Princelings in Children’s Book week

Yes, it’s Children’s Book Week starting today and finishing on Sunday!

Mother Daughter Book Reviews and Youth Literature Reviews have joined forces to provide you with the opportunity to take part in the Children’s Book Week Giveaway Hop 2014, featuring links to giveaways for fabulous children/teen’s books, gift cards, cash, or other prizes.  Scroll down for details.   What better way to celebrate Children’s Book Week?

First, though I have an exclusive  SPECIAL OFFER on the first three books in the Princelings of the East series during May:

Click the book name to go to Smashwords where you can buy the ebook(s) of your choice in your preferred format, and add the coupon code before the final checkout.  You can read more about the books by clicking the title in the black box at the top left of this page.

What else is happening during Children’s Book Week?

If you go to the Children’s Book Week website you can vote for the Children’s Choice Book Award – I hope you will! You can also download posters and bookmarks, including this lovely one:

CBW_2014 bookmark

Also on the Princelings website…

Watch out for a special appearance on Wednesday by the famous Stanley & Katrina, authors of The Perpetual Papers of the Pack of Pets, who have a very special prize competition for you to enter.

And now for the Kid Lit Giveaway Hop

Princelings Trilogy Final front & spineMy Giveaway is running all week 12-18th May (EST), with prizes open worldwide – so even if it isn’t Children’s Book Week where you are, you can still join in the fun.

  • First prize is a signed copy of the Princelings of the East – The Trilogy (paperback), sent worldwide.
  • Three runners-up will have their choice of a print of a chapter illustration from any of the books, signed by the author.  Prints are about A5 size (half US letter size)

a Rafflecopter giveaway
  And now – join the rest of the participants 🙂

 

 

 

 

Children’s Book Week Day 6

Kid-Lit-Giveaway-Hop-Button-May-2013-draft-2

Read any good children’s books recently? Stuck for ideas?  Well, this week is your big chance to hop around the world in search of good reads for kids.  You may even win copies, too!   Children’s Book Week is a celebration of the best books for children. 

This is the last day this week I’ll be posting here, talking about my books, my characters and other books that inspired me.   There is a link to my Giveaway, which you can visit again tomorrow for a last few entries if you like. I hope you’ve enjoyed your visits here, and you’ve ‘followed’ us to keep in touch..

Humphrey – star of The Talent Seekers

Humphrey having a small cuddleIf all goes well, this time next week there will be a new Princelings ebook in the Amazon stores.  Called The Talent Seekers, it stars Humphrey, who was born and raised in the Lost City of Arbor, but escaped and began his journey west at the start of the third book.  This is the story of how he found friendship and a purpose in life.  Here’s a short (580 word) extract for you.

Humphrey (who is pretending to be from Castle Fortune) has left White Horse Castle after a security scare, but is drawn back for the Narrathon, a story-telling marathon during a festival.

Humphrey woke and shook himself.  The sun was as high as it was going to get, and if he didn’t make up his mind, he’d miss the Narrathon and that would make this whole thing a waste of time and effort.  Maybe it doesn’t matter if you miss the Narrathon, a small voice said inside him.  No, said a bigger one.  I want to see it!

He stepped boldly from the path and headed to the castle.

Less than half an hour later he joined a short line of people waiting to go through the castle gates.  He listened to the people in front of him and hoped he would be able to make up the answers to the questions he was asked.  They moved forward quickly.  He’d be there in a few minutes.  He started to panic, and looked around for somewhere to hide.

Behind him was a brown coloured person with a very strange pile of sticks on his back.

“Bit of a pain, this, isn’t it,” he said.

“Er, yes,” said Humphrey, not entirely sure what he meant by “this”.

“I mean, it’s obvious who I am, they know me. I came through yesterday but I still have to go through all the checks.”

“I was here yesterday,” Humphrey said, “I have a visitor’s pass but I left before they gave out the sashes.”

“Oh, you’ll be okay then,” said the brown person, who was beginning to remind Humphrey of someone he had seen the day before.  “Just show your pass.”

Humphrey wondered where he’d put it.  Then he realised it was still tucked under his arm, hidden safely away.  He wondered if the person would mind if he asked him about his sticks.

“Come on, then,” said the brown person, nodding up the path to the gates where a gap had opened up.  Humphrey turned and quickly closed up to the person in front.  They were nearly there.  He hugged his pass tighter, making sure it was still there.

Then it was his turn.

