It's festival season and I've just come back from the Cheltenham Literature Festival, where I read my POPPY AND MAX books to a group of 3 and 4 year olds and their parents.  I slipped in KNOCK KNOCK, WHO'S THERE? as well, because although it was published 23 years ago this month, it's still amazingly popular and I love putting on the masks I made (at least 15 years ago) and acting it out.  In August I was at the Edinburgh Festival with Elizabeth Laird and Jamilla Gavin, where we talked to a room full of older children about writing stories set abroad.  And next week I am going to Belfast for another festival, this time to talk to one group of 5 and 6 year olds and another who will be 10 and 11.

TORN PAGES, my novel about AIDS orphans, is with the printers at the moment.  One final read and then it will go to press - to be published next February.  I am now working on a novel about children in the Cote d'Ivoire.

My young reader - CAT-A-WALL - has just been published, as has a collection called CLASSIC ANIMAL STORIES which I compiled.   At the beginning of November, my collection of original Christmas stories - called THE BLOOMSBURY CHRISTMAS TREASURY - will be on the shelves.  As for those BEAR DETECTIVES, all eight young readers will be published in May and June next year.   The illustrator, Jo Brown, has virtually finished work on them and has done a tremendous job.

New projects?  Eight books about the problems Noah encounters trying to get the animals into the ark! 

Bye for now. 

Sally

13th October 2008

Please feel free to email me about any of my books.  I'll always reply - as long as your email address works!  (They don't always!)  And as long as I don't accidentally delete it (I do sometimes!).  If you don't receive a reply, it will be because it has been sent back to me with some incomprehensible computer-speak explanation about terminal errors, or because it has vanished into thin air.  Either way, try writing again.