Robin Stevens's Blog, page 55

Poison is Not Polite reviewed in the Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books

Poison is Not Polite (the US edition of Arsenic for Tea) has had another lovely review in the Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books! They say …

‘When a suspicious death occurs at Daisy Wells’ family home over the Easter holiday break, the Wells & Wong Detective Society  … leaps back into action as young teen Daisy and best friend (and narrator) Hazel Wong endeavor to solve the murder of unpleasant houseguest Mr. Curtis. … Daisy’s relationships with the suspects make the groups’ detective work an emotionally charged effort, but careful deduction and perseverance serve the young detectives well in solving the crime. Stevens continues to satisfyingly scratch the English murder-mystery itch with this delightful second installment in the Wells & Wong series. … Hazel and Daisy are nuanced, three-dimensional characters, and their bickering but loyal friendship rings true. The mystery itself is solidly constructed, and the solution is both surprising and logical. Fans of the first book will find this just as rewarding, and kids on the cusp of embracing Agatha Christie will enjoy testing their deductive skills here as well. JH’

Thank you BCCB – it’s lovely to see Poison is Not Polite getting such a nice reception in the USA!

Jolly Foul Play – it’s competition time!

I’ve got some good news to start the week for all you UK bunbreak fans: my publishers Puffin have partnered with Caboodle (National Book Tokens) to offer a very special and very delicious prize.

Tea for two (author not included), as well as a signed set of all four Murder Most Unladylike Mysteries, is up for grabs – this is your chance to show your own Daisy (or Hazel) how much their friendship means to you! Six runners up will also win a signed set of the books.

So, what are you waiting for? The competition closes on 2nd June, but you can enter NOW!

Good luck, and may the bunbreak be ever in your favour.

Happy birthday, Poison is Not Polite!

My American book family just got a lot bigger!

Today’s the publication date of both the paperback of Murder is Bad Manners (the American edition of Murder Most Unladylike) and the gorgeous new hardback of Poison is Not Polite (Arsenic for Tea in the UK). I’m totally delighted that Daisy and Hazel’s second adventure is now available to US readers.

It’s been given two starred reviews, from Booklist and Kirkus, and if you live in the USA or Canada, I really hope you’ll enjoy it! If you happen to spot it in the wild, please send me a picture.

Happy detecting!

Mystery & Mayhem

As you may know, Daisy and Hazel’s fifth adventure will be published in October this year. It seems a long way off, but I’ve got good news to help you with the wait: I’ve written a short story for a mystery anthology that’s publishing in just a few weeks!

Mystery & Mayhem is a collaboration between twelve amazing authors, and I think it shows how brilliant British children’s crime writing is right now. Each of the stories is fantastic (and completely new), and there’s such a range of stories (historical, contemporary, funny, scary and exciting), that every crime fan should find something they love.

I’m proud to be a part of the anthology, alongside Clementine Beauvais, Elen Caldecott, Susie Day, Julia Golding, Frances Hardinge, Caroline Lawrence, Helen Moss, Sally Nicholls, Kate Pankhurst, Harriet Whitehorn and Katherine Woodfine, and I can’t wait for you to read it – and especially my story!

I’ve written something completely different to my Murder Most Unladylike books. It’s a contemporary mystery, starring a boy called Jamie who lives in a hotel with his father and his dog. One evening a guest arrives while he’s on his own, but when he wakes up the next morning … she’s vanished.

I hope that sounds exciting! If you’re interested, and you’d like to hear me and some of my fellow Crime Club members talk mystery and mayhem, I’ve already got three events confirmed.

On Monday 9th May at 7pm, Katherine Woodfine and I will be speaking at Waterstones Piccadilly.

On Friday 20th May at 4pm, Katherine Woodfine and I will be speaking at Dulwich Picture Gallery.

On Sunday 22nd May at 11:15am, Helen Moss and I will be speaking at Linton Book Festival.

Stay tuned for more – and I hope you have a very mysterious May!

Jolly Foul Play – the schools tour!

Two weeks. Five days. Ten schools. Ten train journeys. Three hotels. Five bookstores. And six bunbreaks (at a conservative estimate). The Jolly Foul Play schools tour was the most exciting, exhausting and amazing thing I’ve ever done as an author.

I visited Milton Keynes, Hampton, Oxfordshire, Norwich and Streatham, and I had five incredible days of school visits. Below are a selection of my favourite pictures from the events – there are almost too many to share!

Milton Keynes: a jolly fantastic display at Shenley Brook School

A glorious lunchtime bunbreak by Nikki from Waterstones MK!

