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
art bit draw
I was a bit odd. I read books and wanted to draw and go to art school.
bit effect moved piece
Football is a bit like chess: it's not just the piece being moved that matters; it's also the effect that move has on all the other pieces.
emily far stuff
When I'm working, I always read stuff that's as far away from what I'm working on as possible, so I'll read American crime fiction at bedtime, or Emily Dickinson.
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.
children direct
I worry about children not having a sense of any direct connection to the past.
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.
bloke brings hated pops raymond saying stuck
I'm going to get hated for saying this, but honestly, fantasy is easy to write because you can do anything. It's like when Raymond Chandler brings in a bloke with a gun when he's stuck - in fantasy, up pops a wizard, and off we go.
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.
faster mark quicker sharper
'Smart', in American usage, is slicker and sharper than 'intelligent'; faster off the mark and quicker on its feet than deep thought.
Disconnection or alienation from the past has political consequences.
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.
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.
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.