Black Beauty: Redwings Horse Sanctuary Edition

March 30th is Anna Sewell's birthday, which made it the perfect moment to announce an exciting project that has been in the works for a while. Working in collaboration with Redwings Horse Sanctuary and the UEA Publishing Project I've edited and written an afterword for a new edition of Black Beauty - pictured above! Rather thrillingly, Jacqueline Wilson has also written an original foreword for the book. Every copy sold will raise money for Redwings and we've got lots more planned for this collaboration. Below, some of the early coverage, including an interview with Radio Norfolk.

East Anglian Book Awards

 

It was a thrill and an honour to serve as a judge for the East Anglian Book Awards this year. Reading the entries for the The Mal Peet Children’s Award was a complete joy - and an eye-opener too. So many extraordinary creatives producing books for children in the region!

My final shortlist below...

Nineteenth-Century Literature: Enchantments of Waverley

Many years in the making, my article on Walter Scott and the reading lives of nineteenth-century American children is out now in Nineteenth-Century Literature. Abstract below...

UEA Christmas Lectures for Children 2022

Video of our 2022 UEA Christmas lecture for children: A Child's Christmas in Nineteenth Century America:

Gilded Age and Progressive Era Podcast: Five Little Peppers

In what is fast becoming a Christmas tradition, I went on the Gilded Age and Progressive Era Podcast - along with my colleague and co-editor Hilary Emmett - to discuss our new edition of Five Little Peppers. Props to Hilary for the reading!

UEA Christmas Lectures for Children 2022

Well, it's been a decade since I last gave one of the UEA Christmas Lectures for Children, and I'm doing it again! This time, in the company of my colleague Hilary Emmett. We're going to be exploring what A Child's Christmas in 19th Century America was like, drawing on plenty of my research from the last few years and our children's literature publishing project. Get your free ticket here.

Five Little Peppers: Launch Event

This Wednesday we officially launched Five Little Peppers at the wonderful Norwich bookshop Bookbugs and Dragon Tales. It was great to introduce the book the staff and pupils from Queen's Hill Primary. Get your own copy here.

Five Little Peppers

 

I'm thrilled that the second book produced in collaboration my co-editor Hilary Emmett, our students, and the UEA Publishing Project, will be published in November. This time, we're breathing new life into Margaret Sidney's Gilded Age bestseller, Five Little Peppers and How They Grew (1882)! As with last year's edition of What Katy Did, students enrolled on our final year children's literature module co-wrote the introduction and were involved in all aspects of the design. Bonus content: this edition also includes two early short stories by Sidney featuring the Pepper children, including the original version of the hard-to-find "Polly Pepper's Chicken Pie", first published in Wide Awake magazine in 1877! 

Order your copy direct from the UEA Publishing Project here.