Hooray for Children’s Book Festival. What a great month for writers, let alone school children. You might think it’s the pupils who benefit most when authors park their magic carpets in schools and libraries around the country to drop their pearls of lit-wit.
Far from it. Where do you think we pinch our ideas from if not all you busy young brainboxes?
In four days I’ve learned about Magma Dodger, a superhero who lives inside a volcano and speaks Lava-ese, and the Discombobulate, a spherical, confused creature with eyes on its legs, hands on its feet and nostrils on its toes.
I’ve been given the recipe for the Wisher Cake (its ingredients are dollar bills, a Lamborghini, a mansion and chocolate sprinkles; a wish is granted with every bite) and the Fantastic Freaktastic Mindblastic Hallowe’en Bun made of eyeballs, cobwebs and a million spiders’ legs.
I’ve learned that if the Moon were a person he’d be a grumpy old man who wears smooth glittery suits and makes faces at the sun, and that Flu would be a mean little boy who chases Grandma round the house and traps her in her bedroom.
Thank you, young tweeniuses. Stories on legs, the lot of you.