Ali Sparkes and a Sparkling Talk at the Local Library

ali sparkes out of this worldI’ve just seen the fabulous Ali Sparkes give a talk at our local library and….WOW! That’s how an author talk should be done!

Ali writes for children, and she was funny, informative, and engaging. I won’t give away her ‘trade secrets’, but she has quite a few clever props, some for fun, some to illustrate her points, and a final magician’s trick for the end of the talk, which brought some real gasps from her audience.

I might have to make library visits one day, (though I’d have to finish a book first!) so here’s what I picked up from Ali’s talk.

  • Engage the audience in the first few minutes. Ali had us responding to cue cards straight away, and it really got us in the mood.
  • Keep the audience involved. Ali asked questions, she called people up to help, and she used props throughout the talk to keep us interested.
  • Choice of readings. Ali chose a couple of really fun passages from her books, and these were spread out in the talk, but gave a real insight into what to expect if we read her stories. She put a lot of expression into it, but I suspect she’s a natural performer!
  • Be funny. Well, there again, you’re either funny or you’re not – but it certainly helps!
  • End on a high. The magician’s trick. We were ALL impressed, mums and dads too!

And what about writing advice? The talk was aimed at children, but the main message is clear. Don’t give up. Her work was rejected for years, but she kept writing and submitting. She got close a few times, only to be rejected at the last minute, but she kept writing. She was finally published in 2006, and has written 40 books since then!

We’ve never read her books, but on the basis of this talk, I think we’ve missed out. We bought ‘Out of this World’  yesterday, and now that it’s signed, my daughters can fight over who gets to read it first.

The talk was part of the summer reading challenge, which we’ve always taken, but this year… well, to be honest, the girls read longer books now, and the reading challenge would be a bit like Nanowrimo – all about quantity rather than quality. I’m sure they could pick six books to read, but they’d be chosen for their brevity to meet the six week deadline. I’d rather they read a few ‘bigger’ books slowly.

This is the third author talk I’ve attended at the library, and though I’m an aspiring writer I’ve never hovered around afterwards to ask insightful questions, or chat with the ‘proper’ author.  (Actually, I think there were two ‘proper’ authors in the room, I think I spotted Kate Kelly, in the audience, who’s blog I’ve followed for a while.)

I didn’t hover around for a chat this time either, I wish I was the sort of person who could do that though – just walk up and introduce myself, and start chatting about the writing process.

But is that the right thing to do? What’s the social etiquette for collaring authors after talks? Should you save that for conferences?

What do you think?

 

Making Mondays – Tagxedo word art

Always looking for ways to make easy art with the children – this site is a dream!

Instead of a simple word cloud, at Tagxedo.com you can choose from an astonishing array of shapes, and make real  ‘word art’.

tagxedo dog trudyktaylor blog4

  • Firstly, paste in your blog url, or text, or individual words.
  • Choose your shape. Hearts, elephants, bats – I even saw a witch’s hat in there!
  • Choose from a beautiful range of colour themes.
  • Even choose your fonts!
  • Then create, and save to jpg, or share on Facebook or Twitter.
  • They have a shop where you can buy mugs and stuff with your word picture on it.

I can see tons of uses for this:

  • A family word picture, with all our names on it.
  • For Father’s Day, the word ‘Dad’ repeated, and printed out to stick on a card.
  • For Valentine’s Day, the word ‘Love’, to stick on a card or frame and give to someone special.
  • Your child’s name, printed out to frame, maybe even print out 16 or 25 of them, each one in a different colour theme, in a smaller size, and then collage them together!
  • The words of a favourite poem or song.

The possibilities are endless!!!

These are the words it picked up from the blog.

Strangely, at some point I have used the words ‘sandwich’ and ‘rice’, which taken out of context seems a trifle odd! I’ve also used the word ‘really’ a lot more than I should. Happily, ‘Chocolate’ seems nice and emboldened, but where is ‘coffee’? This blog runs on coffee, yet no mention of it – strange…..perhaps it is my guilty little secret, only now revealed…

(Upon further investigation, I’ve uncovered ‘sandwich’ tins, ‘rice’ krispies – see, makes more sense now!)

Have you tried this? Can you think of any more uses for tagxedo?

Cheat’s Pizza Cake – with Rice Krispies

This cake is so easy to make, it feels like cheating! You can make it yourself, or let your children do it – it’s that simple!

Rice Krispie Cake

You will need:

  • A big sandwich cake tin, for getting a nice round shape, and some clingfilm or greaseproof paper to line it with.
  • Rice Krispie cake mixture (the kind made with marshmallow) OR  a real cheat – ready-made Rice Krispie Squares, the chewy marshmallow ones.
  • Strawberry or raspberry seedless jam
  • Sweets! I used Dolly Mixtures, Minstrels, Smarties and Jelly Tots. Anything goes, I guess – just not blue sweets….I’ve never seen anything blue on a pizza, and I’d be suspicious if I did!
  • Grated white chocolate.

