Saturday 30 June 2018

the pictures in the reader’s head - Lari Don

I’m always keen to know how young readers see my stories, in their heads, when they read the words on the page. So it’s always lovely when I receive an envelope of pictures from a class who have read my books.

It’s fascinating to see how their images of the characters differ from the covers of the books, and interesting to see what specific scenes they were keen to recreate (it's often fight scenes or chase scenes!)

I recently received pictures from a class who had read all three novels of the Spellchasers trilogy this year, so it was great to see pictures of lots of different characters and scenes, not just the ones who appear in the first book or on the first cover.

With an eye to creating the next series and auditioning my next set of characters, it’s interesting to note which characters out of a team of magical creatures and a battalion of baddies inspire the readers to spend time drawing their own versions. And this time around, it turns out that creating a goth dryad with purple hair was the clear winner! They may well have run out of purple ink in West Lothian…

The summer holidays have just started in Scotland, so I won’t be getting many envelopes of pictures for a couple of months. I’d better spend the time writing more words, in the hope that they might inspire more pictures in the future…

Lari Don is the award-winning author of more than 20 books for all ages, including fantasy novels for 8 – 12s, picture books, retellings of traditional tales, a teen thriller and novellas for reluctant readers. Lari’s website 
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Lari is on Instagram as LariDonWriter

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