Catherine Cawthorne joins Ian Eagleton in The Reading Realm today to talk about her new book WE’RE MOVING TO THE MOON! which is illustrated by Harry Woodgate!
Before we settle down in The Reading Realm for a chat, what’s your drink and snack of choice?
A nice cup of tea and a Wispa please!
Tell us about your book in three sentences and then three words!
Kit and her family are going on their biggest adventure yet – they’re moving to the Moon! But how will they live, eat, sleep – and most importantly, go to the loo – on a Moon base? Find out in this funny, fact-filled graphic novel style book!
Space, STEM, fun!
If one of your characters could come to dinner, who would you invite and what would you cook them? What do you think you’d talk about?
I would invite Kit’s robopet Helix. Helix is a robot cat full of interesting facts, who thinks they are always right! I guess I’d have to cook robot mice! I would ask all the questions about the universe that we don’t know the answers to.
What’s the funniest word you know that always makes you laugh?
Willy-nilly (do I need to explain?!)…
What’s the silliest or strangest thing you’ve ever researched for a story?
I’ve researched so many peculiar things because I write a lot of funny non-fiction, but trying to find out which animal would be best at huffing and puffing a house down was a good one!
Do your characters ever surprise you?
Definitely – I often start off writing with only the bare bones of an idea, so they take shape as I’m writing.
If your writing desk/office etc could speak, what would it say about you?
“She drinks too much tea and she really needs to understand that used socks are not bookmarks.”
Did you like reading when you were a child? If so, what?
I did, I think because my parents read to me and I associated reading with cosiness and love and escape to other worlds. One of my favourite books was The Queen’s Nose by Dick King-Smith, which I remember finding really funny. We used to listen to books on tape in the car (yes I am old!) on long journeys and we had one of Alan Bennett reading Winnie-the-Pooh, which I loved.
What’s your favourite book that isn’t yours?
That’s impossible to answer! One that I really enjoyed reading with my son a couple of years ago is Finn Jones Was Here by Simon James Green, which made both of us laugh AND cry – definitely the sign of a good book!
What book do you wish you could read for the first time again?
I’d like to reread Tom’s Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce without knowing the twist.
What’s the funniest thing a child has said to you?
One child asked me how many breadcrumbs you could fit between Earth and the Moon, which I didn’t immediately know the answer to!
If you weren’t an author, what would you be?
I think I could make a great pirate if someone would lend me a stick-on beard!
What BAD advice would you give to someone who wants to be a writer?
Make sure your first draft is as good as it can be, and make sure it’s perfect in your head before you even start writing it down.
SPEED ROUND:
Cake or biscuits? Cake
Dinosaurs or unicorns? Dinosaurs
Pirates or astronauts? Pirates
Museums or theme parks? Museums
Cats or dogs? Dogs
Summer or winter? Summer
Aliens or robots? Aliens
