T M Alexander at Lower Shaw Family Fun Day, a Swindon Festival of Literature event

Children love stories, and love writing stories to entertain themselves and others. But how do you get primary school aged children thinking about plot and characterisation?

And at the Lower Shaw Family Fun Day, a Swindon Festival of Literature event, T M Alexander – author of the Tribes series, a kind of Famous Five for the new millennium – was on hand to take budding young authors through the creative stages of writing their own story.

Alexander put the rules in place, and it was up to the audience – comprised of children aged aged six and upwards – to fill in the gaps. So the boy and girl characters were christened James and Eva. The boy liked robotics and climbing, and hated spiders. The girl liked vegetables and was good at finding things. She was scared of the dark.

Those character traits were then woven into a story as – with the help of some props from Alexander’s bin – the author and the children took each other on a magical journey into a land within a scrapbook.

They traversed a maze of maize, warded off angry pigs, followed a rabbit down a hole and swam to a giant duck, who floated them to safety on its back.

And perhaps the best lesson was left for last. Once back in the safety of their room, did our heroes find they had daydreamed the whole adventure? No, insisted the author – that’s a terrible way to end a story!

Instead the protagonists were left wondering whether those weird and wonderful events really did happen to them, as they plucked pieces of maize from their clothing.

So, we’ve had a busy few weeks, everyone seems to be very excited and not really getting on with very much work at all as they’re all too busy watching Hilary Freeman’s new trailer for Lifted on Youtube. Being the crafty cat that I am, I jotted down the URL in my secret spy notebook and had sneaky peak later when they’d all gone home! (I like to keep it hush hush that I am a computer whiz or else I’m sure Piccadilly would have me running the company rather than running over the desks, so shhhhh). You can have a watch too right here.

Isn’t the trailer great! I can totally relate to her angst, it’s hard being a cat. Sometimes humans even doubt our ability to type! Yes, really! Well, this blog will prove just how dexterous the paw can be. I spent the whole of Wednesday pawing through a copy of Lifted out on the roof garden (lucky me, I know! Oh the advantages of being a publisher’s cat…) but you, my friends, can read the first chapter on our website before its release in July.

Lifted by Hilary Freeman

To be perfectly honest, I’m rather jealous of everyone who got to go along to one of T.M. Alexander’s story workshops. I’ve been following her blog here and it sounds like just my saucer of milk (or ‘Cup of Tea’ in Humanspeak). I have so many stories to tell. But that’s for another time. Hopefully that time will be next year at Hay Festival!

Jghhaaagjjjjjgggghhhh….aaag…ahem…sorry about that. Furball. Nasty things. Oh don’t look at me like that, I’m sure you’ve had a number in your time! Anyway… we’ve all been hip hip hooraying for Sheridan Winn who’s only gone and won the 9-11 years Lincolnshire Young People’s Book Award 2009/2010! Another one for the roof garden I feel. It’s out in the shops now, but you can have a read of the first chapter on her website. Meow.

The Sprite Sisters - The Circle of Power by Sheridan Winn

AND – last but not least – there is the SUPER DUPER EXCITING news of me, Mister Toffee, launching my very own blog! To celebrate I’ve teamed up with my lovely friends at Chicklish and have eight SIGNED copies of Cathy Hopkin’s Cinnamon Girl – This Way to Paradise to give away. All you need to do to enter is email your most whisker-tickling cat jokes to toffeelovesbooks@piccadillypress.co.uk by Monday 21st June. I’ll also post my favourite jokes on my shiny new blog so that everyone can have a good old ‘ROFL’.

Sometimes I can't quite decide whether to cuddle books ...

...or just attack them!

Phew! Exhausting! I definitely need to spend some quality time staring at that fascinating pot plant on my roof garden. Toodle pip!