Monday, November 23, 2015

Happy Book Week!

It's Book Week Scotland and how great to find EXODUS in The Guardian's Top Ten Scottish children's book quotes among brilliant company, such as JK Rowling, Robert Louis Stevenson, JM Barrie and Debi Gliori. It's almost impossible to pick a favourite quote, but if I absolutely had to it would be this one:

'To try to be brave is to be brave.'

That's from a beautiful classic - George MacDonald's At the Back of the North Wind.

At the end of the week, I'm off to the Tarbert Book FestivalTarbert is really beautiful and it's also next door to Carradale, the setting for one of my early books, SOUNDTRACK, so I'll be doing a reading from that, as well as taking my young audience on...

'... an exciting journey through some of the biggest ideas of our time (climate change, the future of humanity, the wonders of the universe and mind-bending new science). I'll be exploring and debating these hugely topical and powerful ideas through my own books for young readers - the award-winning EXODUS trilogy, my graphic novel EARTH-PLANET, UNIVERSE on the world's first environmentalist, Scotland's John Muir, and the book I've just written, A GIRL MADE OF STARS.' (Oban Times)

Happy Book Week, wherever you are!





2 comments:

Tez Miller said...

Was A GIRL MADE OF STARS previously titled RIVEN? I somehow have your name linked with RIVEN in my notes, and I don't know how long ago that was, or if I mixed you up with someone else ;-)

JULIE BERTAGNA said...

It was, Tez. You're absolutely right. I think there's a game called Riven plus my agents wanted a title that said a bit more about the book. Getting a lot of fabulous feedback from publishers on it but sadly there's a perception that 'space is not a thing' for readers of YA fiction, that female readers don't want books set in space. What do we do? Publishers need to know about people like you!