We're in the press, we're in the press!!!

Really smashing article written by features editor Keith John Lewis for the famous Brixton Bugle, no less.

Here it is in print...

Or read it online here: BRIXTON BLOG

We're really #proud (can I 'hashtag' like that? Does that make sense..? This isn't twitter, but it seems to be what people do now...)

Extremely moving and beautifully written article by Walter Dean Myers in New York Times:

Where Are the People of Color in Children’s Books?

Walter Dean Myers is an author of books for children and young adults including “Monster,” and the previous Library of Congress National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature.

Proud to say that my first novel for children aged 9-12 years has a central character of colour. 

And that both our picturebooks for children published by Tate, illustrate a diverse, joyful and multi-cultural London. 

When we went to do one of our special Possum's Tail storytelling sessions at a local primary school recently, this aspect of the book was celebrated by the form teacher, who said she was disappointed by how few children's books included the wonderful and diverse mixture of people in the world.

What are those gates? It can't be true!
The possums bob above the...ZOO!

Big Ben is chiming,

it's quarter to eight and

London is calling,

we mustn't be late!

And we were not disappointed! Beautiful on many levels, Ralph Fiennes heads a star-packed cast with a performance of comic genius that's utterly engaging, perceptive and detailed in what is a delightful, fizzy, dark and delicious film of exquisite visuals, witty dialogue and well-paced story. Yet the Grand Budapest Hotel is still a considered, unsettling and surprisingly moving film, given its stylised nature.

Being of Eastern European decent, I found the hotel surroundings in the '70s GBH strangely familiar. Wes Anderson has captured every detail of the faded grandeur common to the similar establishments I visited on holiday in Poland as a child in late '70s (the stacked trolleys, white starched napkins and tired crockery containing always the same kind of delicious broth) and in so doing, he's re-created the lonely, crumbling atmosphere of a once beautiful now despondently beige Communist country.

The GBH in its heyday is of course a place of sparkle and delight about to be crushed by the ugliness of a dark and unknown army. The deliberate parallels with our own European history are obvious yet no less unsettling for that. The delightful Gustav H (played by Fiennes) manages to stick it to these dark oppressors and fiendish thugs, by maintaining his high standards, eccentric charm and poetic grace under what become the most ghastly of circumstances, and despite an almost catastrophic lack of cologne.

Ok, perhaps it could be trimmed here and there; there are moments that are perhaps unnecessary but hey, it is a confection as delectable as the Mendl's cakes that pack such a punch (as well as saw, hammer and chisel…)

"She was dynamite in the sack, you know…" 
"She was 84!"
"Hmmm I've had older…"

What's not to like, *mum?!

(*To explain, my mother called just before we set-off to the cinema and when she heard what film we were seeing announced, in what could be a line from the film: "Oh you'll hate it, darling...")

All quotes with kindest permission from http://www.npr.org

The Grand Budapest Hotel

Posting this because I can barely contain my excitement about this film.

The poster alone simply looks like the most deliciously elaborate cake ever baked...

THE G R A N D  B U D A P E S T  H O T E L

"You're looking so well, darling, you really are. I don't know what sort of cream they put on you down at the morgue but I want some..."

I'm running a humble half marathon to raise a bit of money and awareness for the essential work of the Brain Tumour Charity. 

And in memory of a smashing kid.

I am the light that soared

I am the light that soared

bursting from nothing into brilliant being!

When the dark sky wraps a thousand dreams

in a blanket of winking stars…

there am I.

I am the brightness in heavenly streams

of consciousness 

I am in each particle that floats

and spins on moonbeams

I am the almost imperceptible warmth

that melts frost-spiked leaves.

The normality of variety

Life in all its random games,

The breadth and depth of thought

The expectation of experience

The journey ahead, around, above and beyond

each path you tread.

I sing exuberantly

in a voice that clears the shadows!

Poised, watching, sure.

I am the answer to silence,

I am the love that will endure.

I am ready, steady GO!

The ebb and flow

Of Hope, Potential.

I was and always will be

Playful, sparkling

Possibility.

January 2013

For Silas