Stephen Measday
Stephen Measday is well known for his adventurous and humorous novels for younger readers, such as A Pig Called Francis Bacon, My Friend Roger Bacon and The News They Didn't Use. He has written a total of thirteen children's and young adult novels and has been published in Australia, the United States, France, the UK, Indonesia and South Korea. A Pig Called Francis Bacon and The News They Didn't Use were listed as Notable Books by the Children's Book Council of Australia. The Bacon series is now completed with The Roger Bacon Reporting and Bringing Home the Bacon.
Stephen is also an award-winning scriptwriter for both adults and children in film, television and radio. He has recently adapted the prize-winning novel, Rowan of Rin (by Emily Rodda), as a feature film and worked on the Wicked TV series, the animated adaptation of the highly successful books by Paul Jennings and Morris Gleitzman.
Stephen's professional career began as a cadet journalist with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, where he worked as a reporter, sub-editor and news director, before turning to professional writing. In television Stephen has written for Australia's highest rating drama, 'Blue Heelers', the 10 network children's series Mirror, Mirror 2, ABC TV's The Ferals, Channel 9's Ship to Shore as well as an original tele-feature, The Time Game and 4 episodes of the ACTF series, Skytrackers 2.
In addition to his many writing commitments, Stephen conducts an exciting and informative range of workshops, talks and readings throughout Australia for primary, secondary, tertiary students and for adult groups. In particular, he offers a range of scriptwriting workshops for students from Years 3 - 12. He can also workshop and assist HSC students with writing scripts for drama and video productions. He also offers adult courses in creative writing, script-writing and, specifically, in Writing for Younger Readers.
Stephen is available as a speaker / workshop presenter at conferences, recently conducting workshops for children from all over Europe at the Agora Conference on Audio-Visual Media for Children in Greece. He is regularly invited to host / MC luncheons and other literary events and has appeared as a speaker and panellist at writers' festivals in Melbourne, Brisbane and Sydney. Biographic details from where you can also book Stephen to visit your school http://www.laterallearning.com/authors/measday.html
Contributor: Cécile Ferguson
Reviews
Bringing Home the Bacons
Stephen Measday
This book seeks to answer the ever-important, as well as practical question: how on earth do you feed and look after a growing family of talking pigs? Roger Bacon is working hard to earn money, and, with the help of his human friend, Lucy Russo, Roger and Lucy tour clubs as a ventriloquist act, and eventually appear on a national quiz show "Pick the Porky", all to pay off his family's dream home. Meanwhile, Francis and Verity, Roger's niece and nephew, find themselves becoming involved with the troubles of Pat Dry, their new hermit of a neighbour, who is being chased by criminals. Will the Bacons ever be able to just live in peace? This latest book in the Bacon series was entertaining enough, but wasn't as good as the earlier books in the series, and A Pig Called Francis Bacon, the first book, is still my favourite. My main problem with this book, apart from the storyline losing its zest, is that while Roger and Lucy are supposedly performing a comedy act, their jokes aren't actually that funny, just a bit lame. All the same, I'm sure that fans of this series will enjoy this book, which is still quite a good book despite those shortcomings. 2003, Hodder Headline Australia, Ages 7 up, $14.95. Reviewer: Stephanie, Year 12 (Lollipops -- What's On For Kids, Australia)
ISBN: 0-7336-1610-0
Added 08/01/03
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