Instructions

  1. Make your Rice Krispie mixture,  OR  if you’re using the ready-made Rice Krispie Squares, take them out of their packets, put them in a bowl and warm in the microwave for 15-30 seconds. This will make them all moist and pliable.
  2. Form your mixture into a pizza shape in your lined tin, pressing down firmly, and score into slices. Then cool in the fridge.   (Scoring into slices makes it easier to serve, and  the toppings don’t get destroyed by cutting it up later)
  3. Use seedless jam for tomato sauce, and a selection of sweets for toppings to decorate the base. I used Minstrels, Dolly Mixtures, Smarties and Jelly Tots.
  4. Finish with a grating of white chocolate, which looks amazingly like cheese.
  5. Serve it up, and soak up all that praise!

 

How to make a Baseball Cap Cake

My daughter wanted a cake shaped like her favourite baseball cap.  And this is how it turned out.

cake

 Here’s how I did it….

For the cake –

  • Chocolate fudge icing, I used Nigella’s recipe.

  • Enough sponge cake mix to fill a dome shaped tin.

cake  2bFor the decorating –

  • Roll out icing, pre-coloured or plain ( but then you’ll need to colour it)

  • One Smartie. Don’t worry, it’s not a waste –  you can eat the rest of the packet!

  • White icing for the logo.

  • A golden chocolate coin

  • Icing sugar for easy rolling

  1. Because she likes chocolate, I used a basic chocolate Victoria sponge recipe. And if you’re lucky enough to have a dome shaped tin, then this will be easy for you, but I cheated and used a sandwich tin, and this bowl –cake 1
  2. I scoured my cupboards and found a bowl that was slightly larger in diameter than my sandwich tin. I was sure the bowl would crack in the oven, and that I’d be off to the shops to buy a ‘proper’ domed tin – but it worked a treat! I lined it with greaseproof paper, and filled it halfway to make the domed top. And halfway brought it to about the same diameter as my sandwich tin, which I used to make the base cake to give me the height and shape I needed. cake 2cake  2x
  3. I sandwiched the base to the domed top using lot and lots of Nigella’s chocolate fudge icing. And then as if that wasn’t enough, I covered the outside too! This is great icing, completely delicious and really easy to spread. And then I put it in the fridge to chill.cake  2a
  4. Now it’s time to get busy with the roll out icing. Roll it out large enough to easily cover the dome, then place it on top, mould it to fit, and trim any excess. I made a couple of little holes by pressing too hard, but these are easily fixed by pushing the icing gently together again.cake 3
  5. Easy bit now… find a suitably coloured Smartie, and stick it to the top of your cake with a drop of water. And it might be the time to pause for a moment, admire your work, and munch a few of the ‘wasted’ Smarties. Then use a cocktail stick or wooden barbeque skewer to mark the seams on the crown of the ‘baseball cap’. The cap is divided into sixths, starting at the Smartie if you got it just in the middle!cake 5
  6. Use the cocktail stick to mark out the stitches , and the little air holes at the top of the cap.cake 6cake  6b
  7. Now roll out a piece of icing for the peak of the cap, and place it on the cake board, shaping to fit.cake  7
  8. Cut it to shape, then mark out all the seam lines on the peak.cake  7a
  9. And there you have it, all ready to add logo and details.cake  8
  10. I used a golden chocolate coin, and iced the name on there, and I used shop bought white writing icing to make a logo. cake  9

My daughter and her friends were thrilled!

The most difficult part was finding the right shaped ‘tin’, but the decoration itself is a doddle! And if you give it a try, do let me know how it works for you, or send me a link if you’ve posted a picture!

Happy Baking!

 

World Book Day – dressing up

World Book Day

There’s a rather curmudgeonly story by Dominic Casciani,  on the BBC’s website, where he  takes a dim view of the costume wearing side of World Book Day. He’s of the opinion that WBD has ceased to be about reading, and is now all about the dressing up.

I couldn’t disagree with him more.

Although the local schools have non-school uniform today, they also have authors visiting, and illustrators, and the day is all about BOOKS. Granted, children love dressing up, but I don’t think that’s all they take from the experience. Across the country, schools are holding special events and activities – book based activities. If dressing up adds to the excitement, then so much the better. Costumes can be home-made, or shop bought, and since lots of characters in contemporary books wear ‘normal’ clothes, they can come straight out of your child’s wardrobe.

But looking back, and ignoring the years when they were Rainbow Fairies or Disney Princesses, my girls made some really interesting costume choices. They have been:

  • Araminta Spook, a spooky little girl who lives with weird relatives, bats and ghosts, by wonderful children’s author Angie Sage.
  • Harry Potter. Yes, that’s right. Not Hermione. Harry.
  • Stephanie from Skulduggery Pleasant, a real kickass heroine, with a nice line in sarcasm.
  • And my favourite of all, complete with big red beard and an angry fairy with a frying pan – Mr Gum. I really, really loved that costume.

This year, being a lot older, the girls opted for Bella from Twilight, and Grace from the Shiver trilogy – both contemporary outfits. Not a lot of planning was involved, and this seemed to be the trend for the older children. Walking the dog, I saw several Katnisses, dressed in jeans and hoodies, indistinguishable from normal weekend clothes, not a bow and arrow in sight.

But I had to smile when I passed a Wally, of Where’s Wally fame.  Such a simple outfit. Sheer genius. And it featured hilariously in episodes of Miranda.

I’m all for dressing up for WBD. It’s fun. It’s book related. And it’s memorable, for the parents and the children.

Who knows…..maybe one day, kids might dress up as a character from one of my books…..