Wimbledon BookFest 2014: John McNally - Infinity Drake The Sons of Scarlatti launch

            

            Helping to plan the 2014 Wimbledon BookFest. Assisting at author events in schools around Merton and Mitcham. Book publicity. Meetings with authors, agents, publishers and PR. An internship with the Wimbledon BookFest sounds like paradise for any book enthusiast. And over the coming three months, I will keep a blog of my experiences whilst working in the world of literary Wimbledon.

            Take today for example:  

Working with debut author John McNally and helping to publicise his novel Infinity Drake: The Sons of Scarlatti to students at Wimbledon College and Wimbledon Chase School. Having worked as a screenwriter for Aardman Animations and the BBC, McNally – the natural showman – began both his appearances describing to the children how writing is just a dialogue between two people. Just like a script, people talk in books the way they do in real life.

Infinity Drake captures a child voice fantastically as the eponymous hero is shrunk to 9mm tall by his mad scientist Uncle Al and thrust into a thrilling adventure to avert disaster on a miniature and massive scale.

            The show ran like workshops, and it was great to see young children engaging with an author on such a wide scale. Every question was met with a sea of hands. The enthusiasm was encouraging to see, as McNally walked us through his themes and inspiration: gadgets, adventure, gaming, humour and a shrunken main character – who was inspired by McNally watching his son play with a toy jet on a country walk and thinking: ‘wouldn’t it be cool to be the pilot of that jet?’

A personal highlight was McNally’s shocking revelation for the children. After a lifetime of experience, he had discovered that girls were indeed better than boys. Despite a measurable level of dissent from the boys of Wimbledon College, and a healthy level of competitive air-punching and celebration from the female contingent of Wimbledon Chase Primary School, the author held rapt attention as he described his strong female character, Delta, more than a match for Infinity. As if that wasn’t enough, there were descriptions of John’s creepy crawly muses: botflies, bullet ants and the inspiration of the terrifying Scarlatti Wasp – the monstrous villain of the novel.

            John McNally writes to entertain his readers. With his sequel soon on the horizon, and a third in the series in the works, it seems Harper Collins has found a new addition to the children’s fiction scene that will be here to stay. And who knows, maybe John inspired the winners of the Wimbledon BookFest Young Writers Competition today…

            And with that, I’ll hand over to the man himself:

by David Steedman. Wimbledon BookFest intern and MA student of Children's Literature at the University of Roehampton.