My Blog

Monday 7th June 2010 5.30pm

I must do this blog more often. I get busy doing other things and just forget to come back and update. So what's been happening in my world of writing? What books have come out and what's coming through soon?

1. Ocean Odyssey and Fantastic Forest, my two new Amazing Animals titles (illus Ant Parker) are now out, possibly in hardback and paperback at the same time. So that makes 4 titles in that new series. If they do well I may be asked to write more, but these days new titles can depend on publishers predictions of how many they can reckon to sell. So I'll wait and see. I think the books look great, myself. But will you all buy them?

2. Sir Laughalot is out too, illustrated by Sarah Warburton, my first with her. I should like to do more with her if possible.

3. A board book of my Christmas Wishes (illus Layn Marlow) is being made for this Christmas. It's been retitled after the original old version, so will be called The Night Before Christmas, though the text and pics are entirely as in Christmas Wishes. Only a neat little board book version which looks oh, so crisp and even!

4. There's a sweet little pamphlet book called At The Seaside, which is an adaptation from a counting rhyme I wrote for an anthology some few years ago now. The pics are by Alex Ayliffe and the booklet is being given away free by Bookstart of Booktrust for National Bookstart Day 2010. Get one if you can, especially if there's a very little one in your family just getting into books.

5. Guy Parker-Rees is working on our new picture book together, so you may guess there'll be some animals capering about somewhere in some way. Though which ones, where and why I shall not yet tell. That will be in our Down By The Cool of the Pool series. So I'd better soon start writing another one for him if I want to keep up.

6. Rumour has it that the great John Lawrence may be working on a text by me for David Fickling Books. But that one is strictly under wraps until more is sure. David is coming to see me in Cambridge tomorrow so I may be a little the wiser by then. Who knows? It is better these days not to say too much about work in progress until it's as good as out in the shops.

7. There may be a new lyric poetry collection by me out in the next year or two. The poems have been waiting for ages now, some of them for years (yes, it can be like that if you're not an A list celebrity writer). If I can't get a publisher to do this one for me I may do it myself. These days that actually can be quite a good option for the kind of book that probably won't get high sales but will be a good piece of literature. It IS possible for fine writing to sell well, of course, but if sales and marketing teams reckon it won't then they may often refuse to publish it at all. Even though there may be a fair amount of readers who would enjoy it greatly. These days, mostly, the numbers rule, in my experience. Believing in a book tends to mean believing in its sales potential, rather than believing in its literary merit. Please prove me wrong, publishers, and make me happy... :)

I'm trying to do fewer events from now on. Not cutting them out altogether, but cutting back on the number I do. This is to give me more time to think about what I should be writing over the next few years. Every now and then, as a writer, I come to a kind of pause where not much is occurring to me and I need to moon around a bit and see where I should be going. I notice that I will turn 60 this coming January (2011). So it is not surprising that I should be considering and replanning my writing career. Perhaps I should resume what I set out to do as a much younger man, before I was ever a writer for children. I started out writing poems as an adult, and some of those were quite promising. I can imagine maintaining my work as a children's writer while also making time to write as an adult more seriously. I never really stopped writing as an adult, now I think about it. It's just that my adult work rarely ever goes beyond my notebooks. Whereas my children's work is nearly always linked to commercial demands from publishers (and of course earns me my living, as it has done for about 10 years now...)

Anyway, time to shop for food and then go home for supper. I hope not to leave such a long gap before the next blog.

Bye for now, Tony Mitton

Wed 20th January 2.30pm

Good news. Plum is after all going to be republished by Barn Owl, under Frances Lincoln. It's printing now, or already printed, and should be coming out in March, I believe. I think it will cost around £4.99 or maybe £5.99 and will look rather like the original paperback, only the cover will read : Plum poems by Tony Mitton (making it a little clearer than the original what the book actually is in terms of content).

