Ten-Minute Blog Break - 8th September

Logo by Melany Pietersen

I always feel a bit overexposed when I post the Blog Break the day after I've also featured on Notes from the Slushpile. Hopefully, you'll excuse more of my waffling when I'm talking all about this week's wonderful SCBWI blog posts!

The joy and power of books is that they can inspire so much other creativity - as proved by two different blog posts this week. Catherine Friess has a delightful post about picture-book inspired craft activities that made me want to get out the coloured paper and scissors. Meanwhile, Sally Poyton blogs about a food-inspired creative writing session that sounds positively delicious!

Could you cover such a broad subject as "the science of reading" in only five minutes? Well, Nicola Morgan did at an Edinburgh Book Festival event, and generously shares the transcript with us so we can learn about it too!

I love a good process blog post, especially when there's illustration involved. So I really enjoyed Sarah McIntyre showing us the stages from pencil to print for her drawing of Helga Hammerfest, the barnstorming bearded lady from Sarah and Philip Reeve's latest book.

There's a whole lot more illustration going on in Anne-Marie Perks' post for Big Little Tales. Anne-Marie makes us all very jealous as she details her seven days at the Illustration Masterclass in Amherst, Massachusetts and shares a sneak preview of the work she did there.

Finally, it would seem disingenuous not to mention the refugee crisis that has dominated the media all week. Fortunately for me, Kathy Evans has blogged about it far more eloquently than I could, telling a few home truths and highlighting the amazing achievement of the Save the Children fundraising spearheaded by Patrick Ness (which has raised almost half a million pounds at time of writing).

Nick.

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Nick Cross is an Undiscovered Voices winner and has recently received the SCBWI Magazine Merit Award, for his short story The Last Typewriter.

Click here to read Nick's latest blog post for Notes from the Slushpile. His children's short story The Drowners can be found in issue 9 of Stew Magazine.