Jacqueline Harvey & Alice-Miranda visit St Martin’s

Friday was an exciting day in the LRC when we had a visit from Jacqueline Harvey on her “Alice-Miranda in New York” book tour…

Jacqueline Harvey & Alice-Miranda Visit St Martin’s on PhotoPeach

Jacqueline is a great storyteller and we loved hearing the story of her journey to become a writer.  We trembled when she told us about a scary teacher she had before she met  Mrs Hogan who inspired her to become a teacher.  Jacqueline has always loved to write and as a teacher she wrote lots of plays for her students to perform.  Jacqueline regularly talked about one day writing books for children until her husband challenged her to actually do it and not just talk about it!  (Thank goodness he did!)

           Did you know…

  • Jacqueline has never met the illustrator who draws the covers of the Alice-Miranda books
  • There is a signature pink  item on each Alice-Miranda book cover
  • Jacqueline has used Google to inspire ideas for her settings.  She is going to visit some of the houses she has used in her stories when she visits America and England
  • There are going to be ten Alice-Miranda books

            Writing Tips:

  •  You need to plan your story well before you start writing
  • You have to care about your characters
  • When Jacqueline was stuck writing a description of  Miss Grimm she was given some advice from fellow author, Markus Zusac. He said to think about the way the character would look and then write the OPPOSITE
  • Jacqueline uses a variety of settings for her stories so she can introduce new characters
  • Nasty characters are FUN to write – you can make them quite despicable!

Jacqueline encouraged us to follow our dreams just as she has followed her dream to become a writer …

 P.S – How exciting!  Jacqueline’s visit to our school is on Alice-Miranda’s blog!  Check it out here