Oook!*

*Which means: 'I have great news!'

I just found out that my favorite writer sir Terry Pratchett received the Margaret A. Edwards Award ‘for a significant and lasting contribution to young adult literature.’

Portrait of Sir Terry Pratchett with lil' Discworld by me :)

Terry Pratchett is famous for his Discworld series, which started with The Color of Magic published in 1983. He still writes, and since he was diagnosed with the Alzheimer’s disease in 2007 he has published two bestselling books, and he is already writing two more. But now he seems to be mainly fighting for legalization of assisted suicide in the UK. He gives his reasons for it in his Dimbleby Lecture entitled ‘Shaking hands with Death’ (I found it extremely gripping, and if anyone is interested in watching it, let me know and I’ll give you a link).

Moreover, if you’d like to start reading his books, I’d recommend starting with one of the earliest ones, like ‘The Color of Magic’, ‘Mort’ or ‘Guards! Guards!’. Although each novel (excluding ‘The Color of Magic’ and ‘The Light Fantastic’) tells an independent story, there are groups of characters who come back now and again and if you read the books in a random order, you may miss some fun.

For those of you, who prefer moving pictures to still letters: three Discworld novels have been made into movies: ‘Hogfather’, ‘The Color of Magic’ and ‘Going Postal’. The first two are available in Poland (I saw them in Empik before Christmas, but you’d have to look in the section entitled: Movies for Kids).

Now, I don’t want to you jump to conclusions; Terry Pratchett does not write books for children. He writes books for ‘adults of all ages’ and there are books which are categorized as ‘young adult books’. Nevertheless, most of his novels are directed to grown-ups :)

My personal favorite is ‘Small Gods’, featuring The Great God Om who has only one believer and is inclined to remain in the form of a one-eyed tortoise. Maybe now you will understand why the little tortoise always attached to my bag is called Om :)

Before I finish this note, here’s a short quote about my idol, Susan Sto Helit, granddaughter of Death :)

She'd become a governess. It was one of the few jobs a known lady could do. And she'd taken to it well. She'd sworn that if she did indeed ever find herself dancing on rooftops with chimney sweeps she'd beat herself to death with her own umbrella.

(Terry Pratchett, ‘Hogfather’)

Hm… isn’t it the word we were looking for during our last Grammar lesson? ;)