“Name?” asked the guard.  Humphrey thought he was very large and fierce.

“Humphrey of Fortune,” he replied, trying not to stutter, and he pulled out his pass and showed it to the guard.

“Why didn’t you get a sash yesterday, then?”

“I, er, I left before they were given out.”

“That was silly of you, Humphrey of Fortune,” said the guard, handing over a purple sash with an F marked on it in white. “Put this on, and don’t take it off, and don’t lose it.”

“Thank you,” said Humphrey breathlessly, climbing into his sash.

“Come on, Harrison,” said the brown person to the guard, “let me in, won’t you?”

Harrison, the guard, laughed. “Yes sir, Mister Willoughby.  Or should I call you Lord Willoughby since you seem all high and mighty all of a sudden?”

Humphrey’s insides did somersaults.  Willoughby the Narrator!  He’d been talking to a real live Narrator!  Who was taking part in the Narrathon!

“Excuse me, Mr Willoughby,” he said to him as they moved through the gates. “Where is the best place to sit to listen to you today?”

“Right by my fiddlesticks, Humphrey of Fortune,” he said with a wink.  “Don’t they have narrators at Fortune yet?”

“Er, no, not yet,” Humphrey hoped he was right, and remembering what someone had said about Fortune: “we’re still rebuilding things.”

“Well, you make sure they have a Narrathon at Yule and I’ll be there.”

Things to do

I haven’t any more things for you to do today, but I hope you enjoyed visiting during Children’s book week.  If you’ve been collecting the pictures and colouring them in, you could post them on our Facebook page!  If it won’t let you post on the book page, post it on my Jemima Pett page instead. I still have trouble knowing what you can post where.

Enter my Giveaway

KL Giveaway

Thanks to Mother Daughter Book Reviews and Youth Literature Reviews I’m taking part in a worldwide promotion, the Kid Lit Giveaway Hop. My Giveaway is part of that.

The prizes are:

  • one copy of the Princelings Trilogy (paperback) to a winner in the EU (plus Norway and Switzerland)
  • a bundle of the first three ebooks (as pictured) for a winner elsewhere in the world.
  • one copy of my latest ebook The Talent Seekers (or another of the series if preferred) to a winner (worldwide)

It’s open now and it will close at midnight 19th May (New York time). Click the Kid Lit Giveaway button above to enter – and you can enter every day!

Even more – you can go to other blogs with more books and competitions! Let’s go hopping…

Click here to find more participants and view this Linky Tools list.

Powered by Linky Tools

Children’s Book Week Day 5

Kid-Lit-Giveaway-Hop-Button-May-2013-draft-2

Read any good children’s books recently? Stuck for ideas?  Well, this week is your big chance to hop around the world in search of good reads for kids.  You may even win copies, too!   Children’s Book Week is a celebration of the best books for children. 

Every day this week I’ll be posting here, talking about my books, my characters and other books that inspired me.   There will also be some extra activities and on every post there will be a link to my Giveaway.  You can enter some of the options every day you visit.

Victor – a guinea pig of many talents

All the characters in my books, The Princelings of the East and the rest of the series, are guinea pigs.  They have a complex world, live in castles and other communities and have work, school and all the usual things ‘people’ do. They are based on my real guinea pigs, the first of whom were Fred and George, then came Victor and Hugo, who I took home through a snowstorm.

Victor celbrates his second birthday with Hugo (the candles are only there for the picture)
Victor celebrates his second birthday with Hugo (the candles are only there for the picture)

Victor is the youngest out of my original four guinea pigs, and so he became the youngster in the books.  In the Princelings trilogy he is in his teens, but very responsible and able to look after the Inn when his dad has disappeared.  In Traveler he turns up as a young kid, “a bundle of flying fur and legs”.  He’s full of enthusiasm, but has a tendency to live in a world of his own – two characteristics that the fictional Victor absolutely shares with the real one!  In future books he will turn up again, as a business guru, having passed all his exams and got his Masters in Business Administration.  What I wanted is for Victor to be seen to be clever, and to be able to travel round to other castles and find out more about them.  That couldn’t happen if he stayed at the Inn, even if he was running it.

Fred and Victor in the tent in the garden
Fred and Victor in the tent in the garden

Things to do

Have you ever made a list of all the different things you can do?  Why not do one now.  And see if you have as many talents as Victor.  I bet you can beat him!

Enter my Giveaway

KL Giveaway

Thanks to Mother Daughter Book Reviews and Youth Literature Reviews I’m taking part in a worldwide promotion, the Kid Lit Giveaway Hop. My Giveaway is part of that.