I am also waiting to hear, through my agent, about a good possibility of my new collection being taken up by a main London publisher. The title is also pending so I will stay quiet about that too. It's not definite yet so I don't want to get too hopeful. But this is a collection I've been working on, on & off, since Plum in 1998. A gradual accumulation of poems that work together to make a good volume. A good poetry collection is hard to put together in that I find I can write many passable poems that work for anthologies but which don't somehow earn their place in a solo collection. It's a tricky process getting that right mix.

Jolly Olly Octopus, my new Guy Parker-Rees picture book is now out, looking jolly and hoping to make a splash.

The third and fourth books in my Amazing Animals series with Ant Parker and Macmillan are in production: Ocean Odyssey about the North Atlantic Ocean and Fantastic Forest about the North American Conifer Forests. They follow Rainforest Romp and Super Safari. Apparently those first two haven't been selling as well as Macmillan had hoped, so they've adjusted the cover designs. All four are great little books in looks and content, every bit as good (better, I'd say) than their precursor series Amazing Machines. But maybe Animals don't have the wired-in "boy magnet" that things like diggers, rockets, trucks, submarines, trains, fire engines etc clearly do. But we shall see. Amazing Machines took years to grow as a series and is still very popular. Today's marketing strategies may not allow Animals the time needed, but of course I hope they will.

I've written a new book for Guy, to follow Jolly Olly Octopus. But he's barely begun on it yet, I imagine, and I prefer not to give details until a book is nearly out. Orchard are also looking with interest at a possible poetry picture book, but again, no details until I see good movement.

Sir Laughalot is on his way. I cannot give the actual day. But he will emerge later this year, illustrated by Sarah Warburton. I really like the look of this one. It's different to any of my other books. Wait and see.

At the end of February I'm going to Barcelona to talk and perform at the APAC conference and for the British Council. And the Edinburgh Festival have asked me to do events again this year.

And I notice more teachers' conferences are starting to book me to talk and perform. An audience of teachers is generally very receptive to my work, so I like to do these when they arise. There's time, effort and travelling involved. But if I can win a gathering of teachers toward my work, then I'm halfway to the work reaching their pupils already.

Well, back to work now on a little book about a bear that I'm trying to write. I wonder where that will go, if anywhere... ?

Keep reading, and maybe writing, Tony

Tues 19th January 5pm

2010. I turned 59 the other day. So I have a year until I'm 60. Time to slow down a little maybe. Perform less. Write more. That's what I intend. Some of what I write may not get published. But I'd like to make more time to read and more time to write poems as an adult, which is where I started from so long ago. I write quite a lot in my notebooks from time to time, both as a poet for children and as an adult writing my own poems for their own sake. It is this writing for its own sake that I hope to make more time for in the near future. I have to stop here as I have a visitor. But I'll come back and resume this blog very shortly.....

Monday 7th December 2.40pm

Sorry about the long gap. I seem to get so busy, what with school visits, office admin, work on the picture books, not to mention family life and just plain shopping and cooking. This will be brief. But I hope the first of a series of brief but more frequent blogs. And I hope to be putting a bit more text onto the site itself soon. A few more poems and a bit more prose.

Sad news: Ann Jungman's Barn Owl Books is having to end, most probably for financial reasons, though that's a guess on my part. But Ann emailed me to say the imprint was going, which means that the intended reprint of Plum, my first (and now out of print) poetry collection will not come out with them after all. Ah well, things are pretty tight within the world of poetry for children, as they are somewhat in the world of children's book publishing generally. Still, I'm surviving and have new things coming out. It's just the lyric poetry that's hard to get into print, especially in the form of a solo collection. Perhaps I shall self-publish something as a way to make the work available to interested parties. If I do, I shall advertise it on the site here, for a start.

Better news: People have started to comment favourably on The Storyteller's Secrets, much of which is written in verse. Some nice reviews have come through.

Jolly Olly Octopus, my next picture book with Guy Parker-Rees, is ready to come out sometime next year. My further book with Guy has been accepted and contracted by Orchard Books and Guy will probably start sketching some roughs for that soon.

