Year 5 writers meet Children's Laureate, Malorie Blackman

This Friday, eighteen lucky Year 5 writers walked down to Cheney School to listen to author Malorie Blackman talk about how to become a writer!

Malorie Blackman, who has an OBE and is the Children’s Laureate, talked about how she became a writer, where she gets the ideas for novels, and gave tips to our aspiring writers! We found out about how determined Malorie had to be to get her books published, and how she didn’t give up even after eighty-two rejection letters, and being asked to rewrite a whole book!

As well as this, we heard about how her stories are inspired by things she sees in the news, questions she is asked, and even dreams. One of her top tips is to have a notebook or diary with you all the time, and note down any ideas you have – then one day they might become a story! 

Lila asked what Malorie’s first book was, and found out that it was Hacker and is probably her favourite book. Leona asked what she does if she gets an idea for a new story when she is in the middle of writing a different story. Apparently, she writes the idea down, and comes back to it later. We found out that Malorie's main advice to new writers is to write about what you care about and never give up. Eisa told Malorie about a game he had played which was similar to the book “Theif!” and she gave him some more insight into how she came up with the idea for the book. 

It was a great event, which everyone enjoyed. Some of us bought books which we had signed by Malorie, and headed back up the hill to school. Mrs Kirby, the head teacher of Cheney, was full of praise for Wood Farm's Year 5s, saying that their ideas and questions were fantastic and it was a pleasure to meet them all.