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
teenage tend trying
I tend to boycott all teenage reading while I'm trying to write my own stuff.
knew school sports
I never knew that Americans would take up soccer, and it's a gender-free sport in high school there.
authors people
I'm working with published authors and some very young undergraduates and lots of people in between. They are lovely people, and they can write.
certainly forget reading stop sure time understood words
I'm not sure that when I read 'Treasure Island' for the first time, when I was about 10, I understood all the words or what was going on. But that didn't stop me reading it, and I certainly didn't forget it.
movies
I have to make little movies. I have to sit and film.
brass plate
In my seaside town, there is a plethora of benches, each one bearing a little brass plate commemorating a deceased occupant. You sit with ghosts.
barrier teenage
I don't really see any barrier between teenage fiction and adult literature.
both emily
I feel able to steal from Emily Dickinson because she's both wonderful and dead.
hopeless literary rather readers shelves
It's a nonsense because, as we all know, there are brilliant 15-year-old readers and hopeless 50-year-old readers. All that categorisation is a matter of bookshop shelves rather than literary categories, I think.
asleep bedtime defeats kids nose stuck tend wake
It pretty much defeats the purpose of bedtime reading if you fall asleep before the kids do. And you tend to wake up with a matchbox stuck on the end of your nose and/or a potty on your head.
avoiding chances cliche describe difficult extremely happens match millions thousands trying week words
It's extremely difficult to describe interestingly what happens on the pitch. Thousands of journalists write millions of words every week trying to do it, so your chances of avoiding cliche are very slim. And you're trying to write fiction, not a match report.
attract inclined readers stories suspicious wider younger
I try to write stories that will attract younger readers and make them feel part of a wider readership. I do not feel able to write books that are about, or even for, teenagers; and I am inclined to be suspicious of books which 'target' them.
kids
I want to entertain, but I also want to push the barriers beyond what kids are conditioned into accepting.
champagne drink
I want to drink champagne from ladies' shoes.