The next two titles of my Amazing Animals series with Kingfisher/Macmillan are in preparation: text and content ready, illustration going forward with Ant Parker and editorial.

Rumble, Roar, Dinosaur! (the follow-up to Gnash, Gnaw, Dinosaur!) is ready to come out, probably next year, also.

Sir Laughalot, my picture book with Sarah Warburton, is at colour printout stage (ie nearly ready to publish) so will probably be out sometime next year too. This is looking great. My first with Sarah, and, looking at it, I hope not my last. Great stuff, Sarah! Lovely work, and different to anything else I've done, I think.

Christmas Wishes, my picture book with Layn Marlow, is going into Board Book format (either for this xmas or next, I'm not sure which..... see it on the stands, though, I hope...)

All Afloat on Noah's Boat is being developed as a pop-up book to go alongside the original and the audio versions. That will be interesting, and fun. It's in the hands of a paper-engineer, or will be very soon.

A very ambitious book may be under development soon with David Fickling, about which at present I say nothing, for fear it may founder, though if it doesn't it could make a ripple or two, we hope/think/consider...

As ever, I have things I &/or my agent are sending round. So there are several things getting attention, but it's too soon just yet to mention them, as they're just possibilities. I prefer here to mention only things out already or just about to come through.

My wife Elizabeth is very ill at the moment, so things at home are a bit tough, especially for her. But when your partner and living companion is low, it brings you low too, in certain ways.

Time for a cup of tea now. Then off to catch the post with a contract or two for new books. Work. Nothing like it for keeping the blues at bay, eh?

If I don't blog again beforehand, have a good Christmas break. Bye for now, Tony in Cambridge

Tuesday 4th August 5.15pm

It's one of those times. I have several books going through production. A few have just come out looking pretty good. And I have texts waiting to be seen or decided upon by editors and their teams. And I have that feeling of: "What shall I do next?" It won't be long before someone or other asks me to get back to work on something already happening. There's a lot of work like that you have to do when things are being published. It's amazing how much work just a little picture book can generate. But once you get ahead of yourself as an author, from time to time there's the difficult question: "What should I be doing now?"

For me there's a range of choice: lyric poems, narrative poems, picture books (mostly in verse, but should I consider writing some in prose now?), longer narrative works with a mixture of prose and poetry/verse in them..... that's been my standard range. But should I consider some kind of prose work? Perhaps a short novel, maybe like the early Dahl books where the prose narrative is occasionally broken by verse, songs, poems? Or should I be thinking harder about poetry for children? I have a new lyric collection waiting to be properly edited, if not by David Fickling then by some other editor at some other publisher yet to be found. I need to get that sorted out, but at the moment I'm still waiting for David to decide where he is with it. And until that book is sorted into publishable shape it will be hard to enter a territory of new work. It can be like that with poetry and poems. Too much work stacked up unseen and unread can make one feel blocked, unable to go forward.

So I'm going to have to do a bit of what jazz musicians (used to?) call "woodshedding". This means taking your instrument into the woodshed and experimenting until new things start to emerge. For a writer this would mean just trying out different things until something worth pursuing starts to take shape. Charles Causley used to say that every so often he'd dry up. He found (I recall him saying) that his way was just to leave writing alone for a bit, and to use the time to read and do other things. Apparently, for him, the maximum time was about 3 months until something started to come forward to be written, presumably an idea, a word, a phrase, a rhythm etc. My experience is that a poem will start to assert itself first in the form of some small grain or seed of a poem, such as a single line or phrase that seeks to go further and nags and niggles at you until you write it down and start to do more with it. I heard John Agard once say that gardening was a good thing to do when you were stuck with your writing or needed a change. Walking, clearly, could be a good thing. So the fact that I'm going to the Isle of Skye soon, for two week's walking, may be just what I need.

Anyway, for now I am going back to look at Hindu myths and gods. The Asian Indian myths, legends and tales are full of rich ideas and inspired stories. Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva and, one of my favourites, Ganesh, the god with the head of an elephant. Ganesh is a patron of arts and literature and also the helper-on of new projects. So, as you can see, I should be looking at him right now, since I'm a writer in search of a new project. I wonder if Ganesh will help me...... ?

