents from Gordon Park Playgroup and the children were very excited when Hamish McHaggis himself dropped in to say hello!

On World Book Day Hamish McHaggis followed me around in his Whirry Bang and made a surprise appearance in Newmachar Library where all the children had dressed up for World Book Day as  their favourite characters.

Later I visited Inverurie Library where I spoke to lots of boys and girls from local schools.  The children were very excited to see Hamish when he came into the Library.

Before I left for New Zealand I visited some lovely schools in January – so here is a bit of a catch up!

It was a lively and fun-filled day on 18th January when I visited two schools reading stories from the Hamish McHaggis books and talking about Hamish and his friends.

First I visited Hamilton College.

The boys and girls in the junior school  enjoyed the Hamish stories and they were very patient as I signed their books.

It was rather a long queue!

From there it was a quick dash to Kelvinside Academy where we talked about how many people it takes to make a book like Hamish McHaggis.  Here we have some very keen candidates for different jobs in the publishing world!