With pupils at Two Mile Ash School

Hampton: the view out of my window into the Hampton Court Maze

And my room’s name. Eek…

Talking at Hampton Junior School (photo by Mel @littlestarwrite)

With Hampton pupils – and my unicorn scarf! (photo by Mel @littlestarwrite)

A LSW selfie (photo by Mel @littlestarwrite)

My GORGEOUS peanut butter bunbreak in Hampton

Talking at Trafalgar School (photo by Mel @littlestarwrite)

Oh no! Those pesky LSW students! (photo by Mel @littlestarwrite)

Hooray! (photo by Mel @littlestarwrite)

Oxfordshire: beautiful Burford!

The hall at Burford School – about to be filled with 280 students!

Flowers from Burford School!

My editor investigates at Henry Box School

Norwich: a beautiful location for tea!

Gorgeous Norwich High School for Girls!

With NHS competition winners at lunch

With NHS pupils after the event

My lovely train bunbreak!

Streatham: About to speak at Clapham & Streatham Prep School – and the stage is a bit piratey.

Lovely glass at Clapham & Streatham Prep School!

And now, the credits. I might have been the only person giving the author talks, but I couldn’t possibly have got to my destinations, set up the rooms or sold the books without the help of an enormous team of people. They fed me, drove me, cheered me on and generally supported me, and I’m enormously grateful. So let’s hear it for …

My mastermind of a publicist, Harriet Venn, who planned out the whole trip.

My chaperones from my publisher, Harriet, Nat, Sophia and Annie. Authors on tour need people to tell them where to go and what to do, and also to write names on post-it notes so when they’re signing the hundredth copy of their book, they spell the person’s name right.

The five bookshops and their representatives. Nikki from Waterstones Milton Keynes, Mel from Little Star Write (and Kew Books, who supplied her), Rebecca and Alex from Blackwell’s Oxford, Debbie and Louisa from Waterstones Norwich and Tamara and Tracy from Tales on Moon Lane. There wouldn’t have been any book sales without them, and they found all of the schools we visited.

The schools themselves, and the teachers who looked after me! Shenley Brook End Secondary School, Two Mile Ash School, Hampton Junior School, Trafalgar Junior School, Burford School, Henry Box School, Heartsease Primary Academy, Norwich High School for Girls, Streatham and Clapham Prep School and Corpus Christi Catholic School. I met so many brilliant students, who asked fantastic questions and had wonderful ideas. Thank you for being such excellent audiences!

And that’s it. I had a wonderful time – now I’m going to take a rest, before we begin planning the tour for book 5 …

Jolly Foul Play – Cambridge launch

I can definitely say that Jolly Foul Play has been well and truly launched. It has had not one but THREE parties to celebrate its release – and I think the last, in Cambridge, might have been the best yet.

Cambridge Waterstones have been supporters since the first book was published – I used to be a local author, and they got behind the series fantastically. I’ve had two brilliant launches for previous books with them, so I was delighted to come back for Jolly Foul Play‘s launch. Saskia and Sylvie from Waterstones ran a brilliantly well-organised and fun event – I’m very grateful for all of the work they put in!

There was a brilliant turn-out, and I think that in the end, over 200 fans came. I was signing for two hours, and I loved meeting every one of you. I have to give a special mention to Scarlet, who drew me beautiful fan art of Hazel and Daisy, and Sophie, who wrote me a letter in Pig Latin!

The first thirty people in the queue were also entered into a prize draw to win a special detective notebook – congratulations to Stephanie, who won!

If you came, and stood in that queue, thank you so much. I really do have some of the best fans around!

All ready to go …

A Cambridge bunbreak for Jolly Foul Play

The first arrivals

Signing Jolly Foul Play

The queue is growing!

Raffle is drawn – congratulations Stephanie!

Reading from Jolly Foul Play. Photo by Kendra Leighton.

With the books, after the signing. What a launch!

Jolly Foul Play on Fun Kids Radio

The first day of my Jolly Foul Play tour, in Milton Keynes, is complete! My next stop is Kew, on Thursday – but while I get ready for that, I’ve got a fun interview to share with you.

Last week I went in to the Fun Kids Radio studio and met presenter Bex, who talked to me about my Murder Most Unladylike books, Jolly Foul Play and what’s next for the series. And I even helped her solve a very puzzling office mystery …

If you’d like to listen to the piece, you can find it here. I had a great time recording it – thanks to Bex for being such an awesome host!

With Bex in the Fun Kids studio!

Daisy and Hazel arrive in Italy

This week is a very busy one for me – I’m out at a tour of schools, speaking about Jolly Foul Play. But I’ve got a very exciting bit of news about Daisy and Hazel that I really wanted to share with you: the first foreign-language editions of Murder Most Unladylike and Arsenic for Tea have been printed!