Sunday 5th June 3.40pm

Well, several books have come out lately and some are coming through. So here's a roundup of what's happening with my own books:

Gnash, Gnaw, Dinosaur is out now. It's a poetry picture book. Poems about Dinosaurs written in the first person, with pictures by Lynne Chapman including ingenious flaps that open in various ways. Information in the endpapers. An introductory poem with seven separate dinosaur spreads to make up the book. The sequel, using the same format and recipe, will be called Rumble, Roar, Dinosaur. I imagine that will come out in the year following. But both books are done and ready to go now, in hardback and paperback.

The first two of the new Amazing Animals series have just come out: Rainforest Romp and Super Safari, dealing respectively with the South American Rainforest and the African Savannah. Two more books are under illustration and design at present. And I have four more potential titles listed (each with their own habitat or eco-zone). In these books we have carried the little trio of animal characters (Bird, Mouse and Rabbit) from the world of vehicles to that of zoology. Our trusty trio become little David Attenboroughs, travelling the world in search of creatures of all kinds in their natural habitats. Ant Parker's accurate yet softened illustrations maintain the friendly appeal of the former series, and I continue to use the verse style evolved there too.

The Storyteller's Secrets is now out at last. Not yet in paperback, but the sumptuous hardback is there and has already been very favourably reviewed by Amanda Craig for Times Online. That's a good start and seems hopeful for its reception. It contains some of my best verse narratives (story poems), two from earlier out-of-print publications, the others first seen here, though written, it feels, some while ago. A lot of my best work waits a long time before it sees the light of day, if at all. That's the fate of poetry and poets in this culture, I'm afraid, barring a lucky few.

A Very Curious Bear is also now out in paperback. It's one of my more wistful picture book texts. More thoughtful, less exuberant, than the books I do with Guy Parker-Rees. This is the only book I've done to date with Paul Howard.

My new book (to follow Farmer Joe and the Music Show) with Guy Parker-Rees is called Jolly Olly Octopus. It's an underwater counting book with a bit more to it than that (not so unlike Spookyrumpus, therefore). The book is finished and ready to go but I forget exactly when it's coming out. It can't be too long, I hope. I'm actually at the moment trying to write a new book for Guy to illustrate next. But it can take a while. I did a good one, I thought, but our publisher refused it. So I've had to roll my sleeves up and start again.

I have to mow the lawn now, before it gets too late. So enough blog for now. I probably have other books to mention (there is one that Sarah Warburton is illustrating, but that's not finished yet so I shall be hush, hush about it, apart from to say I just love her pics for it so far).

All for now, Tony Mitton, Cambridge (sunny afternoon now!)

Tuesday 30th June 4.10pm

Yesterday I drove to Oxford, taking John Lawrence, the illustrator, with me. He lives out on the edge of Cambridge so I went out to collect him and we went to see David Fickling and the dfb (David Fickling Books) team about the forthcoming book we are doing for them. It's a long narrative poem taken from mythology. I'm not saying more than that as the book won't be finished until late 2011 or even early 2012. My work was finished a few years ago, when I wrote the text at David's request. But John is a busy man and a much sought after illustrator, so he won't even be free to begin work on this until late August this year. By Christmas he may have a dummy book for us to discuss. But then, what with book fairs and the timings of publishing etc, a book won't be ready to hit the shops before late 2011 at earliest. Yes, it can be frustrating being the writer of texts that have to be illustrated. But the satisfaction is enormous when a good-looking well-illustrated volume actually emerges at the end of the process.

And I'm pleased to be told that TimesOnline, a web reviewing facility of that newspaper, has just reviewed my new "The Storyteller's Secrets" very favourably. See TimesOnline/Summer Reading for Children/June 27 2009/Amanda Craig.

