In the Reading Corner

Kwame Alexander is an American poet and author of books for children, including the verse novel The Crossover, which was awarded the Newbery Medal in 2015 and is the basis for a new series from Disney Plus (2023). It is also available in a graphic novel adaptation illustrated by Dawud Anyabwile. Kwame's novels often use sport as a metaphor for the characters' struggles or the books' themes. In Booked, the sport is football, And in his most recent book, The Door of No Return, the main character, Kofi, is learning how to swim,

Kwame's father was an academic and activist in the civil rights movement. And Kwame has written a picture book, Undefeated,  celebrating Black History and the extraordinary strength and bravery of those that transcended their circumstances.

Two new books, The Door of No Return and the picturebook Unspoken (published in the US as An American Story), also assert this strength and the refusal to be defined by one aspect of Black History - slavery.

In this episode, Kwame talks with Nikki Gamble about both books and their origins.

About The Door of No Return
Eleven-year-old Kofi Offin has dreams of water, of its urgent whisper that beckons with promises and secrets. He has heard the call on the banks of Upper Kwanta, where he lives.

He loves these things above all else: his family, the fireside tales of his father's father, a girl named Ama, and, of course, swimming. But when the unthinkable - a sudden death - occurs during a festival between rival villages, Kofi ends up in a fight for his life. What happens next will send him on a harrowing journey across land and sea, and away from everything he loves.

Yet Kofi's dreams may be the key to his freedom...

About Unspoken
How do you tell a story that starts in Africa and ends in horror? About strength and pride and refusing to be broken? One that still hurts and still loves?A powerfully moving, poetic exploration of the story of slavery: from Africa to the tall ships, from back-breaking work in a strange land to resilience and eventual emancipation, Kwame Alexander tells the story that's hard to hear. Told through the lens of a teacher speaking to their young pupils, and in multiple art styles from award-winning artist and sculptor Dare Coulter, the story of slavery becomes one that you can tell with the bravery to lift your voice.

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Thank you for listening. 

If you enjoyed this podcast, please support us by subscribing to our channel. and by purchasing books from our online bookshop, Bestbooksforschools.com

In the Reading Corner is presented by Nikki Gamble, Director of Just Imagine. 

Follow us on Youtube for more author events YouTube.com/@nikkigamble1

For general news and updates: follow us on X @imaginecentre  Bluesky  https://bsky.app/profile/justimaginecentre.bsky.social  Instagram https://www.instagram.com/justimagine_books/

Full details about the range of services we provide can be found on our website www.justimagine.co.uk

Mariajo Illustrajo is a Spanish designer, printmaker and illustrator living in the UK. After studying at the art school in Madrid, she moved to Bath, where she completed a degree in Graphic Communication.  Later she graduated from the Cambridge School of Art at Anglia Ruskin University with an MA in Children's Book Illustration. In 2020 she was the overall winner of the World Illustration Awards.

To date, Mariajo has produced two children's books: Flooded and Lost, published by Frances Lincoln.

In this episode, she joined Nikki Gamble to talk about her journey to children's book illustration and how her picturebooks were conceived.

Read  our review of Flooded on the Just Imagine website

 Purchase Flooded from our bookselling partner Best Books for Schools.

Flooded is a funny and beautifully illustrated tale of animals living in a city that is slowly flooding. The flood comes gradually at first. All the animals ignore the obvious and go about their busy lives, disjointed from one another and preoccupied with their own problems.

Eventually, the flood water reaches a height they can no longer ignore, and they must work together to save their city. All the animals join together in a line and pull out the plug drowning the city. This exceptionally illustrated story teaches a message not to let problems fester, and with a little teamwork and community spirit, no problem is insurmountable.

About Lost
Lost is the story of a polar bear who finds himself lost and alone in the big, cold city until a young girl takes him under her wing, showing him that there is love, friendship, and help to be found even in the loneliest of places...

Support the show

Thank you for listening. 

If you enjoyed this podcast, please support us by subscribing to our channel. and by purchasing books from our online bookshop, Bestbooksforschools.com

In the Reading Corner is presented by Nikki Gamble, Director of Just Imagine. 

Follow us on Youtube for more author events YouTube.com/@nikkigamble1

For general news and updates: follow us on X @imaginecentre  Bluesky  https://bsky.app/profile/justimaginecentre.bsky.social  Instagram https://www.instagram.com/justimagine_books/

Full details about the range of services we provide can be found on our website www.justimagine.co.uk

Shirley Marr is a Chinese-Australian author who migrated from Singapore with her family in the 1980s. Her novel, A Glasshouse of Stars, which won the Children's Book Council of Australia Award, is based on this early experience. It was nominated in the UK for Cilip Carnegie Medal.

