I was recently interviewed by magazine Books For Keeps about the importance of reading for pleasure and my path to writing the DINO KNIGHTS series. You can (and should!) read the full interview here.
And a few snippets here:
‘With Dino Knights it was my goal to create a chapter book series that is just rip-roaring fun, with something happening every couple of pages. There are cliffhangers, turns in the story, you want to know what’s going to happen next. To me, that’s the pleasure part of reading for pleasure and it’s something I can control. As a parent, I can try and control access to the screen, and there are debates going on in the UK about limiting social media and screen access. I don’t have direct control over that, but I do have direct control over how exciting Chapter 4 can be.’
Henry is a particularly appealing lead, with a courteousness the best of the Round Table would recognise, and a talent for winning over opponents through reasoning. ‘There’s a lot of protagonists in literature and in film and television, particularly young male protagonists, where it’s all about fighting and winning somebody over through physicality,’ says Jeff. ‘I wanted to have somebody who, deep down, is really focused on trying to do the right thing and to live by a code of honour, which is why the knight setting worked so well. It was important to me that Henry always tries to do what he thinks is right and honourable and that really plays out in the third book, Dino Knights Extinction, because they come up against some people you could say are just purely evil.’
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