Last week I went to Lichfield to spend 2 days working with Kate MacRae, my webdesigner for this site. The idea was to bring the main structure of the site to completion, making sure there were at least basic entries on all the main pages. Which, I think, there now are. We don't have any covers for the 'Anthologies' section under 'My Books' yet. But that will come. And I'm in so many anthologies that we will only show a representative few.

A big thrill for me is to have a page where I am starting to post some of my poems which are written simply as poems, where I am writing as a poet rather than as a poet for children. Yes, for me there is a distinction. Not always, but sometimes. It depends. One can have arguments about this, but I know what I mean. Also, in Top Secret, I have begun to post up poems for children which are as yet unpublished. These are likely to be from my next lyric collection, though some of them may not be selected for that collection in the end. David Fickling is reading these on & off. Over the last few years I've been sending him possible manuscripts for that collection but we have yet to sort out a choice and an order of poems. Yes, choosing a solo poet collection can really take that long. When we published Plum (Scholastic 1998) we went through 150 poems to get down to the final 50 and even then we cut one to leave 49 in the end.

I am delighted to tell you (more later on this as it comes through) that Ann Jungman of Barn Owl Books is going to produce a 'remake' of Plum (which I hope may come out by the end of 2010). I think that Plum is possibly my most important book in terms of children's poetry. I was very disappointed that the selectors chose not to include it in a recent exhibition of children's poetry at the British Library. For that exhibition I was asked to perform my work as one of the linked events. But there was no mention of my contribution to children's poetry in the exhibition itself. It's always disappointing to be overlooked (ask the bad fairy from The Sleeping Beauty!) but still..... if any of my poetry or verse for children is to be remembered in the longer term, time will do the telling. And one exhibition will not be the final judge. As with book prizes, it's a question of who's choosing, who's judging, and what their own particular preferences and prejudices are. It can never be truly impartial or disinterested. I've been in the judge's and reviewer's seat in the past, so have watched the process from the inside.

The new PLUM won't be a facsimile, but should have the same order of poems, and, I hope, Peter Bailey's original illustrations + a cover very reminiscent of the original. So, at last, when it continues to be recommended, you'll be able to buy copies from Barn Owl (imprint of Frances Lincoln), or from me if I'm visiting your school or library. And you won't have to seek out 2nd hand copies from amazon or abebooks or the like. In the meantime, if you really want copies, try amazon, abebooks etc as you can get 2nd hand copies at reasonable prices. Trust me, their value will grow as they become harder to get.

Thanks for coming on and reading me. I don't blog very often but mean to get it up to once a week soon. And keep visiting to see if I have more poems up to read. With all my best, Tony Mitton

Thursday 11th June 1.30pm

Some new books have now come out. On the 4th June 'The Storyteller's Secrets' had its publication day. In its structure it's a kind of sequel to 'The Tale of Tales' but there is no connection in terms of plot or characters. The structure that both books use is to link together narrative poems with a prose story. In 'The Tale of Tales' a group of animals gradually accumulates around Monkey, who is on a journey. Each creature who joins the group tells a tale in some way connected with their identity as an animal. Each of such tales are told in verse. In 'The Storyteller's Secrets' the situation or setting is a typical village where Toby and Tess live. A mysterious storyteller passes through the village from time to time. Every time he does so he tells them a story. Again, these stories are all rendered as verse narratives, story poems. The book ends with a long lyric poem and another shorter one. Peter Bailey uses silhouette and monochrome pen & ink to illustrate and, as with 'The Tale of Tales', the book has a classic feel and look to it. It's a kind of timeless tome, you could say. Take a look. If you can't afford to buy it, try asking at your local library. They may even order it in for you. If you love traditional tales and folklore, or if you like traditional styles of written verse, then this book may be for you. Think ballad and you'll be close.

