Category Archives: Reading and Literacy

My New Book Project – Generation Moon

Artemis 1 was due to launch as I am writing this, having been delayed many times. It is now due to go in two days time – Wednesday, Nov. 16.

Returning to the moon has brought back memories of the excitement I felt as a kid, as The Apollo missions headed out towards the Moon. Apollo 8 was my most favourite mission – It was so bold, so new, so intrepid and all wrapped up with the magic of Christmas.

My generation of Moonies were really let down with the ending of Apollo. But soon, it seems, there really will be humans established on the moon – the future we imagined was ours when we were kids.

So I am now writing a middle-grade, adventure trilogy called GENERATION MOON to inspire the new generation of kids who, one day – quite soon, will populate the Moon and will maybe go even further, to Mars and beyond.

I feel there is a need to get on with this project – time is of the essence and regular publishing schedules are too slow. So, I will be-self publishing over the next year to 18 months, launching the project as limited signed editions on Kickstarter soon.

Sign up to my YouTube Channel when I will be regularly posting news, hints and tips about the whole self-publishing process, writing – editing – illustrating – launching – publishing and, most importantly – marketing.

As well as inspiring a new generation of moonies and astronauts, I hope to help other along with their self-publishing projects.

Stay tuned!

Political Correctness or Wokeness in Children’s Books?

Times and attitudes change.I was brought up a child of empire and was imbued with attitudes and beliefs by parents, family, school, society and friends.

We have come a long way in a very short time. I found theses two little dummy books that I made to experiment with a character that I called clumsy clot – a commonly used epithet when I was growing up.

Clumsy Clot was a name I used and never thought about until my editor explained why publishers would not be likely to leap at the chance of using the character. Was it censorship, my first brush with political correctness or an awakening to a more empathic view of the use of language?

Why your children’s story likely won’t sell millions!

@LouigiVerona, on YouTube, asked me the following, when commenting on my last video: https://youtu.be/XaRwoKwxdr0

“A question: you are frequently saying that a story for one’s child is not necessarily a story that would work for other children. Could you talk more about it? I’m not planning to write anything like that, but I’m just curious what a writer should pay attention to and what, in your experience, actually works?”

I thought the easiest thing would be to make a video off the top of my head to start trying to explain this for you and for myself. There is a lot more to it and I will come back to this subject – especially if the video makes you want to ask more questions – please do so in the comments box below.

Having made and edited the video the following thoughts occurred to me:

Simply put, a story written for a particular child assumes the reader knows so much about that family or the child’ situation – the the pet names – the culture – the in-jokes.

There is often a lot that is written in a family story which actually excludes the reader.

To write a story that is universal, it must accessible for all children, or at least the target audience.

If you want to sell a lot of books, you want to make the story inclusive for as many children as possible.

The themes should be those of all children’s lives, not those of one particular child on one particular day in one particular culture.

It is good to share cultures and allow others in to understand, but that means finding the universality in the story.