Se7en + 1 Meet Alan Glass, the Author of Oliver’s Outline… And a GiveAway…

It appears to be a week of books on our blog… settle in there are going to be books abounding. Oliver’s Outline is a new picture book on the block, by Alan Glass and illustrated by Sandy Lightly, published by PanMacmillan South Africa. Earlier this week we met up with author, Alan Glass and what a fun and lively interview followed around our kitchen table. We have a copy of his new book, Oliver’s Outline, to Give Away to one of our readers…

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The Book: Oliver’s Outline

Oliver’s Outline is the story of an ordinary looking lad, in an ordinary looking house, with an ordinary looking family… but look again. Oliver has no outline, he is different and he is troubled to find himself different. His parents encourage a very tentative Oliver to head out into the world and seek his outline. Oliver bravely heads out into the world on a fantastic adventure. As the adventure unfolds so more and more outline appears in the illustrations, and finally Oliver realises that he is complete. This book is about a young person who feels that he can’t “fit in” because he is different… Only to discover somewhat triumphantly that he is quite complete just as he is. The book is written in rhyme and this, along with the illustrations, makes the book. You want to read along just to hear the rhythm play it’s way out… and to see Oliver succeed. I have to say our copy of the book is looking somewhat worn already, it has been read and re-read… not to mention inspired an afternoon art session. My younger guys sat around the table painting folk without outlines… fun times!!!

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Let’s Talk to the Author, Alan Glass

Alan Glass is a South African author, who lives in our neighbourhood… they seem to flourish here. He recently wrote Oliver’s Outline, but he is clearly a man of many talents, with lots of interesting and creative jobs under his belt. Not least of which was creating a heap of parent friendly music for kids and number of books to go with it. Let me just say… bravery award to the author who isn’t afraid to take on se7en+1 kids all at once and answer a barrage of questions…

  1. Let’s talk about your typical day: First thing… he makes his bed, (one or two hoods nearly fell off their chairs), because it makes it highly unlikely that one will clamber back into bed. Next he takes his dogs for a walk on the beach or on our mountain… yes, we share a mountain and I cannot fathom why we haven’t bumped into him before. Then he sits at his desk and does business things – email and what not… before heading out for meetings. He creates whenever and wherever he is inspired, and ends his day by walking his dogs… Clearly he has very energetic dogs!!!
  2. Let’s talk about kid books: He is a huge advocate of reading. he took a while to get reading, in fact he wasn’t a huge reader as a kid… but he had three older sisters who read heaps to him when he was a kid and he loves everything Dr. Seuss as a result. His favourite book ever… well that would be The Book Thief.

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  3. Let’s talk about what he is reading right now: He always has a pile of book that he reads simultaneously. Recently he read Lewis Pugh’s book: 21 Yaks and a Speedo. Clearly I need to read this book, so many folk have highly recommended it.
  4. Let’s talk about this book: He had this book lurking around in his head for a while, he was dying to write it. Writing books like this – well this is the work he wants to be doing. He hates dumbing down books for kids – do I hear a hooray!!! – He has a glossary at the back of his picture book so that kids (or their parents), can look up any words they might find tricky… Words like glossary are in the glossary. He was also proud to show us a reference, a salute really, to his father… hidden in “the class photograph” – so clever, I love it.
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  6. Let’s talk about food: He really wanted to talk about food… apparently he loves food… all food… which makes it somewhat difficult to answer a question about his favourite foods. But chocolate ranks high. And he always works with a cup of coffee or tea beside him. He loves eating out, but he also loves to cook in. A favourite dish… hmmm something with pasta.
  7. Let’s talk about ambitions: As a young child he coveted a gold album on the wall at his aunt’s house… he wanted to have one too. He stayed strong in his dream and did get his Gold and Platinum Albums with his Beautiful Creature Cds.
  8. Let’s talk about the future: His enthusiasm is contagious and he so enjoyed writing Oliver’s Outline… he would love to write more books like it.
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    And the se7en + 1th thing…

  10. Let’s talk about advice: Be careful what you wish for, wishes tend to come true… Here’s a book in itself, he had several examples of things that he had wished for that really did come true… only what he wished for wasn’t exactly what he wanted and those wishes might have ever so slightly missed the mark.

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The GiveAway

We have a copy of Oliver’s Outline to GiveAway… This GiveAway works in the usual way, leave a comment before 23 April 2015 and tell us “where you would go on an adventure.” We will draw and publish the winners in the following Fabulous Fun Post. I won’t respond to your comments as I do on our other posts because I don’t want to be included in our own giveaway.

Our GiveAways are open to everyone: If you have won a GiveAway before never fear – enter away. If you live on the far side of the world – enter away. Postage takes forever from here but eventually it should get to you! Good luck and happy commenting!!!

We would love to thank Alan Glass so very much for spending time with us and we would like to thank PanMacmillan South Africa who provided us with two copies of the book, one for review purposes and the other for a giveAway. This is not a sponsored post, we were not paid to write the review and the opinions are as usual entirely our own.

17 Replies to “Se7en + 1 Meet Alan Glass, the Author of Oliver’s Outline… And a GiveAway…”

  1. So many places to go! . . .I would pick Belize. I have always wanted to explore a coral reef & a rain forest.

  2. this sounds like a lovely book!! If I was to go on an adventure, I would love to go to an active volcano, like in Hawaii.

  3. Such a tough question. There a ton of places I’d like to adventure to and around, but right now something that would be good for K to adventure with tops the list. So it’d be somewhere I’d been to before, the Netherlands, but specifically Dick Bruna Huis – there are a lot of displays and activities at kid level, which my kid would go crazy for.

  4. This books sounds lovely! I would take my boys for a winter adventure to Norway (where I’m from, but they’ve only been once so far). There would have to be snow, lots of it, so they could build snow forts and learn how to ski.

  5. We always love trying new kids books, especially those not ‘dumbed down’! My adventure would have to be through Africa by car…but maybe once our kids are older!!

  6. If I were going on an adventure all by myself, I would love to travel to Ireland, to see the village where my gran grew up and where my mom was born.
    But if we were going as a family, the kids all want to go West and see the Canadian Rockies. That would be a really fun family trip.

  7. Gosh, how fun to have an author interview right in your hood 🙂

    Adventure? Well, I’m not much of an adventurer but let’s say we’d traipse around London 🙂

  8. I have never been in the snow, and nor have my kids, so this winter we plan to adventure to Ceres or wherever we can find some snow to play in for the day!

  9. How cool to have a publisher author in your neighborhood!

    Adventure Too many places in my bucket list but I can start with the Rocky Mountains

  10. Even if given the money to go, not sure what I would choose -SO MANY places. But for now I would start with the Northern Lights

  11. Would love to do a trip through Europe seeing all the things we read about in school last year

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