Miriam Halahmy at the Jewish Museum

On Friday June 15th  EGA students from Years 7 and 8 visited the Jewish museum to see two authors, Miriam Halahmy and Gillian Cross, as part of the PopUp Festival. http://pop-up.org.uk/ I had the privilege of attending the talk with Miriam Halahmy, who spoke to a Year 7 group about her book 'Hidden.'

Hidden is set on Hayling Island, where Miriam grew up and deals with a pair of teenagers who find an illegal immigrant on the beach and hide him in a hut. (For more information on the book see my review post).

Miriam talked about how she is married into an Iraqi family, who are of Arabic Jewish origin. She talked about the mass evacuation of Jews from Iraq and how this influenced her book, the idea for which sprang into her mind when she was walking on the beach in Hayling one day. She told the students that the message she wanted to get across was how people who come from other countries live ordinary lives; their country isn't just about wars and devastation. She read out a passage from the book which illustrated this, where Samir recalls his homeland and she talked a bit about Iraq and her family connections there.

The students had all read the book and clearly enjoyed the session, especially when they got to act out bits of the story. They asked lots of questions and Miriam was particularly pleased with the comment from one student who said:

'I love the twists in your writing, the way I can't predict what Lindy or anyone will do.'

Miriam showed us the cover for 'Illegal' and talked about how the designer had come up with the concept of doors. The door on the cover of Hidden is the door of the hut on the beach where Mohammed is hidden.The door on the cover of Illegal is the door of the house Lindy is looking after. She talked about the books which follow Hidden – each of the next two books picks up on a minor character in Hidden and takes up their story.

After that Miranda from the Jewish museum ran a workshop on Jewish people and traditions and the girls used some artefacts to flesh out characters they had learnt about during the morning. Then they spent some time looking around the museum. It was a fantastic event.