Her latest novel, All Four Quarters of the Moon, also draws on this early childhood experience but focuses on the relationship of two young sisters and the comfort they find in each other's company, storytelling and imaginative play.

Shirley joined Nikki Gamble, In the Reading Corner to talk about the book, her personal experiences and the line between fact and fiction.

Read our review of All Four Quarters of the Moon on the Just Imagine website.

Purchase All Four Quarters of the Moon from our bookselling partner Best Books for Schools

Publishers Blurb
Everything so far, if Peijing had to sum it up, was a string of small awkward experiences that she hoped would end soon. The night of the Mid-Autumn festival, making mooncakes with Ah-Ma, was the last time Peijing remembers her life being the same. Now facing a new home, a new school and a new language, everything is different.

Peijing thinks everything will turn out okay as long as they all have each other. But cracks are starting to appear in the family. Biju, lovable but annoying, needs Peijing to be the dependable big sister.

Ah-Ma keeps forgetting who she is, and Ma Ma and Ba Ba are no longer themselves. Peijing has no idea how she's supposed to cope with the uncertainties of her own world while shouldering the burden of everyone else. If her family are the four quarters of the mooncake, where does she even fit in?

Support the show

Thank you for listening. 

If you enjoyed this podcast, please support us by subscribing to our channel. and by purchasing books from our online bookshop, Bestbooksforschools.com

In the Reading Corner is presented by Nikki Gamble, Director of Just Imagine. 

Follow us on Youtube for more author events YouTube.com/@nikkigamble1

For general news and updates: follow us on X @imaginecentre  Bluesky  https://bsky.app/profile/justimaginecentre.bsky.social  Instagram https://www.instagram.com/justimagine_books/

Full details about the range of services we provide can be found on our website www.justimagine.co.uk

Deborah Ellis works as a mental health residential counsellor in Toronto. She is the winner of the Governor General's Award in Canada (equivalent to the Carnegie Medal) for her first novel Looking for X.

She was raised in Paris, Ontario, and from the time she was 17, she has been a political activist advocating non-violence. After high school, she went to Toronto and worked in the Peace Movement. Later she got involved in the Women's Movement, focusing on women's rights and economic justice.

Deborah has spent much time in Pakistan, in Afghan refugee camps, talking to women and documenting their lives under 20 years of war. Her main engagement continues to be anti-war politics.

Deborah has written four novels about a 12-year-old girl, Parvana, living under Taliban rule in Afghanistan and the challenges that she and her family face. The fourth book, My Name is Parvana, is set against the American invasion and is a period of cautious hope.

Since the American withdrawal and the subsequent takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban, Deborah has been compelled to write a fifth novel about Parvana, One More Mountain.  She joins Nikki Gamble In the Reading Corner to tell us more about it and her involvement with the women and children of Afghanistan.

About One More Mountain
It's 2021, and the Taliban have regained power in Afghanistan. Parvana and Shauzia, the brave protagonists of The Breadwinner, must now flee to escape new dangers from an old enemy. It has been 20 years since Parvana and Shauzia had to disguise themselves as boys to support themselves and their families.

But when the Taliban were defeated in 2001, it looked as if Afghans could finally rebuild their country. Many things have changed for Parvana since then. She has married Asif, who she met in the desert as she searched for her family when she was a child.

She runs a school for girls. She has a son, Rafi, who is about to fly to New York, where he will train to become a dancer. While Asif tries to get Parvana's sister, Maryam, and Rafi on one of the last flights out of Kabul, the Taliban come to the school, and Parvana must lead the girls out of Green Valley and into the mountains.

Support the show

Thank you for listening. 

If you enjoyed this podcast, please support us by subscribing to our channel. and by purchasing books from our online bookshop, Bestbooksforschools.com

In the Reading Corner is presented by Nikki Gamble, Director of Just Imagine. 

Follow us on Youtube for more author events YouTube.com/@nikkigamble1

For general news and updates: follow us on X @imaginecentre  Bluesky  https://bsky.app/profile/justimaginecentre.bsky.social  Instagram https://www.instagram.com/justimagine_books/

Full details about the range of services we provide can be found on our website www.justimagine.co.uk

Abi Elphinstone is a writer of children's fantasy stories, including The Dream Snatcher, Sky Song and Rumblestar. She has also written picturebooks, The Snow Dragon and the Frost Goblin. Many of Abi's stories are set in magical cold places, inspired by growing up in the North of Scotland. This is true of her latest book, Saving Neverland, which reimagines J M Barrie's Peter Pan for the 21st century.

Read our review of Saving Neverland on the Just Imagine website

Purchase Saving Neverland from our bookselling partner Best Books for Schools

Number 14 Darlington Road, looks like a perfectly ordinary townhouse - at first glance, anyway, but magic is good at hiding . . . when it's waiting for the right person to discover it . . .

