Julia Jarman

This isn't really recent news, but I'm so proud ...

Illustrator Lynne Chapman and I had to go to a glitzy award ceremony at the Plaza Theatre in Stockport. It was just like the Oscars with everyone - well all the ladies - in posh frocks and a nail-bitingly tense wait while the envelope were opened.

Lynne and I were SO excited when we won. We were both presented with a framed piece of art work. Mine was by Emily Forrest and it's super - a terrific painting of the anaconda eating two victims. We were supposed to go up on stage and give a speech, but the Early Years section had just been won by Nick Sharrat for NEVER USE A KNIFE AND FORK and he hadn't given a speech. Instead he balanced bagles on his head - yes really - so we thought we couldn't just give a boring old speech after that. What were we to do?

Here's what we did - a dramatic reading of our prize-winning book and it went down very well. (I'm in the spotty blouse.) How we loved the applause! Afterwards we met the other winners, the Mayor of Stockport and lots of other important people, most importantly the children who voted for our book. THANK YOU!

But that's enough about last year. Read on to find out about exciting new resources, one of them inspired by the prize-winning GHOST WRITER!

Happy reading!

Julia

PS VISITS 2009 I'm already fully booked for this term and I'm off to San Francisco for the Reading the World Conference on 20th March to give a presentation on my picture books.Webamster will be in charge of the site and he'll be at home looking after Perdita the cat.

Teachers, please note, I can't do any more school visits this term, and the summer term is filling up fast.

I've just had an invitation to do a double act with illustrator, Lynne Chapman, at the Edinburgh Festival in August 2009, and another to talk about my novels for teens to the famous Raffles Institute in Singapore in 2010.