Books, Mud and Compost. And Horses.

Huge, huge thanks to Victoria Eveleigh whose memory banks are in an infinitely better state than my own, because she remembered well, everything, and much of what you read here came from her.  *** In the final event of the day, Meg Rosoff interviewed K M Peyton. They have known each other for some years. Meg was talking to David Fickling about how much she enjoyed KM Peyton's books, and said wasn't it a pity that she was dead. 'She's not dead,' was the reply. 'Would you like to meet her?' They met, and have stayed in touch ever since. Kathy had written several books before her English teacher suggested to her parents that they send one off to a publisher. That was Sabre, Horse of the Sea , published in 1948. Despite having written about horses since early childhood ( Sabre was by no means the first book she wrote) Kathy hadn't ridden much. This did not stop her having a stable-full of imaginary horses and ponies she documented in notebooks, and

If you missed part one, which covered the morning of the Cambridge Horse Tales conference, you can find that here . One thing I did forget to mention in the first post was the book shop, with every modern pony book you can imagine, and several I couldn't, having fallen back more than somewhat in keeping up with what is going on in the pony book world. Purely in the interests of research, I bought books. It would have been rude not to. The bookshop was run by the lovely Marilyn Brocklehurst, of the Norwich Children's Book Centre . The first afternoon session was by Melanie Keene. I loved this session. I've never been quite sure how I ended up in the fields of literature, because I am never happier than when fossicking about in ephemera and documents. This talk featured an enthralling selection of  horsy toys, lesson plans, books, and even wallpaper, illustrating the central part the horse played in Victorian life, and in that of children in particular. The horse e

The Cambridge conference on pony books – what an event. I must say a huge thank you to Georgie Horrell and Zoe Jaques for having the idea in the first place, Sabine Edwards for triumphs of organisation, and Morag Styles for keeping the round table participants under control. First up was Meg Rosoff, talking about throughness (not thoroughness, through-ness). And resonance. And why they're important when you write. Meg used to get sent shedloads of YA lit to comment on for the cover blurb. Dutifully, she read it all, and wondered why so much of it was dull. It was well-written. The characters were good. The plots were good — often, she said, better than her own, because she doesn't regard plotting as one of her strengths. And yet, the books were still dull. Why? Because they lacked throughness. And what is throughness, you are no doubt asking? This was something Meg explained to us through the medium of her riding lessons. Her riding teacher was trying to get her to understa

I'll report later on what actually happened at the conference, but in the meantime, here is the text of what I said. This is the full version, because reading this lot out would have taken considerably longer than I was allowed so drastic pruning took place before the event. [Edited to add this is in a large part my fault. I know how many words you  need for five minutes, but was sort of hoping I could speak quickly and it would all be ok. Alas the stopwatch was not my friend, even with my million-mile-an-hour delivery, so cut it was.] *** I approach the pony book now from a similar perspective to many children today. I live in a world that is relatively horse-free. I no longer ride. I now live in the middle of a town, where the closest I get to a horse is the carved relief of a horse opposite our local Marks and Spencers. The 1920s–1930s That is not how the world was when the pony book as we know it was developing. In the 1920s and 1930s, the position of the horse was mas