Nicola Morgan's Blog

In case you’ve noticed that some of my posts are disappearing and links are broken, it’s because I’m about to have a massive and fabulous (for me) new website, so I’m repurposing the best material for that and deleting as I go. Hang around for the new launch – SOON!

A quick reminder of these surveys I’d love you to fill in and/or share.

Positively Teenage – How positive are you? This is for 10-18s. It gives me lots of info about how you’re feeling about being a teenager and gives you a chance to share your thoughts anonymously. There’s even a bit where you can give advice to other teenagers 

In haste: below is the presentation I promised Monday’s audience of writers that I’d put on my site for them. It won’t make sense unless you were there but anyone is welcome to see it, obvs.

Synopsis

If you want to buy Write a Great Synopsis, the links are here.

While I’m here: I’m taking a blog break just now because I’m undergoing a MASSIVE website reconstruct so I am focusing on the new content for that. No point in putting stuff up if it’s all going to have to go down. Please stick around for the launch – it’s going to be super-cool!

 

 

 

I couldn’t begin to guess how many times I’ve recommended Daniel Levitin’s The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload[image error] and how many times people in audiences have nodded while I’m doing so. Full of mind-boggling facts and figures and thought-provoking points, it will give you a proper understanding of the problems we face as we try to swim through the deluge of information that swamps us every day – or at least those of us who engage in the digital world, through necessity or pleasure or both.

Although it’s offered as a how-to book, as well, I don’t think this is its main value. Its importance is in creating evidence-based awareness of what’s going on.

The “how-to” comes best from reading Walter Mischel’s The Marshmallow Test: Understanding Self-control and How To Master It[image error]. I love this book! Just reading about the well-known research on young children and how they do or don’t defer gratification (one marshmallow now or two later?) is interesting but what is far more useful is what strategies we can learn from the successful children. Those strategies have now been widely investigated and are well worth trying for yourself as you try to rein in your smartphone use, for example.

Finally, if you don’t fully appreciate why your smartphone is so irresistible, read Adam Alter’s excellent Irresistible: Why you are addicted to technology and how to set yourself free[image error]. And read it before you start judging “young people today”…

In my view, these three books give you a really good understanding of what’s going on (for us and our teenagers – this is really not age-dependent) when we (over)-use our smarpthone and other screens, and how to create good, healthy, controlled habits

Buy The Organized Mind

Buy The Marshmallow Test

Buy Irresistible

 

Sally Prue is a wonderful writer who never “writes down” to her audience. She’s not unlike David Almond in that respect.

Cold Tom[image error] is a dark book, set in a parallel world of demons, a Tribe and Tom, who thinks he can survive alone, but it’s never gratuitously dark. It’s like a nightmare you always know you can wake from and which always has that sense of unreality that stops it being dangerous.

I’ve selected it as a Positively Teenage choice as I think it’s another perfect transition book, moving a young reader from the hand-holding protective books of childhood towards independence and resilience that is the aim of adolescence. I don’t think you can become resilient without being tested and stretched and made to think for yourself. And I think books like Cold Tom do that.

It’s short, too. It’s great for a young reader who feels daunted by longer fiction but who wants to experience a gripping and thought-provoking read. Read it as an exciting adventure or read it to understand something about human connections, friendships and why no one can be an island. We are tied to each other and we should value those ties. Even when they hurt.

Don’t read it when you need cheering up or to have a good laugh, though. It’s not likely to have that effect! And don’t read it if you like your endings neat and sweet… This is a book to build resilience, not to wrap the reader in a cocoon. It’s a book for discussion, too. Parents sometimes worry that teenagers love very dark books: yes, they often do. It does no harm in a young reader who is showing no other signs of distress in his or her lives. Dark books can allow risk-taking and emotional boundary-pushing in a safe context. Don’t stop your healthy 11-12yos reading whatever books they like.

Buy Cold Tom here.

Another book you might like by Sally Prue is The Devil’s Toenail[image error]

Every school to purchase a Brain Stick – my vast collection of wellbeing-empowering, brain-boosting teaching materials on a sassily-packaged USB stick – already receives a free pdf of Know Your Brain. Know Your Brain was originally published in 2007 and is now out of print. It won’t be coming back into print because my next book, Positively Teenage, is taking its place as my way of helping older children and younger teenagers make their brains flourish. Know Your Brain is really relevant to Brain Sticks. I am delighted to be able to give schools a free copy to use in any way they wish within their schools. 

All Brain Sticks purchased by Nov 5th will ALSO receive a free copy of The Teenage Guide to Friends.

Why? Last week was a good week!

 

Skellig holds a special place in my heart. It (or the paperback anyway) was published in 1998. My older daughter, H, was eleven. We were going on our first foreign holiday and I’d gone to Ottakar’s (remember that?) to buy some books for my daughters. H was all Jacqueline Wilsonned-out, needed something new. I picked up a chunky book with a title that took my fancy, read the first page and discarded it. Not what I was looking for. Not interesting enough. Picked up a slimmer one, although actually H definitely didn’t need something on the basis of its slimness. I probably picked it up because it had a recommendation sticker on the shelf.

The slimmer one was Skellig[image error]. Read the first page. Interesting. Bought it.

Went on holiday. H finished Skellig quickly and told me I HAD to read it. I think that was the first time my daughter had told me I HAD to read a book. I did and I loved it.