Martha Pennydrop is ten, and desperate to grow up. But growing up is a tricky business. It means turning your back on imagination, fun and magic, because those were the things that led to the Terrible Day when something awful nearly happened to Martha's younger brother, Scruff, which would have been All Her Fault.

But when Martha and Scruff discover a drawer full of mysterious gold dust in the bedroom of their new house - along with a window that's seemingly impossible to close - it's the start of an incredible adventure to a magical world: Neverland! The Pennydrop's new house used to belong to another family - the Darlings - who once visited this world themselves. Now Peter Pan is back, and in need of their help. Neverland is in the icy grip of a terrible curse - cast long ago by Captain Hook.

And only Martha and Scruff can save it . . .

A reluctant Martha and excited Scruff are swept off to Neverland and into the company of the Lost Kids. But when Scruff is kidnapped, Martha must rediscover all the imagination, magic and belief she has buried deep inside herself for so long, to save him - and Neverland itself.

Support the show

Thank you for listening. 

If you enjoyed this podcast, please support us by subscribing to our channel. and by purchasing books from our online bookshop, Bestbooksforschools.com

In the Reading Corner is presented by Nikki Gamble, Director of Just Imagine. 

Follow us on Youtube for more author events YouTube.com/@nikkigamble1

For general news and updates: follow us on X @imaginecentre  Bluesky  https://bsky.app/profile/justimaginecentre.bsky.social  Instagram https://www.instagram.com/justimagine_books/

Full details about the range of services we provide can be found on our website www.justimagine.co.uk

Neuroscientishttps://justimagine.co.uk/review/the-boy-who-didnt-want-to-die/t and Holocaust survivor, Peter Lantos, has written a children's book about his childhood experience of being sent, aged 5 years old,  with his family from Hungary to Bergen Belsen.  In this episode, he talks to Nikki Gamble about his reasons for writing a children's book, his experiences, and his hopes for future generations.

Read our review of The Boy Who Didn't Want to Die on the Just Imagine website

Purchase  The Boy Who Didn't Want to Die from our bookselling partner Best Books for Schools

A story of survival - and of enduring hope in the face of unspeakable hardship - on an extraordinary journey, made by Peter, a boy of five, through war-torn Europe in 1944 and 45. Peter soon realises that this new adventure is really a nightmare, watching bombs falling from the blue sky outside Vienna, and learning maths from his mother in Belsen.

Support the show

Thank you for listening. 

If you enjoyed this podcast, please support us by subscribing to our channel. and by purchasing books from our online bookshop, Bestbooksforschools.com

In the Reading Corner is presented by Nikki Gamble, Director of Just Imagine. 

Follow us on Youtube for more author events YouTube.com/@nikkigamble1

For general news and updates: follow us on X @imaginecentre  Bluesky  https://bsky.app/profile/justimaginecentre.bsky.social  Instagram https://www.instagram.com/justimagine_books/

Full details about the range of services we provide can be found on our website www.justimagine.co.uk

Berlie Doherty is one of our foremost fiction writers for children and young adults. She is a double recipient of the Carnegie Medal with her novels Granny was a Buffer Girl (1986) and Dear Nobody (1991). She is also the author of the popular middle-grade novel Street Child and its sequel, Far From Home, which are read extensively in primary schools.

Berlie has written many more books for children and teenagers, from picture books, young fiction, retellings of fairy stories and Bible stories, and YA novels.

Her most recent book, The Haunted Hills is published by UCLan. Berlie returns to her Derbyshire home for the setting of this evocative ghost story.

In this episode, she talks to Nikki Gamble about the importance of music and landscape in her stories and the paradox of finding beauty in derelict places.

About The Haunted Hills
When Carl visits the Peak District with his parents to try and recover from the fallout of a horrific accident, he becomes caught up in the mysterious tale of the Lost Lad. Are the hills actually haunted or is Carl being chased by his own demons? As past and present collide, Carl must learn to come to terms with the loss of his best friend, Jack and find a way to move on.

Support the show

Thank you for listening. 

If you enjoyed this podcast, please support us by subscribing to our channel. and by purchasing books from our online bookshop, Bestbooksforschools.com

In the Reading Corner is presented by Nikki Gamble, Director of Just Imagine. 

Follow us on Youtube for more author events YouTube.com/@nikkigamble1

For general news and updates: follow us on X @imaginecentre  Bluesky  https://bsky.app/profile/justimaginecentre.bsky.social  Instagram https://www.instagram.com/justimagine_books/

Full details about the range of services we provide can be found on our website www.justimagine.co.uk

Emily Gravett achieved instant success with the publication of her debut picture book, Wolves - a university project that was awarded the Macmillan Prize and was published by Macmillan Children's Books. It won the Kate Greenaway Medal in 2005.

