GUEST SELECTOR: VIVIAN FRENCH10:00 The OobIcoo Event Julia Donaldson RBS Main Theatre, £4.50 Age 5 - 9 Children's Laureate Julia Donaldson sings and dances her way through her fabulous picture books from brand new stories such as Superworm to everybody's favourite -The Gruffalo! Get ready to join in with Julia and her cast, including husband Malcolm and fellow writer Moira Munro. 10:00- Are You Sitting Comfortably? 10:30 RBS Story Box, Free: Book in Advance All Ages Join us for a quick, magical dip into the world of words with our free morning events for children of all ages. It might be a story, a poem, songs and rhymes or a reading with one of our Festival authors. Today: Storytime with Peter Rabbit. 10:00 Aesop's Funky Fables with Vivian French RBS Imagination Lab, £4.50 Age 6 - 12 Aesop's fables have been around for nearly 3000 years, enduring and evolving with each retelling. Join our Guest Selector, Vivian French, for a fun, engaging event where you can choose your favourite fable and give it your own spin, just as Vivian has done in her Funky Fables. The stories are perfect for turning into rhymes, songs or pictures and for telling to your friends and family. 10:30 Frank Cottrell Boyce & Andrew Motion ScottishPower Studio Theatre, £4.50 Age 10+ How many of us have finished a novel and spent idle hours wondering what the characters did next? Join screenwriter and novelist, Frank Cottrell Boyce and former Poet Laureate Andrew Motion as they discuss their new novels, both of which pick up where former writers left off: Frank with Chitty Chitty Bang Bang Flies Again and Andrew with Silver, his sequel to Treasure Island. Discover what two of our finest writers imagined came next. 10:30 Joan Lingard RBS Corner Theatre, £4.50 Age 10 - 14 'By reading and by writing we can enter different worlds, get inside the skins of different people in different places, and push out the boundaries of our own lives.' Over her incredible career, Joan Lingard has written nearly fifty books that get inside the skin of fascinating characters, from those living in revolutionary Russia to Franco's Spain, contemporary Scotland and Northern Ireland. Join her to hear about her new novels, The Stolen Sister and What Holly Did. 11:30 To Be a Cat with Matt Haig RBS Imagination Lab, £4.50 Age 9 - 12 Ever thought how lovely it would be to be a cat? To forget about school, bullies, parent problems and just spend all day fence-balancing and sniffing the air for the scent of sardines? Award-winning author Matt Haig shares his new book To be a Cat, featuring unhappy schoolboy Barney Willow, who morphs into a kitty - but not just any old kitty, one belonging to his tormentor, the horrid Gavin Needles. 12:00 Alex Scarrow & Simon Scarrow RBS Corner Theatre, £4.50 Age 10 - 14 Be whisked away on a whirlwind tour of ancient Rome with Alex and Simon Scarrow. Alex's Gates of Rome is the fifth book in his hugely popular time travel adventure series TimeRiders, in which his heroes grapple with an alternate timeline. Meanwhile, brother Simon's second book in his Gladiator series, Street Fighter, follows young Marcus, sold into slavery and forced to become a Gladiator. Come and experience the sights, smells, blood and violence of ancient Rome. 13:30 Jacqueline Wilson RBS Main Theatre, £4.50 Age 9 - 14 In 1902, E Nesbit published Five Children and It which has never been out of print. Now, Jacqueline Wilson has revisited the original and created Four Children and It. Set in the modern day and following Rosalind and Robbie, their half-sister Maudie and step-sister Smash, the foursome discover the mythical sand-fairy, or Psammead, in a big sandpit in Surrey's Oxshott Woods! Come and hear more about her take on this much-loved story.13:30 Return to Ribblestrop with Andy Mulligan RBS Imagination Lab, £4.50 Age 11 - 14 Imagine a boarding school in an old mansion with ghosts, monks, animals, noisy boys and odd teachers. If this is your kind of place then join Andy Mulligan as he describes his Guardian Children's Fiction Prize-winning novel Return to Ribblestrop, a tale with a great adventure at its core but also packed with wonderful, warm and funny characters. This is one school that would certainly challenge an HMI Inspector. Sat 11 AugustSharon laughed too much, too loudly, as if it was the best joke she'd heard in years. Holly didn't laugh. She was trying to work out how to escape.Joan Lingard, What to Do About Holly?, 10:30'I can't have you messing up the lines, d'you see? Classic body. Racing engine. You're a contradiction, that's what you are.' 'Couldn't that be our category then?' suggested Mum. 'Couldn't we be in the contradiction category?'Frank Cottrell Boyce, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang Flies Again, 10:30 Meg Rosoff, 16:3060