They’re the Italian editions, from the publisher Mondadori, and they are a book lover’s dream. They’re hardbacks, with the most beautiful endpapers – I’m completely in love with the way Mondadori has reworked the British covers to fit with the new Italian titles. I’m also delighted by those titles. My Italian is quite wonky, but I think the rough translations are ‘Murder for Girls’ and ‘On Holiday with Death’ – and the series title, of course, is ‘Miss Detective’!

I can tell that the translators, Manuela Salvi and Manuela Piemonte, have really captured the essence of the books – there are loads of lovely touches, my favourite of which has to be Beanie’s new name. In Italian she’s ‘Scricciolo’, which means Wren – something small and sweet, just like Beanie!

Last week was Bologna Book Fair, the biggest children’s book rights fair of the year. My (tireless and brilliant) agent was there – and she got to see the enormous Miss Detective banner that Mondadori had put up to advertise the books. Hazel and Daisy have arrived in Italy in style!

Cambridge and Oxford: one weekend of two festivals!

It’s been a busy three days for me and Jolly Foul Play: I’ve travelled to THREE cities (if you count London in between), spoken at TWO literary festivals, and eaten SEVERAL bunbreaks.

On Friday, I headed to Cambridge. It’s a special place for me – I used to live there (I wrote Arsenic for Tea and First Class Murder on the commuter train between Cambridge and London), and it’s where my fifth book is going to be set.

A train bunbreak!

After a swift train bunbreak, I arrived at the festival to discover that the whole place had been themed around my book. How kind of them! My event was sold out, and it turns out that 100 people is quite a lot to see staring back at you when you get up on a stage. If you came, thank you so much – and if you waited in the enormous signing queue afterwards, thank you even more!

A very jolly literary festival

Showing off the colour coordination!

The queue to get in! This is when I started to get nervous …

About to go on stage …

On Sunday, I visited Oxford. Oxford is where I grew up – I lived in Pembroke College, where my father was Master. And it just so happens that the venue for Sunday’s event, The Story Museum, is across the road from Pembroke!

Before the event began, I went on a mini tour of Oxford bookshops. Both Blackwell’s (where I used to work, and where I wrote the first draft of Murder Most Unladylike all the way back in 2010) and Waterstones had Jolly Foul Play in their windows. Below are some pictures of me pointing at them excitedly, because pointing at my books is one of my favourite things to do.

Blackwell’s!

Waterstone’s!

The Oxford Literary Festival event was a panel with fellow crime writers Katherine Woodfine and Julia Lee. It was, delightfully, called Murder for Tea, which horrified the nice old gentleman I met in the green room. ‘What are you doing?’ he asked me kindly. ‘Murder!’ I said. ‘For tea!’ He did not speak to me again.

The Lit Fest had very cleverly (and luckily) supplied our audience with buns for a post-event bunbreak – we talked about buns so much that everyone must have been hungry. We also discussed real-life crime solving, and our ideal detective societies, as well as doing readings from our latest books. It was a thoroughly spiffing afternoon, and if you came, thank you so much!

Bunbreak! Not poisoned, we promise …

A lovely rainbow of books to be signed!

Three partners in crime! Katherine Woodfine, Julia Lee and me!

 

And all of this is just the beginning. Over the next week and a half I’m going to be travelling around, visiting as many schools as I can to talk about Jolly Foul Play. I’m very excited (and already stocking up on bunbreak) – wish me luck!

Jolly Foul Play’s Birmingham Launch

On Friday, Jolly Foul Play had its second launch day, at Birmingham’s beautiful new Waterstones. The store were wonderful hosts – they set up a bunbreak for us, and lots of fans came along. It was wonderful to see you all, and great to know that I’ve got fans in the Midlands!

We held a cover-illustration competition, with detective notebooks as the prizes, and I was very impressed by the entries. It was very difficult to pick the winners – congratulations to everyone who entered, and especially to the winners, Lilly and Lydia!

Below are some pictures from the event – if you were there, I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did!

Bunbreak ready to go!

Detectives hard at work on their covers!

One of the winning entries – by Lilly

The other winner – by Lydia

Honourable mention – this incredible space adventure by Ben!

With the winners, Lydia and Lilly!

And finally, my bunbreak on the way home – thank you so much to Jamie at Birmingham Waterstones!

Next weekend I’m going to be visiting both Cambridge and Oxford, for sold-out events at their festivals. My next public signing will be at Waterstones Milton Keynes, on the 12th April at 4:30pm – and after that, I’ll be visiting Cambridge Waterstones on the 16th at 3. Please come see me, and help me continue Jolly Foul Play‘s wonderful first month!