Since then, Emily has produced many well-loved picture books, including Little Mouse's Big Book of Fears, Meerkat Mail,  The Odd Egg, Monkey and Me,  Tidy and Too Much Stuff.

She has also illustrated novels for A F Harrold, Nick Lake and Matt Haig. And a prestigious illustrated edition of Quidditch Through the Ages.

Nikki Gamble invited Emily to join her In The Reading Corner to talk about some recent work, including her latest picture book for young children, 10 Cats

Purchase 10 Cats from our bookselling partner Best Books for Schools

Support the show

Thank you for listening. 

If you enjoyed this podcast, please support us by subscribing to our channel. and by purchasing books from our online bookshop, Bestbooksforschools.com

In the Reading Corner is presented by Nikki Gamble, Director of Just Imagine. 

Follow us on Youtube for more author events YouTube.com/@nikkigamble1

For general news and updates: follow us on X @imaginecentre  Bluesky  https://bsky.app/profile/justimaginecentre.bsky.social  Instagram https://www.instagram.com/justimagine_books/

Full details about the range of services we provide can be found on our website www.justimagine.co.uk

Neurodivergent teenager, Libby Scott tells us how she came to be a published author and her partnership with author Rebecca Westcott.

Libby and Rebecca talk about co-authoring, the importance of own voices literature and their latest book All the Pieces of Me.

About All the Pieces of Me

Year 9 can be tough for everyone, but for Tally,  it feels even tougher. Make-up, boys, social media, GCSE prep - why is everything starting to feel so different? Tally has always known that being autistic means some things are harder for her than other people. But becoming a teenager has left Tally feeling like she has no idea who she is anymore.

Support the show

Thank you for listening. 

If you enjoyed this podcast, please support us by subscribing to our channel. and by purchasing books from our online bookshop, Bestbooksforschools.com

In the Reading Corner is presented by Nikki Gamble, Director of Just Imagine. 

Follow us on Youtube for more author events YouTube.com/@nikkigamble1

For general news and updates: follow us on X @imaginecentre  Bluesky  https://bsky.app/profile/justimaginecentre.bsky.social  Instagram https://www.instagram.com/justimagine_books/

Full details about the range of services we provide can be found on our website www.justimagine.co.uk

Kelly Yang is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Front desk series, two YA novels and a non-fiction book about the Chinese American experience.

in 2019, she was awarded the Asian Pacific American Award for Literature and the Parents; Choice Gold Medal, along with several other accolades.

Kelly immigrated to America when she was 6 years old and grew up in Southern California, where she and her parents worked in three motels. She eventually left the motels and went to college at the age of 13 and law school at the age of 17. She is a graduate of UC Berkeley, where she majored in Political Science, and Harvard Law School

She is the founder of The Kelly Yang Project, a writing and public speaking project for children based in Hong Kong,

Kelly joined Nikki Gamble In The Reading Corner to talk about fiction as a powerful vehicle for writing about life and to offer some reflections on the Chinese American immigration experience. She also talked about Key Player, her most recent novel in the Front Desk series.

Read our review of Key Player on the Just Imagine website

Purchase Key Player from our bookselling partner Best Books for Schools

Publisher's Blurb
MIA TANG IS PLAYING TO WIN!

The Women's World Cup is coming to California, and everyone has football fever - especially Mia! But when her PE teacher gives her a C, Mia has to pull up her grade by scoring interviews with the championship teams. It's not so easy when... 1.

The two teams are hunkered down in secret hotels in Pasadena and not taking any media requests. 2. Mr Yao is back at the motel- as a co-owner! Jason is sure his dad deserves a second chance.

Mia is not so sure. 3. Mia's parents are trying to buy a house of their own, which turns out to be a LOT harder than they thought! As Mia aims for her goals, she'll have to face strikers from all corners and her own fears.

But if anyone can find a way to win big, it's Mia Tang. The fourth book in the FRONT DESK series - following Mia Tang as she plays to win!v

Support the show

Thank you for listening. 

If you enjoyed this podcast, please support us by subscribing to our channel. and by purchasing books from our online bookshop, Bestbooksforschools.com

In the Reading Corner is presented by Nikki Gamble, Director of Just Imagine. 

Follow us on Youtube for more author events YouTube.com/@nikkigamble1

For general news and updates: follow us on X @imaginecentre  Bluesky  https://bsky.app/profile/justimaginecentre.bsky.social  Instagram https://www.instagram.com/justimagine_books/

Full details about the range of services we provide can be found on our website www.justimagine.co.uk