There's a new book of poems about dinosaurs out now too. It's called 'Gnash, Gnaw, Dinosaur!' Really it's a picture book. Every spread has a poem about a particular kind of dinosaur with a splendid illustration by Lynne Chapman. Moreover, every spread has a flap the opens to convert the picture in some way. There's a sequel to follow, called 'Rumble, Roar, Dinosaur!' which will come out later, though the book, as far as I'm concerned now, is ready. The poems all have a light touch but are actually based on real information about dinosaurs which I researched in a number of source books. Similarly, the illustrations have a humorous edge, while remaining true to what we know about how these creatures may have looked.

The other upcoming books for me are the first two in a new series with Ant Parker. Ant and I have the well-established series now known as Amazing Machines, rhyming information books about vehicles. The lightness in these books is provided by Ant's wonderful little trio of animal characters, Bird, Mouse and Rabbit. In the new series I am sending this trio around the world to different eco-zones, on information safaris, like little David Attenboroughs, to see what wildlife may be found in such places. The first two books look at the South American Rainforest and the African Plain : Rainforest Romp / Super Safari. In a way I am writing these for a new, young, Green Generation, to introduce very young children to the wonders of worldwide wildlife.

It's time for lunch now. So I'm blogging off. Goodbye till next time. Tony Mitton

Tuesday 5th May, 6.00pm

Well, the website is coming together, bit by bit. I still have to get text up on the More About Me, About Writing, Other Work and Top Secret sections. And we also need to put a bit more up on the My Books areas. But at least I have a web presence now.

The British Library event went fairly well, I'm told. It's quite tricky sharing an hour with two other poets, especially when one is as seasoned a performer as Michael Rosen. He has a wonderfully relaxed presence on stage and a way of charming and amusing a mixed audience of children and adults. By comparison I'm perhaps a bit stiff. Really I don't see myself as a "performance" poet but more as a "performing" poet. It may sound like a fine distinction, but what I mean is I see myself primarily as a writer who has learned to perform his own work to some degree, rather than as a performance poet, whose work is essentially scripts for performance. I don't mean that Michael's work doesn't stand up on the page. It does. It reads really well. I'm simply talking about myself as a performer, and saying that I don't have his experience on stage as a performer. He's spent his life performing and broadcasting as well as writing, while I've only really been on my hind legs for about a decade now (and trying to limit the amount of performing I do so as not to encroach too much on my writing projects). It's a tricky balance to strike, how much to perform, how much to stay at home and write.

I went up to Sheffield Hallam last week to do an event for Nikki Gamble of the Write Away website. The other two participants were David Melling and Chris Mould, both author-illustrators. So I was the poet and writer of picture book texts. We each presented bits of our work and talked about our working processes. I wasn't as fluent as I sometimes can be, but I gather I passed muster.

My new book The Storyteller's Secrets comes out soon. Publication day is 4th June 09, I believe. The book is a sumptuous production, thanks to David Fickling and his team there in Oxford at dfb. In structure it's like The Tale of Tales. Narrative poems woven together in a linking prose narrative. Silhouette illustrations to go with the prose, more openwork monochrome illustrations to go with the verse, all done by Peter Bailey. It should in due course go into paperback like its companion precursor.

But this summer John Lawrence is due to start work on something special, again from David Fickling. And written by me, I should affirm. I must at present say nothing about this. Hush-hush. It is unwise to blab about projects until they are just about on the shelf or in the shop window, I have learned....

Back soon, I hope. Tony

Friday, 24th April, 5.30pm

Hello there. This is my first ever blog on the site. I'm actually still learning how to manage the site itself. So far all the clever work has been done by my web designer, the brilliant Kate MacRae. But I hope soon to be able to blog with ease and even to post things elsewhere on the site. At this rate I shall become a webdesigner and forget all about writing poems and books. No, that must not happen.

Tomorrow I'm doing an event at the British Library near Kings Cross in London. It's in connection with their exhibition of children's poetry from past to present, called Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Bat (which is a quotation from Lewis Carroll, in one of the Alice books, I forget which...). Michael Rosen is leading the event with Francesca Beard and me joining in. We'll be reading some of our favourite poems from the past by others, then reading/performing some of our own.

I have to finish preparing that now, so I will, as they say, log off......

Till soon, Tony

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