Secret to being brainy? Read anything at all, reckons author

Published on Friday 15 May 2009 22:05

LEADING children's author Anthony Horowitz urged an audience of 11,000 Scottish schoolchildren yesterday to read – and read anything – to "exercise their minds".

Horowitz, screen-writer of Foyle's War and best-selling author of more than 50 books, was speaking to classrooms in 215 schools across the country in a question-and-answer session from Edinburgh that was carried on schoolroom "smart boards" and computer screens.

The latest book in his best-known series – the adventures of young secret agent Alex Rider – opens at a Scottish castle on Hogmanay, he revealed. Early chapters are set on Loch Arkaig and a Scottish ski resort.

Horowitz, who is rated Britain's most successful male writer for children, with multi-million book sales in 34 languages, urged his young audience to believe in themselves if they wanted to be writers, and above all keep reading.

"Don't just think you have to read good books. Read anything, because reading is a muscle that needs exercising," he said.

He urged them to try Tintin, the cartoon adventures that were the first books he read.

The Scottish Book Trust said yesterday that almost 11,000 schoolchildren were tuned into Horowitz's event at Surgeons' Hall via an internet broadcast, tied to the paperback launch of his book Necropolis.

He answered a few of more than 500 questions e-mailed in by schools from Orkney to Glasgow.

It was funded by the Scottish Arts Council as a pilot event, said book trust director Mark Lambert, with other authors set to follow. "This is one way in which we can get to huge amounts of kids, irrespective of geography and cost, bringing writers directly into their school."

Horowitz, whose son is studying at Edinburgh University, was set to head to Inverness for a research trip including the Monar dam, to "get immersed in the landscape".

The event was a chance to "get to islands and far-distant schools that I couldn't possibly reach on foot, as it were", he said.

He added that, for children immersed in virtual life, from texting to computers, "this is completely unremarkable".

Mentioned in the past as a favourite for the title of Children's Laureate – with a new writer to be named next month – he said he would not accept it.

"We don't need a spokesperson to be the one person representing children's books," he said.

"Children will come out and listen to a writer whose books they like. They don't need a government agency or a medal that says 'laureate' to continue that."