A Pocketful of Stars

Product Information

There is also a time limit, so try to collect all the beautiful stars before it runs out. However, you can add to your time and continue the adventure. Once you've obtained five hundred points, your time will be extended by twenty seconds. At the interval Mum goes and grabs her and Elle an ice cream – vanilla for Mum, strawberry for Elle. She doesn’t ask me, even though she knows chocolate is my favourite.

A Pocketful of Stars | ESA/Hubble - www.spacetelescope.org A Pocketful of Stars | ESA/Hubble - www.spacetelescope.org

Aisha’s writing is bursting with spirit and heart – she writes passionately and evocatively and completely inhabits the worlds she writes about, which in turn means that as a reader we become equally immersed in her worlds and characters. Liz: An important thing is to trust your instincts – and trust your writing. With Aisha’s book, she felt that the magical element needed to change – which meant quite a lot of reworking – so it was a really brave decision to trust that feeling and go for it. Only you know the story you want to write. Another more practical thing is to push through on a first draft – it’s really easy to start second guessing yourself and want to edit as you go, but try to just write through to the end. The shaping and rethinking comes afterwards – and we’re there to help with that! This was a really wonderful MG novel that explored friendship and family with a lot of nuance and perspective. I absolutely loved this book! It caught my attention from the beginning and I could not put it down! Every chapter has to have a purpose and progress the story in some way. It’s such a simple piece of advice that has had a huge impact on my writing.I wanted to write a story about someone who tries to save her mum as a way of coping with her grief, and I wanted to use the format of a classic quest, but in a contemporary setting. At first, Safiya was interested in gaming but it didn’t feature in the memory chapters at all. As I delved further into my edits it became clear that the book would be stronger if I combined her love of gaming with the quest. That’s when I decided to incorporate the video game elements into the memory chapters. The idea didn’t arrive as a cohesive whole, and it didn’t become what it was until a few edits into the journey.

A Pocketful of Stars by Aisha Bushby | Goodreads A Pocketful of Stars by Aisha Bushby | Goodreads

I cannot explain how much I love this book. The description, emotion, atmosphere, everything! It's one of those books that you reccomend to all of your friends and one you will carry with you forever! Alongside that, I wanted there to be one constant in Safiya’s life, something to ground her and make her feel safe: Dad. A lot of Safiya’s strength comes from her father’s stability, even though her fire comes from her mother.I mean Cathy Cassidy said on the cover ‘A gorgeous story of friendship and growing up’ and yeah sounds about right. I also love all of the family aspects of this book. Safiya and her mother are not two people who always get along, especially as they have vastly different interests. But Safiya learns to appreciate and love her mother for who she is, same as her mother does for her, and for her mother before her. I am working on my second book, which I am currently drafting, and I’m very excited about it! I can’t say too much just yet, but I can say that there will be a new magical place to explore. Before I got an agent and book deal writing was my creative escape, and so I spent all of my free time, when I wasn’t at work, reading and writing. I didn’t do much else for a long time! I can’t help but think that maybe Elle’s the daughter Mum should’ve had, the daughter she would’ve wanted.

Pocketful of Stars | NuMuKi Orisinal: Pocketful of Stars | NuMuKi

It was a beautiful, heartrending story of a mother and daughter creating a magnificent bond with their lives. The evocation of memory from perfume, the vivid colours, sights and sounds of Kuwait were incredibly vivid. This is a story of senses – from the lush food at Eid to the silk mermaid outfit. What experiences were you drawing from here? The world-shifting moment for Safiya is her mother’s sudden illness and subsequent coma, although this is not a book about dealing with tragedy, there’s a lot of forward momentum – a bit like life. In some cases, Safiya is helpless to the events around her and is carried along – such as the change in her friendship dynamics will Elle but then she actively pursues her mother’s dream memories which ultimately dealing with her mother’s illness. How did you approach framing a story where a character has to deal with a major traumatic event? As a debut author, what did you find the most challenging part of the writing process for the book? I love the fact that none of the mother-daughter fights in this book are one-sided - Safiya's mum genuinely says and does things she shouldn't and so does Safiya (and Safiya's grandmother, too, in the memories Safiya witnesses). They're all strong-minded, passionate women who believe strongly in their own points of view - and love each other equally strongly, which makes their arguments even more painful. But the hope and compassion in the ending is heartwrenchingly well done. The tears I cried at the end of this book were so well-earned.

I remember once (and still) fearing everything that comes with publication. I voiced this to my dad who said: ‘Well, at least you’re not an actor. They’re judged for who they are, you’re just judged for what you write.’ Ahhhhh I just finished this book, and I am in tears, but it was an absolutely perfect ending. This whole book is so full of heart and magic. Safiya is a 14-year-old girl in London, obsessed with her favorite video game (an imagined one that sounds really fabulous!), splitting her time between her two loving divorced parents and trying to figure out the shifting rules of her relationship with her best friend as well as her increasingly fraught relationship with her mum. They used to have so much fun together, but now they're always at loggerheads and don't seem able to understand each other at all... NASA explores the unknown in air and space, innovates for the benefit of humanity, and inspires the world through discovery.

A Pocketful of Stars by Aisha Bushby - Writing.ie A Pocketful of Stars by Aisha Bushby - Writing.ie

What I found appealing in this book were how many ways the teens were creative – as illustrators, writers, game players and makeup artists. Having a form of creative output helps them bond as well as being a constructive pastime. How much do engage in being creative in other ways and how do you let off creative steam in other forms? Safiya and her mum have never seen eye to eye. Her mum doesn’t understand Safiya’s love of gaming and Safiya doesn’t think they have anything in common. As Safiya struggles to fit in at school she wonders if her mum wishes she was more like her confident best friend Elle. But then her mum falls into a coma and, when Safiya waits by her bedside, she finds herself in a strange and magical world that looks a bit like one of her games. And there’s a rebellious teenage girl, with a secret, who looks suspiciously familiar …Abir and Izzy widen their eyes at one another, as if to say ‘how immature’, but I catch Izzy grinning at me. But when she suddenly falls ill, it’s up to Safiya to use her gaming skills of following clues and building stories to uncover the truth about her mum’s history and find the things about her that will bind them together forever.