Students from Year 8 and 9 had the opportunity to meet author, Michael Grant, yesterday after being invited to an event hosted by Kirkham Grammar School.
“A driving torrential narrative” is how Stephen King described Michael Grant’s most renowned work ‘The Gone Series’. Speaking to students from a number of local schools the “evil genius of Young Adult Fiction”* Mr Grant inspired budding authors with tales of his unconventional rise to fame from humble beginnings. With 150 novels to his name his objective has always been to create interesting characters and plots which his young audience can relate to.
Inspired by the artists and writers from the mid-twentieth century who created the first wave of superheroes, Mr Grant set out to build diversity within his characters, “I thought, ‘What can I bring?’ ‘What could I do differently?’, and I purposely set out to create superheroes without spandex or capes, less muscular and with more ethnical diversity”. It certainly worked with over a million copies of ‘The Gone Series’ sold in the UK alone. Now promoting ‘Monsters’ the first in a trilogy following on from ‘Gone’, Mr Grant had a captive audience as he talked about his characters, “My characters are my employees. Sometimes I have a good relationship with them and sometimes not. Sometimes they work well for me, but if they’re not I have to kill them.”
After the session students had an opportunity to meet the author and have their books signed. School Librarian Mrs Young said, “As a librarian, I’m passionate about students enjoying books and events like this go a long way in helping to bring the characters and stories to life. We’re very grateful to Kirkham Grammar for inviting us”.
*Egmont. 2017. Michael Grant Biography. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.egmont.co.uk/books/author/401/michael-grant. [Accessed 18 October 2017].
Michael Grant
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