At the time, I’d been trying and failing (for nearly 20 years) to write publishable literary fiction for adults. I came close a few times, too. I’d also tried writing for younger readers but didn’t even bother to submit anything as even I knew it was rubbish. When I read Skellig, I realised what I’d been doing wrong with both the adult and the younger fiction: with the adult fiction, I’d forgotten the importance of plot: I was right up myself with the gorgeousness of my prose; and with the younger fiction I’d thought – stupid woman, and I’m ashamed to this day – that you had to write simple, that only plot mattered and that language only had to be clear. I didn’t know you could write deep, that you could mess around with words and do things with them. I’d thought you had to tell young readers stuff. I know. I’m sorry.

I came back from that holiday and started writing what became Mondays are Red, my first novel, for teenagers. It quickly got me an agent and then a publisher. But look what else it got me!

Skellig is THE book I’d recommend to young readers wanting to move into teenage fiction (though Skellig is age-defying not age-defining) in the most inspirational, imaginative, word-sparkly way. It represents what is so great about writing for teenagers: they have an adult appreciation of language with a child’s free-flying imagination.

And the chunky book with the intriguing title, the one I discarded as not being interesting enough? You might have heard of it: Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. It would have been a first edition.

Honestly, I’d rather have my signed Skellig.

Buy Skellig here[image error] or in a physical bookshop.

 

This is the second book (of many!) that I’ll be recommending as “positively teenage”. Publishers, do contact me if you have books you think a) fit the criteria (here) and b) I’ll love. Please don’t be offended if I say no – I’ll only read something I do think I’ll love. Authors, please don’t ask me to read yours: get your publisher to ask me. Asking me yourself makes me all kind of squirm.

Buffalo Soldier won Tanya Landman the prestigious Carnegie Medal but I’d already been on record as loving it and being in awe of the story-telling power. Set just after the American Civil War has ended, it follows the adventures of a freed girl slave who has to save her life by disguising herself as a boy and joining the army to fight against the Native Americans. Sounds unbelievable? No, it’s based on a true story and researched in immense detail. Harrowing, brutal, eye-opening, mind-widening and incredibly exciting. Read it!

One of the reasons I love historical fiction for young readers is that it can go to really scary places without actually making the reader fear for themselves. There is a sense of “This is terrifying but it can’t happen to me so I’m OK reading it.” That was my thinking when I wrote Fleshmarket, which starts with a scene where a woman is having surgery without anaesthetic because it was set before anaesthesia was invented…

Buy Buffalo Soldier here[image error]

Want to win a signed copy of Fleshmarket? Just comment on this post. One lucky reader will be picked at random on my birthday – Nov 11th

This is the first book (of many!) that I’ll be recommending as “positively teenage”. Publishers, do contact me if you have books you think a) fit the criteria (below) and b) I’ll love. Please don’t be offended if I say no – I’ll only read something I do think I’ll love. Authors, please don’t ask me to read yours: get your publisher to ask me. Asking me yourself makes me all kind of squirm.

CLEO by Lucy Coats

Cleo is a brilliantly gripping novel that imagines the teenage Cleopatra as she faces unimaginable dangers from treacherous human enemies and cruel, bloodthirsty gods on her terrifying journey to fulfil her destiny to be Queen of Egypt. Coats is an expert in myths and legends and a passionate story-teller and this shows.

Read this if you want a richly descriptive story, with roller-coasting emotions and a gripping, fast-paced plot to drag you away from your own worries for a time. There are blood and snakes and heat … and a boy…

Oh, and a sequel. Called Chosen[image error].

Buy Cleo here.

Positively Teenage book recommendations are for books which (in my opinion) fulfil these criteria:

(Exceptions are always possible but really would need to be exceptional)

Teenage (13+) central character, if fiction (12 at a push)
Aimed at readers aged 11-15
Not focusing on teenage “issues” or teenage mental illness, important as those things are to talk about
Showing young people tackling adventures or challenges that are not directly related to adolescence
A combination of inspiring, exciting and/or deep-thinking

Publishers are welcome to contact me to suggest a title but please don’t take offence if I say no. I will only recommend books I really love.

Authors, please leave it to your publishers to contact me…

Readers, do you have a favourite book you’d like me to recommend on Positively Teenage? See the criteria above and, if it fits, suggest it.

This week I’m at the City of London School for Girls on Wednesday, talking to parents there and those of the Boys’ school, focusing on the part that the human social drive plays in teenage stress, wellbeing, behaviours and screentime – and what we can do about it. And on Thursday I’m at the Hall School in Hampstead, talking to Years 6, 7 and 8 about various things to do with stress, wellbeing and screentime, and then to their parents in the evening.

Go here first, as you’ll find the key stuff selected for you. This is the best place to go if you’re in a hurry.

And here is the handout – Resources overview – which you probably had printed for you at my talk.

Another key one – Ten things for parents to know.

As always, the Powerpoint presentations are on my slideshare page for anyone to access freely (but they won’t stay there for long) and, as always, do take your pick from the resources menu on the right to find links to the science that informs what I talk about, as well as lots of free downloadable materials.

Those of you who work in schools, do take a look at my classroom resources. It’s the best way to teach young people how to look after their own brains and physical and mental wellbeing.

There are two current surveys I’d love young people to answer. They only take a few minutes and they will really help me know my audiences. Adults can also answer the one on social media – though some questions won’t apply. Please do join in!

Life Online – Smartphones, social media and you
Positively Teenage – How positive are you?

And finally, it’s National Libraries Week so why not go along to your local library and take home an armful of books – FREE!

Big thanks to both schools for inviting me and for raising the funds for the visit. I love being able to share what I know and I really hope it helps. It’s what I needed to know when I was much younger!