14:00 Jeremy Strong ScottishPower Studio Theatre, £4.50 Age 7 - 10 You can't beat a Jeremy Strong event to brighten your day and make you laugh. And this will be no exception. Join Jeremy and Streaker, the 'Hundred-Mile an-Hour Dog', as he goes for gold (that's Streaker, not Jeremy) and hear about the new comic book adventure for Cartoon Kid and all his superhero friends. 14:00 Ian Livingstone RBS Corner Theatre, £4.50 Age 8 - 11 Ian Livingstone celebrates Fighting Fantasy game books. Ian has been in the interactive games industry for over twenty five years, is the co-founder of Games Workshop, launched Dungeons & Dragons in Europe and wrote the first Fighting Fantasy with Steve Jackson thirty years ago! Just ask your dad, he's bound to have a couple of dusty copies in the loft. A thrilling interactive event - whether you know the books or are new to the concept, we guarantee you'll be hooked. 15:00 Illustration Masterclass with Chris Riddell RBS Imagination Lab, £4.50 Age 9 - 12 This is a fantastic opportunity to learn about book illustration from one of the best. Chris Riddell is known for his beautiful, detailed line drawings in The Edge Chronicles and Fergus Crane, co-written with Paul Stewart, The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman, as well as his tales of Ottoline and many other successful collaborations. Come and get insights and tips and hear more about how an illustrator and a writer work together. 15:30 The Last Dragon Chronicles with Chris d'Lacey RBS Corner Theatre, £4.50 Age 10 - 14 Chris d'Lacey tells you all about The Fire Ascending, the next exciting instalment in his breathtaking The Last Dragon Chronicles series. Get to know more about hero David Rain, his quest to save the tear of the last dragon and his thrilling endeavours to protect mankind and dragons from evil forces. 16:30 Meg Rosoff RBS Imagination Lab, £4.50 Age 14+ In the beginning there was Bob and then he made the heavens and the earth. Meg Rosoff's latest novel There Is No Dog features a typical lazy, self-obsessed, sex-crazed teenage boy. Unfortunately, this teenage boy is also God! Meg's books such as How I Live Now and The Bride's Farewell are complex, intriguing, challenging and utterly compelling. Come and hear her discuss ideas, characters and what happens when you leave an adolescent boy in charge of the universe. 17:00 Catherine MacPhail RBS Corner Theatre, £4.50 Age 10 - 14 'You can't trust anyone when it comes to ghosts.' So states Tyler Lawless, first encountered in Catherine MacPhail's Out of the Depths and now set to return in her new mystery, Secret of the Shadows. Since her first novel, Run Zan Run, Catherine has written nearly forty books, each with her trademark humour, endearing characters and a combination of mystery, the supernatural and, most of all, extremely good stories.18:30 Magnus Fin with Janis Mackay RBS Imagination Lab, £4.50 Age 8 - 12 Imagine the crashing waves of the Atlantic Ocean with seals, beaches and Selkies! Join author Janis Mackay to hear about Magnus Fin and the Selkie Secret, the final part in the Magnus Fin trilogy - stories of an underwater half-seal, half-human hero. Come along for an interactive ride that will transport you to the wild Caithness coast. Illustrator in Residence: Chris RiddellEvery one of them pricked their tufted ears. Dozens of green eyes grew in size.Chris d'Lacey, The Fire Ascending, 15:30He turned his head to see what he had only felt so far. A tail. Curled into a quivering kind of question mark, as though the rest of his body was a query wanting an answer.Matt Haig, To Be a Cat, 11:30See page 83 for booking detailsBook now: www.edbookfest.co.uk 0845 373 588861