Kjartan Poskitt: The facts about National Non-Fiction Day

On Thursday 4th November we celebrated the first National Non-Fiction Day with the brilliant Kjartan Poskitt. In today's blog Kjartan, author of the Murderous Maths series, talks about National Non-Fiction Day and his two brilliant events in Edinburgh.

Now that I'm getting old and lazy, there aren't many things that I enjoy setting the early alarm clock for... but one of them is getting on the train to do a book event in Edinburgh, so YIPPEE for the first ever National Non-Fiction Day.

It's a brilliant idea. Nearly every book award or book event is for made-up story books, so it's really good that interesting books full of real facts are finally getting a day to themselves. My big hairy scary chum Philip Ardargh was in Birmingham talking about his jolly Henry's House books, and my top pal Tony De Saulles was also out and about showing how he draws his hilarious pictures for the Horrible Science series. But I had the best gig - The Royal Society in Edinburgh! It had big pillars and a very posh ceiling and 300 kids who had come to enjoy themselves.

So what happens when you come to see an old bald bloke talking about maths books? The first thing is that the sound man at the Royal Society let me plug my iPod in, so everybody was dancing to YMCA before it started. I bet that's never happened in the Royal Society before ha ha! Then a very nice young lady made a speech to introduce me and say how marvellous I am. (It was a very good speech too, I could have listened to it all day.) And then we're off...

The first thing I like to do is a few magic tricks using people out of the audience. I must know about 100 tricks that involve numbers, shapes, cards, folding paper and so on, and I always try to make sure there's a few tricks in every Murderous Maths book I write. After the tricks I teach everyone the 1089 times table - which only takes about 20 seconds! It's great because everybody sits there amazed like they've been donked on the head. And that's when I do my favourite bit on the big screen...

Suppose you have chess board which has 64 black and white squares. You put 1 penny on the first square, 2 pennies on the next square, 4 pennies on the next, then 8 then 16... and keep doubling them up. By the time you get to square 21, you'll need over 1 million pennies and the pile will be a mile high. On square 48 the pile of pennies will be higher then the sun and on square 64 the pennies will be ONE AND A HALF LIGHT YEARS high. Now if you read that in a story book such as Harry Potter or Tracey Beaker then you'd just think "yeah yeah so what?"  But this comes out of The Murderous Maths of Everything and it's TRUE. And that's why I think Non-Fiction Day is such a good idea!

So what with tricks, mad facts, embarrassed teachers and a bit of old cardboard that magically turns into a football, that's what I was doing on Nov 4th. I must thank the lovely Scottish Book Trust People for fixing such a fab event, and all the kids and teachers for coming along and having such a good laugh with me.  Oh, and the Royal Society sound man for turning the music up. Rock on!

Watch Kjartan in action in our video podcasts from his Scottish Friendly Children's Book Tour earlier this year.

Kjartan's website is filled with lots of great ideas and tricks, why don't you have a go at completing some of the on-line puzzles and games.

To find out more about Nation Non-Fiction Day, please visit their website.

Other news:

Guy Bass has launched his first viral book trailer for Secret Santa. Have a look, have a laugh, and why not have a go! Think you can do better than Team Christmas? Upload your X.M.A.S. Academy audition tapes onto Facebook, YouTube or Twitter.

To find out more, please visit Guy's website.

The West of Scotland Children's Book Group is holding a Meet Our Authors event where you are invited to come along and meet Theresa Breslin, Maggi Gibson, Julia Jarman, Sara Pinto and Lynne Rickards. You can hear how they work, how they plan for school visits, and find out the answers to the questions you've always wanted to ask.

The event will take Place on the 29th of November between 5 and 7pm at Scotia Books.To find out more, go to their website.

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