The Titanic Detective Agency

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Finally, thank you to everyone who sent recipes, and photos of themselves for our projects. The class video, and recipe book are on their way, and I will share them with you as soon as they are ready! Thank you to everyone who has contributed to one of the videos this week, it has been lovely to hear and see you all.

Thank you for sending your recipes across – if there are any more out there can they be sent across asap – I’m keen to get going and make the recipe book! Creating characters is my favourite part of planning a story, but when you’re writing about real-life people, it gets more complicated. I annotated a photograph of Bertha, noting everything I’d discovered about her: she loved gymnastics, attended Sunday School, owned an autograph book, had extremely squinty teeth. I decided that she might have been self-conscious about her teeth, although my only clue was that she married a dentist. Once I’d a clear idea of Bertha, her likes and dislikes, strengths and weaknesses, I was ready to write her story, first as short chapter headings on a series of post-it notes. I often use post-it notes as they ensure that I know where the story is going and how it is going to get there. Then I dive in and write the book. The Titanic Detective Agency The sequel to The Mixed Up Summer, The Awkward Autumn of Lily McLean, was published in March 2017 and A Pattern of Secrets, a Victorian mystery set in Paisley, was published by the fabulous Cranachan Books in 2018.Finally, our video based on the organs of the Human body is on the Video Resource Centre. It has been added to the Class Five playlist, and is there for you all to enjoy. Thank you so much to everybody who sent clips in for the video – it looks fantastic! But no-one is expecting to be woken up in the night....for the unsinkable ship to be sinking...for so many lives to be lost. Inverclyde’s Meliora Festival in mid-June was tremendous fun. My first event in a massive inflatable structure! It was followed by a relaxing week’s holiday in Sorrento and an author visit to the Scottish Game Fair.

My aim was to create an exciting, engaging adventure story, one which would include interesting information the children might find less easy to access, mainly about the ordinary people on board the ship. This was the stuff I found fascinating, and knew would engage my readers. I will be online every day this week, and will be hosting ‘Live’ sessions on the class blog during the following times. I’ve ignored this blog for too long and now there’s too much to include, so here’s some happenings from March to August! I’m the author of Guardians of the Wild Unicorns, a middle-grade novel starring the unicorns of mythology and legend. Another of my novels is The Titanic Detective Agency, a fresh retelling of the tragedy with a Scottish twist. Secrets of the Last Merfolk came out in 2021 with Floris Books and The Rewilders and Euro Spies have both been recently published by Cranachan Books. As a child, Lindsay developed a keen interest in the past, thanks to the Ladybird Adventures from History series. If only she’d held on to all those early editions…The Titanic Detective Agency is a really great piece of historical fiction. I loved the interweaving of fact and fiction. Bertha, Madge, Johan and some of the other characters in the book were actual passengers on the Titanic. At the end of the book there are photographs and small biographies of some of the passengers, letting you know more about the lives of those that survived. I also really loved Bertha’s realisation that she had completely underestimated her mother’s bravery and strength. The scene where Bertha recognises that bravery isn’t necessarily about daring deeds and intrepid adventures but that it can be something quite understated is really powerful and very moving. The exciting storyline, short chapters and young leads make The Titanic Detective Agency a hugely appealing book for a middle grade audience. Rating: https://getkidsintobooks.wordpress.com/

In 2015 her WW1 novel Shell Hole was shortlisted for the Dundee Great War Children’s Book Prize and she enjoyed engaging in research so much that she was inspired to write another historical novel, A Pattern of Secrets, this time focusing on her local area. Currently, I am researching and writing another reading book for schools, again based on a real-life historical disaster, as well as doing line-edits for a new novel, which is coming out next year with Floris Books. More details about this one coming soon! Having read Lindsay’s 2018 middle grade historical fiction A Pattern of Secrets I’ve been sure that The Titanic Detective Agency is going to be as good as well. Lindsay hasn’t let me down! She astonishes me with every little detail of the Titanic blended into her outstanding storytelling! The Titanic Detective Agency feels like the Titanic itself – strong, majestic, powerful, exciting, glorious and classic, minus the tragedy. It is indeed a marvel! I have uploaded some more videos to the Video Resource Centre, the end of The Titanic Detective Agency is now there, along with a Memories video to go along with our work on The Piano.We are continuing with our work on The Piano this week, and I can’t wait to see what you all come up with. You sent across some beautiful pieces of work last week, and I was really impressed with the way that you all managed to capture the emotions of the video.The treasure map is in the hands of 3rd Class passenger Johan, a young Swedish boy who's desperate to get to America and bring the rest of his family across. He doesn't speak any English, and Bertha doesn't speak any Swedish, but somehow they manage to communicate. During the last week of term I will be uploading a summer challenge, which will lay out some activities you could complete over the holidays. These will all be short tasks which will just help to keep your skills sharp in preparation for you starting in Year Six in September. Overshadowing these adventures, of course, is the iceberg in the Titanic's path. There's plenty of foreshadowing, with the word "unsinkable" being bandied about with aplomb, discussions of how much more dangerous a trans-Atlantic dirigible flight would be, and the occasional glance at the number of lifeboats.

Having said that, the main reason I choose to write for primary school children is that the books which still mean the most to me are the ones I read as a child. When anyone asks me to name my favourite books, I mention The Secret Island, The Borrowers, Mrs Frisby and the Rats of Nimh and The Family from One End Street before any novels I’ve read as an adult. As a child, I was an avid reader, and those books kept me company, built empathy and helped me to determine the sort of person I wanted to be. I loved my childhood favourites deeply and hope very much that my own stories are ones which children will remember fondly years from now. I have many plans! My retirement from teaching in the summer will hopefully mean I have more time and energy to focus on writing. My seldom-used dining room is about to be transformed into a magnificent writer’s room, probably with help from Ikea. I’ll have time to start work on redrafting my YA novel, The Reader of Caledon, a dark fantasy with echoes of The Hunger Games, set in an alternative Glasgow, and on redrafting The Superpower Switch Off, a MG adventure about four young superheroes who lose their superpowers after a misuse of powers incident in school, and have to continue to battle a Supervillain without them. In March, I did my first international author visit, and spent a wonderful three days doing workshops at the European School in Luxembourg, plus a lovely afternoon exploring the city. So grateful to the organisers for making it such an enjoyable visit.

Bertha is hoping that in America girls can do whatever they want. She wants to be heard, she wants to do something dramatic like fly planes or be a polar explorer. On the ship there are few children and she befriends Madge Collyer. Whilst looking for something to alleviate the boredom, Bertha and Madge start the Collyer-Watt Detective Agency. Their first case is the strange Mr Hoffman and his two small boys. Why doesn't he want anyone to talk to them? Is their mother really dead? My autumn calendar is already filling up with invitations to book festivals, libraries and schools, and it will be lovely to balance my working life between writing and talking about writing! Have you any tips for aspiring authors? Our topic and science work are carrying on with the topics we have been studying since Easter, investigating the claim that the Titanic was unsinkable, and building an understanding of solids, liquids and gases in our science work. I will be online this week between 10am & 12pm on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, and through the day on Thursday and Friday around meetings etc.