Last week was Children's Book Week and my local TV station Notts TV marked it by having me as a guest on their 630 Show along with Tim Ryan, one of the organisers of Nottingham's wonderful Telling Tales Festival. Notts TV didn't know it when they invited us, but Tim and I are old friends; we both came to Nottingham to study architecture at the University and went on to work side by side in the same Nottingham practice for a couple years.
I'd originally been invited on to the show to talk about my own books, but I offered to recommend a couple of recent favourites by other authors and illustrators. And then I realised that I ought to take the opportunity to promote the Summer Reading Challenge which was launching the following day. So in the end I didn't have time to talk about any of my own books, but there's an image of one of them, The Silver Serpent Cup, on the screen behind me.
The show went out live and the half hour seemed to fly by. Before I knew it we were finishing with a great performance from Rich Howell of Nottingham music collective RJMarks. Thanks to Notts TV and 630 Show presenter Nicola Beswick (who's a big fan of kids' books) for having us on.
| The Silly Book of Side-Splitting Stuff written by Andy Seed illustrated by Scott Garrett 
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The Sleeper and the Spindle written by Neil Gaiman illustrated by Chris Riddell 
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The Telling Tales Festival is on 10 October 2015. You can find out more about it at nottinghamtellingtales.org.uk.
And you can find out more about this year's Record Breakers Summer Reading Challenge at summerreadingchallenge.org.uk
