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.
'Keeper' is about fathers, ultimately. and also conservation, commitment and ambition.
hard
I have kind of a personality defect in that I find the word 'no' hard to articulate.
dislike
I find myself, by happy accident, writing 'Young Adult' fiction. However, I dislike such categories.
burger crossing heavy history less liquor prevents store traffic
History is the heavy traffic that prevents us from crossing the road. We wait, more or less patiently, for it to pause, so that we can get to the liquor store or the laundromat or the burger bar.
aloud children deal elementary great musicality necessary rhythm steps taking taught towards uncertain
I was taking my first uncertain steps towards writing for children when my own were young. Reading aloud to them taught me a great deal when I had a great deal to learn. It taught me elementary things about rhythm and pace, the necessary musicality of text.
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.
ya
I didn't consciously make the decision to write an adult novel. I didn't think of it as my riposte to the YA genre.
books fireworks love merely surprised
What I value in books is lucidity. I want the language to be rich; I love lexical fireworks on the page, but I have to know what it means. I want to be surprised and delighted, not merely baffled.
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.