Manchester Children's Book Festival starts on Friday

Matt Brown is headlining this year's Manchester Children's Book Festival

THIS year’s Manchester Children’s Book Festival starts this week!

Organised by the University’s Manchester Writing School, this is the first time the festival will become an annual event.

The festival was first introduced by Prof Carol Ann Duffy in 2010 as a pilot project, organised by James Draper, Kaye Tew and their teams.

Since then the event has gone from strength to strength, and headline names have included Michael Morpurgo, Philip Pullman and Jacqueline Wilson.

Magical time travel

This year’s event will be headed by Matt Brown, author of the Compton Valance series of books.

Other authors appearing at the event include Alex Scarrow, Liz Kessler and Alex Wheatle.

Carol Ann said: “You might not have been expecting to see us again until 2016 but, due to popular demand, the Manchester Children's Book Festival is back, and now an annual event.

“Our theme for 2015 is time travel, inspired by our headline book series Compton Valance, which sees Compton visit different time periods using his magical mouldy sandwich."

Event for everyone

Festival Director Kaye Tew said: “We're proud to maintain MCBF as an event for everyone, and continue with special projects that enable the broadest possible audience to engage with literature and the arts, and provide opportunities for creative expression.

“The Festival is a chance to highlight the year-round work of our outreach and schools' liaison teams in the Humanities faculty at the University, and we'll be taking authors, artists and performers into classrooms for MCBF workshops designed to raise aspirations and confidence in young people - and inspire the festival stars of tomorrow!”

The festival will once again be partnering with the national charity ReadWell, who provide books for children undergoing treatment in hospitals. Last year’s partnership resulted in hundreds of new books making their way onto wards and into school rooms at the Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital.

For more information, and full what’s on listings, visit www.mcbf.org.uk

Notes to editors

To speak to any of the authors appearing at this year's festival, or the festival organisers, please contact Kat Dibbits in the Manchester Metropolitan University press office on 0161 247 5278 or email K.Dibbits@mmu.ac.uk. High res images of authors and last year's festival are available on request.