Millie and the Stopped Watch

Welcome to Sally's book-a-day-for-2017 blog. If unfamiliar with the blog, scroll down.

Millie and the Stopped Watch (1999) Post 155

Millie and the Stopped Watch is one of nine titles in the Olympic Mascot series which I wrote as a commission. Millie's name represents "Millennium", just as Syd's is for "Sydney" and Ollie for "Olympic". This particular story begins with Millie using Syd's stopwatch to time her friend's training run. It isn't working well, and Millie tries, and fails, to fix it, musing on needing to use good tools to get good results. She encounters two young athletes, one of whom is having problems mastering cartwheels and whose human coach is ill. Millie coaches her, and she wins her contest, thereby earning sporting equipment for her school. The young athlete is necessarily a school child, because obviously I couldn't write about athletes who really did compete in the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games. Millie assistance is acknowledged and the human coach offers her a reward for stepping in to help. Millie rejects this idea, but the humans persist, and so Millie asks for a new stopwatch. 

Seventeen years down the track, this little series is still kicking about. I believe it is still used in schools when a new Olympic Games is imminent.

About the Blog 

Sally is Sally Odgers; author, manuscript assessor, editor, anthologist and reader. She runs http://www.affordablemanuscriptassessments.com and Prints Charming Books. (Sally is me, by the way, and I am lots of other things too, but these are the relevant ones for now.)

The goal for 2017 is to write a post a day profiling the background behind one of my books; how it came to be written, what it's about, and any things of note that happened along the way. If you're an author, an aspiring author, a reader or just someone who enjoys windows into worlds, you might find this fun. The books are not in any special order, but will be assigned approximate dates, and pictures, where they exist. If you enjoyed a post, or want to ask about any of my books or my manuscript assessment service, leave me a message.