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@gillarbuthnott
It’s been a while…
…since I posted anything here. Writing life had continued to be quiet as the effects of the pandemic unwound themselves in schools and libraries. I’m delighted to be out and about again now though doing events, and even more delighted to show off my new book, hot off the presses today! From Cells To Ourselves tells the story of evolution, something I’ve wanted to write about for a long time.…
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Good News X 2!
Good News X 2!
It’s always good to come home from holiday and find there’s something to distract you from the pile of washing, but it’s usually something very minor. Not this time… I’ve come home to news of listings for not one, but two book awards! From Shore to Ocean Floor, illustrated by the wonderful Christopher Nielsen and published by Big Picture Press, has been longlisted for the UKLA Book Awards. I’m…
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Teen Queen - Just Imagine...
Teen Queen – Just Imagine…
A very belated welcome to my latest book, The Amazing Life of Mary, Queen of Scots. (My laptop has been in computer hospital and I’m too useless to do things like this on my phone.) She did indeed have an amazing life: Queen of Scots at six days old, married to the heir to the French throne at fifteen, Queen of France at sixteen, widowed at seventeen, returned to rule Scotland at eighteen, forced…
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Dive Right In...
Dive Right In…
September has been a vintage month: not one, but two books hitting the shelves. Today I’m celebrating the publication of From Shore to Ocean Floor, another gorgeous title from Big Picture Press, illustrated by Christopher Nielsen. We know more about the surface of Mars then we do about Earth’s oceans. What’s really down there, and how did we find out? Dive in to find out about shipwrecks,…
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Happy Publication Day!
I want to introduce you all to my latest ink-and-paper offspring: Microbe Wars. This is a book I’ve wanted to write for some time, and in June 2020 Templar Books decided that they would like to publish it. It’s been a whirlwind of writing, editing, design and illustration since then, and I’m immensely proud of the result. It takes a lot of people to turn an idea into a finished book and I’ve been…
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Best Review Ever - The Real One!
Best Review Ever – The Real One!
You may be thinking ‘I’ve already seen this post’, but don’t go – this is an entirely different sort of ‘best review ever’, sent to me by an 8 year old reader in the USA…
“My dad bought your science books for me when I was 4 – The Beginner’s Guide to Periodic Table, What Makes You You, What makes Your Body Work, A Beginner’s Guide to Electricity and Magnetism and Your Guide to Life on Earth…
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Dipping my toes in the virtual water I'm a bit late to the party, but I am at last engaging with the idea of online events.
The Best Review Ever?
The Best Review Ever?
I hardly ever look at my books on Amazon.com, but yesterday I did and I found the most amazing review:
‘This book appears to be targeted at young children. It has bright and cheerful pictures and advertises it is ‘wacky’. Unfortunately it was not age appropriate (for any child). It contains dark and unnecessary subject matter. There is nothing ‘amazing and wacky” about this book. The nonchalant…
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Oh Happy Day #1 A red-letter today, on the slow road out of Covid-19 hibernation. I was able to go, in person, to a bookshop, an actual, physical bookshop.
Lockdown Children’s LitFest Just a quickie... I'm delighted to say that on Thursday 14th May at 2pm, I'm being interviewed online by Catherine Millar as part of her splendid Lockdown Children's LitFest.
Adventures in e-publishing #2
Adventures in e-publishing #2
It’s nearly a month since I stuck my head above the parapet and put my book The Keepers’ Daughter on line as a Kindle download and POD paperback; so, what have I learned in that time?
First, I love the way I can track what’s been happening to it. I can check how many downloads there have been per day by using the KDP website. I could check hour by hour if I wanted to, using Amazon Author Central…
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The Best Biscuits Ever
I posted a picture of these on Instagram and have been asked for the recipe. If you have a subscription to The Times you can find it on line, if not, here is a compressed version. I do hope I’m not about to be prosecuted for breach of copyright… The recipe is by Rahul Mandal, of ‘Bakeoff‘ fame and the cookies taste as good as they look.
1 Cream 50g butter, 40g tahini and 90g dark brown sugar. Add…
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Adventures in e-Publishing I am well known for my technomuppetry, so it was with major trepidation that I embarked on an attempt to publish my novel…
Our Microbe Friends #6 Miracle Mould
In 1939 the search was on for chemicals that could treat bacterial infections – a really serious issue with war looming. In Oxford Howard Florey and Ernst Chain came across Fleming’s work and started to look at penicillin. They infected mice with pneumonia and injected half of them with penicillin. The next day all the injected mice were fine, and all the others were dead. Chain rightly described…
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Our Microbe Friends #5 Miracle Mould!
Moulds are a group of fungi. They’re very important in the process of decay, and they also create the ‘veins’ in blue cheeses like Stilton. But there are a few that do something far more important than giving us something tasty to put on biscuits…
In 1928 Professor Alexander Fleming went on holiday (something you could still do, back then…). He was working on the bacteria that cause sore throats,…
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Our Microbe Friends #4: Fabulous Fungi
Fungi are a strange and wonderful group of organisms. They’re not animals OR plants: they have a whole Kingdom to themselves. And not all of them are microbes – that’s obvious, if you’ve ever eaten a mushroom: you didn’t need a microscope to find it on your plate. So, what are they?
If you see a mushroom growing in the ground, you are only seeing the reproductive bit of the fungus. The rest is…
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Our Microbe Friends #3: The Wonders of Compost
Still talking rot tonight… Did you realise that if you have a compost heap in your garden, or if you put food waste out for recycling, you are enlisting an army of trillions of microbes to help you?
Making compost is like magic – but it’s just biology (mind you, I find biology pretty magical). I’ve just chucked an apple core on my compost heap; what’s going to happen to it?
First, the local cats…
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