I had a nosy inside the new improved Bluecoat this afternoon as it hosted the very droll and dry author of this year's Liverpool Reads book.
They were also serving class chocolate biscuits with a melt-in-the mouth filling!
Anyway, said author Mal Peet was a very entertaining talker and I'd urge everyone to give his books a go.
I was hooked on Tamar, a novel about the Dutch resistance in the Second World War, during a long train journey last week.
And I picked up a copy of Keeper at the event this afternoon.
He was certainly a bit more enlightening than Evander Holyfield who I saw at the Central Library earlier - we all assumed he was going to read an extract from his autobiography, but instead he fielded a few questions from a small audience of schoolchildren (whose Scouse accents bemused him - he had to have each question repeated!).
Anyway, Mal Peet has always been into reading as escapism from a turbulent childhood with too many family crammed into too small a home and all ready to start a row.
He describes books as being "like a Tardis".
He also used to go off on his bike, as he described it "you could go off for a whole day without your parents lynching the nearest paedophile". I remember those days too.
His books are described as being for teenage readers but aren't ABOUT teenage readers.
He said he did no research for Keeper, set in South America - the closest he has been to the continent is Truro!
But he went the other way on Tamar and immersed himself, becoming quite obsessed. Research, he said, is "a seductive little rascal."
I don't think you need to be a teenager to enjoy his books however. They are seductive little rascals as well.....
