The new Booked Up site is live! Woo hoo! Over the next week three Booked Up arcade style games will be added to the website as well as e-cards and competitions. There will also be a message board for Year 7s to talk about Booked Up and the books on offer.

Schools have until Friday 22 October to place their orders and all books will be delivered by the first week of December. What a great Christmas Present! The Booked Up DVD is also available on the website and you can see my bit of the DVD by clicking here and scrolling down to the video viewer on the Takeshita Demons Booked Up page:

SCHOOLS UPDATE
Last term over 5,000 schools, hospices and home educators in England registered for Booked Up and this week they start receiving their sample set of books, guide for teachers, posters, a DVD and magazines for children. AWESOME!

LIBRARIES UPDATE
In July just under 2,500 public libraries in England received a set of the Booked Up books, bookmarks, stickers and information for librarians. Booked Up also featured in information for 11-year-olds in this year’s Summer Reading Challenge.

NORTHERN IRELAND PILOT
There is also a pilot Booked Up program running in Northern Ireland. The pilot is based on the Booked Up England model of delivering through secondary schools and adding value to the programme through partnership working with Public Libraries. Booked Up Northern Ireland is spread across the whole of Northern Ireland with 68 pilot schools and 95 public libraries taking part.

AWESOME!

So things are really very exciting at the moment. AND, in especially cool news, I spent a lovely evening last night at the Fremantle Children’s Literature Centre for 123YA, a series of talks by three authors for Young Adults: Deb Fitzpatrick, author of 90 Packets of Instant Noodles; A.J. Betts, author of Shutterspeed and Wavelength; and Kate McCaffery, author of Beautiful Monster and others I’m too lazy to hyperlink (check out her website instead). It was great fun and very inspiring. If you live in Western Australia (or have a massive travel budget and lots of time) I recommend subscribing to Fremantle Press’s blog to find out when other, similar events are on. AND get yourself on the mailing list for the Fremantle Children’s Literature Centre: they do great stuff and always have something interesting lined up in their calendar.