Anti-Poodle Prejudice

A Mr POSKITT writes to say that he could only imagine me owning a labrador or a dalmatian and what's with the miniature poodle - was it a raffle prize?  He's not the first to cast aspersions on our choice of dog (yes, I'm looking at you, McIntyre).  However, as this frankly terrifying photo proves, Frodo is a rough, tough country poodle, and you insult him at your peril...

Traction Fortress

I was making some final adjustments to Scrivener's Moon last week, and now that it's off to the proof reader and then the printers I decided to relax by drawing Traction Fortresses.  The one above is inspired by photographs I've seen of fantastic wooden churches in Norway; precarious-looking stacks of towers and turrets covered in shingles like dragon's scales.  I guess this weaponised version could use a ram or some anti-boarding spikes at the front, but the perspective defeated me, and otherwise I think it comes close to what I had in mind while I was writing the new book.  This is a Traction Fortress of the Arkangelsk nomads; more primitive than the kit London's new masters use, but there are an awful lot more of the Arkangelsk.  I've used water colour and coloured pencils (neither of them very well, it must be said).

Mo-Bots in Widecombe

It turns out that while I was visiting Blackawton School last Wednesday comics artist Neill Cameron was visiting Sam's school here in Widecombe.  He was there as part of a new children's literature festival based in Exeter and called - only slightly wince-inducingly - the EXEtreme Imagination Festival (see what they did there?).  It's a pity the two events clashed, as I'd have liked to gatecrash Neill's talk, but I've heard nothing but good reports of it from teachers and pupils, and there are some photos on Neill's blog.   Sam came home with a copy of Neill's DFC book Mo-Bot High, which he has been reading avidly ever since.

Meanwhile, my attempts at landscape drawing have continued, slightly hampered by rain, fog and puppy- minding, but much encouraged by Sam's comics heroine and all-round pointy-spectacled fountain of wonderfulness, Sarah McIntyre.  While I draw trees on Dartmoor she draws other trees in London's Greenwich Park, and it's always a pleasure to see a new picture go up on her blog.

McIntyre

Reeve

Traction City Sighted in Blackawton!

Oh, I hate having my picture taken, and it always shows, but I had to include this one to give you a sense of the scale of this vast model of London from Mortal Engines, built by pupils at Blackawton Primary School.  It comes complete with caterpillar tracks, chimney smoke, a working elevator, flocks of airships and balloons, and a smaller model of Salthook constructed around the school's wheelchair lift so that it can be reeled in by London's 'jaws'.

Tom Pether, one of the teachers at the school, made contact in the summer to tell me that he was planning a whole term of topic work based around the book: "...investigating character development, settings and narrative... using the character of Hester as a stimulus to look further at ideas of gender - perceptions and assumptions, the history of female emancipation etc...  (And) looking at how technological change affects people..."  I never knew there was so much in it!

I've always felt a bit ambivalent about my books being used in schools in this way - I didn't really intend them to be Set Texts, more the sort of thing you read under the bedcovers with a torch, and your parents say, "What are you reading that rubbish for?".  But when I visited the school yesterday the children all seemed to be enjoying the book and had done lots of great drawings, as well as coming up with some interesting ideas of their own for extra characters who might inhabit London.  One group had invented an alternate version of MEDUSA which fired swarms of metal bees to strip rival cities bare!  They all had lots of good questions to ask, and I ended up having a thoroughly enjoyable morning with them while Sarah did the shopping in nearby Totnes. 

Sir Dogford of Poo.

I wish I could have stayed longer, but it was the first time we'd left Frodo at home on his own, so we had to hurry back at lunch time, expecting to find the kitchen a sea of wee and worse.  But happily he seems to be getting the hang of things, so there weren't too many puddles.