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I'm Marcus Sedgwick, I'm the author of She Is Not Invisible. It's a story about a 16
year old girl called Laureth. Laureth has been blind from birth. One in 30 people in
the country have some kind of visual impairment. I've written 13 books, I haven't had a blind
character once yet, it was about time I did. A large part of my research was done by coming
here to New College Worcester, which is a secondary school, boarding school, specifically
aimed at catering for blind and visually impaired students.
I'm absolutely delighted to be back at the college today with a finished copy of the
book. I could not have written this book without the help of the students here. We're about
to start discussing it and I'm kind of beside myself with nerves to see what they make of
it. I know some of your faces, I don't know everyone
but I'm hoping we'll have a chance to meet everyone and talk to everyone before the day
is over. There's nothing in this book that wasn't something that someone, somewhere along
the line said to me in some form or other. I couldn't have done it without you, really,
genuinely could not have done this. So if you don't like the things that are in this
book, I'm going to blame you. [Laughter] One of the first things I learnt when I first
came to New College was how few books make it into braille. I gather it's less than one
per cent of all books published every year. Not only is it so few books, it also takes
them months to appear. So what that means is, if you're blind or visually impaired,
you want to read a book that your peers are reading at school or in a reading group and
you can't. So it seemed to be absolutely vital that we made this book available in as many
different accessible formats from publication day and I'm really delighted that Orion have
managed to pull that off. That's a very strange and different experience
for me, I've never written a book in this way before and remember that these discussion
points are to go out to general reading groups in the Reading Group Challenge.
At what point in the story did you realise that Laureth is blind? Perhaps everyone had
told you before you even read it that she was.
Female Student: Yes. Marcus Sedgwick: You've got your hand up.
Marcia: Yeah, I sort of had an idea that she had an impairment to do with her sight was
when she was sweeping across the desk to find the passports when she was in the airport.
India: When Benjamin let go of her hand and she yelled, Benjamin, and she didn't move
and then she fell over the bag. Marcus Sedgwick: I'm delighted that my new
book, She Is Not Invisible, is part of Read for RNIB Day Reading Group Challenge. To take
part yourself, sign up at readforrnib.org.uk.