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Crowds greeted Jonathan as he walked into the library at lunchtime, as well as the photographer from the Hereford Times. The queue of pupils waiting for a signature stretched across the main library floor. Infact, eventually we sat him at the front and everyone sat and listened while he was interviewed first by Sixth form fans and then by the school newspaper team! Even that was not enough for Book Club members, who crowded round and asked questions as the bell went for next lesson.
Acclaimed author Jonathan Stroud visited the school to talk to pupils as part of a UK tour to promote his latest book Heroes of the Valley. As well as a morning session with year 9, a chat with sixth form students and an afternoon session with year 10, Jonathan signed books and met with members of the school's own Bookclub. He toured the USA last month and is currently in the UK before a tour of Germany next month.
The Hertfordshire-based fantasy writer, who is best known as the author of the Bartimaeus trilogy, has written six novels in total and sold over four million books worldwide. The film rights to Bartimaeus have been sold to Miramax. He talked about how he writes, how he plans out each chapter and what counts as a 'good days work' - 25 sheets of writing incase you were wondering! He showed us the different book covers which were designed for his books in different countries. No-one liked the American cover, and while the German cover was lovely, it bore no resemblance to anything that happened in the book! He spoke about how he got started - one of his first jobs was to write pieces in a 'Where's Wally' book, which he showed us! He is also a dab hand at cartoons, we are very pleased to have three signed originals now in the library!
Jonathan Stroud was born in Bedford and grew up in St. Albans. He always had a burning desire to write a full-length work of fiction which he would have wanted to read when he was younger, and so after graduating from York University he embarked on a publishing and writing career in the game-book and non-fiction department at Walker Books. He moved to Kingfisher Publications to edit children's non-fiction, and for a time juggled working with writing, but Jonathan is now a full-time writer.
We were all delighted to meet him and the time talking seemed far to short for all of us. Thankyou Jonathan!
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