Children's Book Day & Iron Fey, Soul Screamers Giveaway

Every Year we have a 'Children's Book Day' within the Library service. We are given 6 Teen books to read, 2 Manga's and 6 Picture books. We then meet on the day and discuss the books and vote for our favourite, One will be crowned as the 'Book Of The Year'.
We also have Guest Speakers and activities throughout the day.

Today kicked off with the usual welcome speeches and safety talk, then the real excitement began. We had three ladies from 'MIRA INK' publishing, website is here. This is an Imprint Publishing company which is also a part of Harlequin Publishers. They are a fairly new company but have already got some big names under their wing, Including Maria V Snyder - with her Inside Out series, Rachel Vincent with the Soul Screamers series, Gena Showalter with a new YA novel called Intertwined, and Juli Kagawa with the Iron Fey series, and many more.

I got a free copy of all of the above books and am super excited. I love Maria Snyder and have read all of her other books. And the Iron Fey series looks really captivating.

I also got an extra copy of 'My Soul To Take' by Rachel Vincent (Soul Screamers book 1) and 'The Iron King' by Julie Kagawa (Iron Fey book 1) I will be doing a Giveaway for these two books. Details and sign up will be at the bottom of this post. These are really exciting books and a great chance to get your hands on them.

The talk was very interesting and really opened my eyes to the publishing world. I found this talk particularly interesting as I am trying to get my book published at the moment and they offered some useful tips, and also meant I had another contact to look at.

After this amazing talk, we split into groups and discussed the 6 Teen books we had read. I love a good discussion and it's always great to get different opinions.
The 6 books we had to read were:

Tripwire by Steve Cole
Matched by Ally Condie
Hush, Hush by Becca Fitzpatrick
Inside by J.A. Jarman
Trash by Andy Mulligan
Never Bite A Boy on The First Date by Tamara Summers

Click on the titles above to read my reviews on the book. unfortunately there isn't a review for Hush, Hush as I read it before I started my blog as it is slightly older than the other books on the list.



After the Teen Discussion, we had a break and then settled down for another Guest Speaker. I was so excited about this one as I love his books and couldn't wait to meet him. Author of the Changeling series Steve Feasey was with us and gave us a fascinating talk both about him personally, his books and the 'genre' of Horror. He was a great speaker and captured our attention. His talk was very interesting and funny. He was also very friendly and great to talk to. He signed all four of my books and let me take a picture of him.

I can't wait until book 5 - 'Changeling: Zombie Dawn' is out. These books just keep getting better.
My reviews for his first four books are here: book 1, book 2, book 3, book 4

We then had lunch, then split back into our groups for the Picture & Manga book discussion.
The Manga's we read were:
Vampire Knight vol 1 by Matsuri Hino
Otomen vol 1 by Aya Kanno

unfortunately neither of these received great feedback.

The Picture books were:
The Pirate Cruncher by Johnny Duddle
Monsters: An Owners Guide by Jonathan Emmett and Mark Oliver
Three by the Sea by Mini Grey
Dunderheads by Paul Fleischman and David Roberts
Leon and the Place Between by Graham Baker-Smith
Vern & Lettuce by Sarah McIntyre
 
We then had another guest speaker Lucy Forrester who works with Peters Publishing in the Manga department, she talked about the origins of manga, styles of manga and went through some of the terminology found in Manga. She also touched on the way to read Manga for those that struggled with the layout. It was an interesting talk and she showed examples of some I was familiar with and others I hadn't seen before.
We had another quick break, then had another speaker, a Japanese lady who touched on Mangazines and the art of Manga, she is a professional Manga artist, she then did a little demonstration using people from the crowd as models and she drew a few pictures. She was great to watch and really brought the pictures to life on the page.

All that was left now was to announce the winners of each catergory.

The Teen books went in this order

First Place went to 'Trash' by Andy Mulligan but won by just 1 vote.

Second Place went to 'Matched' by Ally Condie. (my personal favourite)

Third Place went to 'Inside' by J.A. Jarman

Fourth Place went to 'Hush, Hush' by Becca Fitzpatrick

Fifth Place went to Never Bite A Boy On The First Date by Tamara Summers

Sixth Place went to 'Tripwire' by Steve Cole.

It was a close run race and there were some great books in there.

The winning Picture book was 'The Pirate Cruncher' by Johnny Duddle.

Overall it was a great day, lots of great free stuff, some awesome guest speakers, and really a day talking about books, what could be better!!! :D

GIVEAWAY!
Now, you have sat through all that (or you've skipped down the page, I won't tell honest) I will announce the Giveaway.

As I said earlier up for grabs is a promotional paperback copy of:
My Soul To Take by Rachel Vincent
The Iron King by Julie Kagawa

So how to enter?

To enter put your details in the Linky List below, then a name will be drawn out at the end. The winner will receive both of the above books.
There are no extra points for advertising this Giveaway, but I would appreciate any posts or tweets you can do. :D

Here are the rules: 

1) Competition opens now (Wednesday 9th March)
2) Competition closes on Wednesday 16th March Midnight GMT
3) Enter your Name, E-mail and Blog Link in the Linky List Below (email will be hidden) and you don't have to have a blog to enter, however -
4) You must be a Follower to enter!
5) One Name will be selected at random from the list.
6) Contest open INTERNATIONALLY!!! :D
7) Winners will be contacted by e-mail
8) Winners will have 3 days to reply or another winner will be selected.

Good Luck Everyone.