News & Blog by Jacqueline Harvey
Read the latest news and bulletins, essays, features, opinions from our bestselling authors. Find out what's being said, debated, and discussed in the world of books and ideas.
On a beautiful sunny afternoon in Sydney, a couple of weeks ago, over one hundred little girls and almost as many accompanying mums and dad waited on the wharf at Circular Quay to board the MV 2000 - for a book launch. It seemed a bit surreal at the time and I was pretty overwhelmed that all of those people were there to help me launch Alice-Miranda’s latest adventure Alice-Miranda At Sea. It was...
Recently I met a group of children who were very familiar with my friend Alice-Miranda Highton-Smith-Kennington-Jones. It was great hearing their thoughts about this little character with whom I spend so much of my time. At this particular school, some Year 4 students, having had the first few chapters of Alice-Miranda at School read aloud to them brainstormed ideas about her. They said things...
Alice-Miranda bubbled around in my head for a very long time before I knew exactly what to do with her. I was working as the Deputy Head of a girls’ primary school when the idea of her first appeared, so I spent quite a lot of time talking with the students about the types of characters they liked – and what made them likable. I knew in Alice-Miranda I wanted to create a character who was original,...
I’d always thought of myself as a pretty positive person until a couple of years ago when I read through a diary I’d been keeping. It struck me that it was quite possibly the greatest whinge-fest in the history of the world. That diary (and a number preceding) appeared to be the repositories of all manner of angst and worry – and self-indulgent miserablising (I know it’s not a real word, but I’m...
Is there such thing as a perfect place to write? Roald Dahl, one of my literary heroes certainly thought so. In a shed at the bottom of his garden. Virginia Woolf favoured the room in the garden concept too, while other authors seem attached to their studies. I was wondering what it would be like to have a dedicated writing space – somewhere to go every day and ponder my characters, write their...
Stories have always been part of my life. As a child I was an avid reader and grew up a big fan of the school and town libraries. I particularly loved the smell. There was something potent about opening a book and breathing in that very particular scent. It was the whiff of adventure, of journeys into the unknown. I regularly borrowed books and was smart enough to return them on time – the librarians...
