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Charlie Higson launches The Dead

Manchester Childrens’ Book Festival event

TOP children’s author and comedian Charlie Higson launched his new novel – The Dead – at Manchester Metropolitan University.

 The ‘Young Bond’ author and former Fast Show star launched his follow up to the best-selling zombie tale The Enemy to an excitable audience of more than 260 people – made up of Year 7, 8 and 9 pupils from Manchester schools. 

The event was hosted by Manchester Libraries and Puffin Books in association with the Manchester Children’s Book Festival  - a bi-annual festival hosted by the University’s Writing School.

Charlie entertained the audience with his own take on the origins of gothic fiction and horror films. 

“Scare the wits out of them”

Apparently, it all began in 1815 with the eruption of Mount Tambora, which resulted in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Doctor Polidori’s The Vampyre (the forerunner of Bram Stoker’s Dracula).  These, in turn, led to theatre productions and then, with the advent of film, the Horror genre which triggered Charlie’s burning desire to terrify young readers with his gruesome Zombie stories. 

According to Charlie, children’s horror should “scare the wits out of them” and he admitted he only felt he’d got the hang of horror writing when his youngest “had serious nightmares!”

To find out more about Manchester Children’s Book Festival events, please sign up to be on our mailing list at: www.manchesterchildrensbookfestival.co.uk or emailing:  mcbf@mmu.ac.uk

Published Thursday, 14th April 2011