The prizes are:

  • one copy of the Princelings Trilogy (paperback) to a winner in the EU (plus Norway and Switzerland)
  • a bundle of the first three ebooks (as pictured) for a winner elsewhere in the world.
  • one copy of my latest ebook The Talent Seekers (or another of the series if preferred) to a winner (worldwide)

It’s open now and it will close at midnight 19th May (New York time). Click the Kid Lit Giveaway button above to enter – and you can enter every day!

Even more – you can go to other blogs with more books and competitions! Let’s go hopping…

Click here to find more participants and view this Linky Tools list.

Powered by Linky Tools

Children’s Book Week Day 4

Traveler - original cover

Kid-Lit-Giveaway-Hop-Button-May-2013-draft-2

Read any good children’s books recently? Stuck for ideas?  Well, this week is your big chance to hop around the world in search of good reads for kids.  You may even win copies, too!   Children’s Book Week is a celebration of the best books for children. 

Every day this week I’ll be posting here, talking about my books, my characters and other books that inspired me.   There will also be some extra activities and on every post there will be a link to my Giveaway.  You can enter some of the options every day you visit.

Hugo and Mariusz – the mystery guinea pigs

All the characters in my books, The Princelings of the East and the rest of the series, are guinea pigs.  They have a complex world, live in castles and other communities and have work, school and all the usual things ‘people’ do. They are based on my real guinea pigs, the first of whom were Fred and George, then along came Victor and Hugo about eighteen months later.  Then we were on the Guinea Pigs – Rodents with Attitude forum one February when DawnC arrived – and she had two guinea pigs,  a beautiful sheltie type called Saku and a big bold chap called Mariusz, who was just like Hugo!

Now here’s a puzzle for you: which is Hugo and which is Mariusz?  The picture on the cover of the Traveler in Black and White was done by Dawn using pastels and working from a photograph.  Which pig is it, hers or mine?

What books do you know where two characters look alike?  I can think of quite a lot.  Many of them swap places, sometimes for good reasons, sometimes for bad.  I can think of three where one of them is a prince or king and the other a commoner or visitor.  I’ve listed those at the bottom of the page, below the Giveaway, along with the answers to the picture puzzle.

Tomorrow is Friday and I’ll talk about Victor, who appears in the first four books, and I’ve been writing another starring him ever since I finished Traveler.  It still isn’t finished, though.

Things to do

Mariusz and hatToday’s picture is one of Mariusz or Hugo with his nice hat.  Download it here and print it out.  You don’t have to use the same colours as the cover, but you can if you like.  It’s your picture!  I once did a snow scene in pink and pale green.  It looked surprisingly good!

Enter my Giveaway

KL Giveaway

Thanks to Mother Daughter Book Reviews and Youth Literature Reviews I’m taking part in a worldwide promotion, the Kid Lit Giveaway Hop. My Giveaway is part of that.

The prizes are:

  • one copy of the Princelings Trilogy (paperback) to a winner in the EU (plus Norway and Switzerland)
  • a bundle of the first three ebooks (as pictured) for a winner elsewhere in the world.
  • one copy of my latest ebook The Talent Seekers (or another of the series if preferred) to a winner (worldwide)

It’s open now and it will close at midnight 19th May (New York time). Click the Kid Lit Giveaway button above to enter – and you can enter every day!

Even more – you can go to other blogs with more books and competitions! Let’s go hopping…

Click here to find more participants and view this Linky Tools list.

Powered by Linky Tools

Answers

Books: I’m thinking The Prince and The Pauper, The Man in the Iron Mask and The Prisoner of Zenda, but there are loads more – and plenty of more recent films, too.

Guinea pigs: Mariusz is on the left, Hugo on the right.  You can’t tell from those pictures, but Mariusz’s white lip and cheek, which you can see on the book cover (yes, it’s Mariusz on the cover) were unlike Hugo’s.  Hugo had black cheeks, and a white lip stripe that went down his throat and broadened out on his chest.  Hugo’s white in his crest (on top of his head) started slightly further back than Mariusz’s.  And although they both had a white left foot and a black right foot at the front, Mariusz’s back feet were both black whereas Hugo’s were both white!  And in truth, Hugo was really a dark chocolate colour rather than true black.  It depended on the light, really. But they were both big, bold and very beautiful buddies.  Always up to mischief. I’d better stop there…