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Mermice and Gwenevere at the Bookery

The Bookery in Crediton is one of the best bookshops in this country, and you don’t have to take my word for it - they were literally voted Best Independent Bookshop and Best Children’s Bookshop at the British Book Awards last year. They organise fantastic events with local schools, and have arranged lots of school visits for me over the years, with and without co-author Sarah McIntyre. This year they’re marking their tenth anniversary, and have just unveiled a whole newly-built event space, which links the shop itself to the meeting room and Hub workspace areas out back, and has allowed for a rearrangement of the shop itself and an expansion of the children’s section (yay!). If you’re ever in that part of Devon (just north of Exeter) do drop in and have a look around - it’s a fantastic place, and they have loads of great events with visiting authors. 


To celebrate the anniversary, the new space, and the start of Independent Bookshop Week, the Bookery threw a big party yesterday, with a whole day of events. Michael Morporgo came along to officially open the new part of the shop and did a well-attended event afterwards in the Town Hall. And Sarah McIntyre and I were there to talk Adventuremice. We have a new book out, Adventuremice: Mermice Mystery, in which I think Sarah’s illustrations are even more elaborate than they were in the first exciting instalment. (If you’re after a present or some top-notch home decor you can actually buy the original artwork here). Thanks to the Bookery and their amazing school events organiser Cathie Holden, lots of Crediton kids are keen Reeve & McIntyre fans already, and were eager to get a look at our latest.

We read bits of the books, and Sarah led the audience in drawing mermice and creating an island-hopping race game. (Me: What strange or dangerous thing might we find on the next island? Boy In Audience: PAPER TOWELS!) If you want to recreate some of the excitement in your own home, there are a variety of FREE drawing guides and other activities on top website adventuremice.com

Photo by Hannah Foley

Even more excitingly, the Bookery gave me and Sarah Reeve the chance to screen our newly completed film GWENEVERE. It’s never been seen before on any screen larger than the laptop I did the editing on, but Claire Lewis and manager Dee Lalljee turned the Bookery’s meeting room into a bijou cinema for the afternoon, with a large plasma screen and a speaker, where we were able to show it to a small audience.

It was very hot in our minicinema, and also quite noisy, as there was a party going on outside, but we whacked the sound up, Brian Mitchell’s tremendous score drowned out most of the chit-chat with drums and crumhorns, and everyone seemed to enjoy it. Some of the audience were very young - the littlest was only four, I think - and I’d never really intended Gwenevere as a children’s film, it has a kind of elegiac, arthouse pace, but they stuck with it and applauded loudly at the end. There were lots of compliments for the music, for Sarah R’s photography, and for the actors - Laura Frances Martin (Gwenevere) came along, as did Arran Hawkins (Sir Lancelot), and I wish Joanna Neary could have been there, because her performance got a lot of laughs (as I knew it would: she’s the funniest person I know, and the film was written around her). I’m looking to arrange a Glittering Premiere and hopefully a few more local screenings soon, and we’ll be releasing the whole film on YouTube probably towards the end of the year - watch this space!

But mostly watch The Bookery, as they soar from strength to strength. Huge congratulations to Dee and all the staff and volunteers for ten fantastic years. Here’s to many more!

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