mg – Page 2 – The Princelings Books: Jemima Pett

17 May, 2013

Children’s Book Week Day 5

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

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

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

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.

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16 May, 2013

Children’s Book Week Day 4

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

Today’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

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…

15 May, 2013

Children’s Book Week Day 3

George and the flying machine

I keep my guinea pigs indoors in a cage, but in the summer, and mild weather, I put them out in runs on the grass. I call them my lawn-mowing squad, and Fred, George, Victor and Hugo were so diligent I didn’t have to mow around my vegetable patches all summer. The guinea pigs I have at present don’t seem to do nearly such a neat job!

One thing that amused me was the way George (on the right in the picture above) would look up and follow the track of any light aircraft, including a vintage biplane, that went over the garden. I’m sure he couldn’t see it; maybe it was the particular sound that it made. It gave me the idea that he might enjoy experimenting with flying in the books though.I was thinking of other children’s books that feature aeroplanes or flying. This is where I’m at a disadvantage because I don’t have experience of an extensive range of more recent children’s books. I can think of The Adventures of TinTin, and of course the Biggles stories by Captain W E Johns, but they are probably considered old-fashioned and non-pc now. I loved the film of TinTin – did you see it? What did you like best?

What other books do you like that have aeroplanes or other flying objects – excluding brooms, thestrals, flying cars and portkeys!

Tomorrow’s post will be about Hugo, or do I mean Mariusz? The mystery guinea pigs!

Things to do

Today there is a colouring page for you. This is the master sketch for the picture of George flying his machine with Fred as the passenger that appears on the back of the Trilogy paperback. Thank you to my cover illustrator, Danielle English, for providing it for us. You might like to see more of her work here. Right-click it to ‘save image’ and download the picture file to your own device. It should print full size on letter paper or A4 for colouring in. You’ll have to be neat to get Fred and George’s features!

Enter my 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

14 May, 2013

Children’s Book Week Day 2

Guinea pigs and eating

Real guinea pigs are very interested in their food, and Fred and George (the real ones) enjoyed all sorts of different vegetables, herbs and wildplants too. I grew a lot of different things in my garden for them. I was careful not to let them try things known to be poisonous, but a lot just isn’t known, and I felt I could trust Fred, in particular, to know what was good to eat and what was not. I can’t do that with my latest additions, Dylan and Dougall!

In the books, though, there are all sorts of interesting concoctions that a gourmet guinea pig might enjoy. Real guinea pigs don’t eat ice-cream, but Fred gets an inspiration watching the lights reflecting in a lavender sorbet (a lavender-flavoured water-ice). My Fred adored lavender! They do get lots of opportunities for mixed dishes of salad food or vegetables, and one type of dish is called a melange , which is French for mixture.

When I write about drinks, I used the terms that you might understand for a type of drink. Guinea pigs would not drink cola, or any type of soda, or beer, or wine, or tea or coffee. But I like to think of them enjoying a few luxuries, and so Hugo (Lord Mariusz) has a business brewing and selling Wozna cola. The inn serves ale, soft drinks, and sometimes something a little stronger. I imagine all these drinks made from fruits and herbs and vegetables, much like a country person might make wine from the hedgerows – elderflower champagne, anyone? I also invented a coffee drink subsitute called an espressimenta – it’s a mint drink made like an espresso!

Do you remember what Ratty brought out of his picnic basket when he took Moley out in his boat? It’s much the same in my guinea pig world.

In tomorrow’s post I’ll talk about George and his interest in engineering and flying machines!

Things to do

Did you print out yesterday’s picture to colour in? How many different types of fruit and vegetables could you see? The answers are below the Linky List.

Enter my 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: You should have seen carrot, bell pepper, melon (it could be interpreted as a banana), apple, cucumber and the leaves and flower at the front are dandelion. Six items in all.