Mal Peet
Mal Peet
Mal Peetwas an English author and illustrator best known for young-adult fiction. He has won several honours including the Carnegie Medal and the Guardian Prize, British children's literature awards that recognise "year's best" books. Three of his novels feature football and the fictional South American sports journalist Paul Faustino. The Murdstone Trilogyis his first work aimed at adult readers...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionYoung Adult Author
Date of Birth20 June 1947
among creates destroy echo exposure plays press
Exposure is about, among other things, the ferocity of the press and the way - in an echo of some of Shakespeare's plays - the modern media creates heroes to destroy them.
ya
I didn't consciously make the decision to write an adult novel. I didn't think of it as my riposte to the YA genre.
attempt brought disguise generating genres seemingly sets sort whimsical
I see genres as generating sets of rules or conventions that are only interesting when they are subverted or used to disguise the author's intent. My own way of doing this is to attempt a sort of whimsical alchemy, whereby seemingly incompatible genres are brought into unlikely partnerships.
box capacity maximum sit
Bootworks' Black Box Theatre has a maximum seating capacity of two - as long as one of you is happy to sit on the other's lap.
soccer children book
The three things that kept me sane as a child were bikes, books, and soccer
characters freeze people sofa top watching whatever worry
Everyone who sits on a sofa watching 'Match of the Day' is a top soccer expert, as you know. So if you start to worry about such people reading your story and saying, 'That'd never happen' you're going to freeze up. You're writing fiction, and your characters can do whatever you need them to do.
dislike
I find myself, by happy accident, writing 'Young Adult' fiction. However, I dislike such categories.
convincing good magic novel remember
Remember that a good football novel has to have the same ingredients as any other good novel: drama, convincing and interesting characters, a strong story-line, and some kind of magic in the writing.
grind grumpy man pull seems synonymous teeth whenever
Normally, I'm a grumpy old man - whenever I read about celebrity, I start to grind my teeth and pull my hair; it seems synonymous with idiocy.
kids
I want to entertain, but I also want to push the barriers beyond what kids are conditioned into accepting.
numbers tangled together
Algebra messed up one of those divisions between things that help you make sense of the world and keep it tidy. Letters make words; figures make numbers. They had no business getting tangled up together.
benches human
The very provision of benches by the council or the corporation acknowledges the human need to be private in public, to be conspicuously idle, to have nothing better to do.
benches both common fact forms generally intimate public spaces widely
Benches and books have things in common beyond the fact that they're generally to do with sitting. Both are forms of public privacy, intimate spaces widely shared.
books fireworks love merely surprised
What I value in books is lucidity. I want the language to be rich; I love lexical fireworks on the page, but I have to know what it means. I want to be surprised and delighted, not merely baffled.