My Science School

Agatha Christie created her plots in a large Victorian bathtub whilst munching on apples. Before renovating her house her architect was told, “I want a big bath, and I need a ledge because I like to eat apples.”

In 1926, Christie released The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, a hit which was later marked as a genre classic and one of the author's all-time favorites. She dealt with tumult that same year, however, as her mother died and her husband revealed that he was in a relationship with another woman. Traumatized by the revelation, Christie disappeared only to be discovered by authorities several days later at a Harrogate hotel, registered under the name of her husband's mistress.

Christie would recover, with her and Archibald divorcing in 1928. In 1930, she married archaeology professor Max Mallowan, with whom she traveled on several expeditions, later recounting her trips in the 1946 memoir Come, Tell Me How You Live. The year of her new nuptials also saw the release of Murder at the Vicarage, which became another classic and introduced readers to Miss Jane Marple, an enquiring village lady.

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John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was an English writer, poet, philologist, and academic, best known as the author of the high fantasy works The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

For Tolkien, the languages came first. Middle Earth and the "Lord of the Rings" epics were created around his constructed languages. Basically, he invented words and needed speakers.

He created the 15 different Elvish dialects, along with languages for the Ents, the Orcs, the Dwarves, the men and the Hobbits and more. He thought of everything: The Dwarves even had a separate sign language, because the forges they worked were too loud.

During his time at Pembroke College Tolkien wrote The Hobbit and the first two volumes of The Lord of the Rings, while living at 20 Northmoor Road in North Oxford. He also published a philological essay in 1932 on the name "Nodens", following Sir Mortimer Wheeler's unearthing of a Roman Asclepeion at Lydney Park, Gloucestershire, in 1928.

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Jeff Kinney was born in 1971 in Maryland and attended the University of Maryland in the early 1990s. It was there that Jeff ran a comic strip called “Igdoof” in the campus newspaper, and he knew he wanted to be a cartoonist.

In 2006, Jeff signed a multi-book deal with publisher Harry N. Abrams, Inc. to turn Diary of a Wimpy Kid into a print series. The first Diary of a Wimpy Kid book was published in 2007 and became an instant bestseller. Just a year later, more than 100,000 copies were in print in the United States alone. With each subsequent book, in-print numbers continue to grow exponentially both in the U.S. and abroad. There are now more than 200 million copies of the series in print worldwide.

The Diary of a Wimpy Kid series has been a fixture on the USA Today, Wall Street Journal, and Publishers Weekly bestseller lists. The series has remained on the New York Times bestseller lists since the publication of the first book, for more than 500 weeks total, and more than 350 on the series list. The books are currently available in 76 editions in 64 languages.

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J.K. Rowling first had the idea for Harry Potter while delayed on a train travelling from Manchester to London King’s Cross in 1990. Over the next five years, she began to plan out the seven books of the series. She wrote mostly in longhand and amassed a mountain of notes, many of which were on scraps of paper.

She arrived in Edinburgh in 1993 with three chapters of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone in her suitcase. By now she had a baby daughter, Jessica, but she continued to write in every spare moment she could find. When Joanne had finished the manuscript, she sent the first three chapters to a number of literary agents, one of whom wrote back asking to see the rest of it. She says that it was ‘the best letter I had ever received in my life’.

After finishing the first book and whilst training as a teacher, Harry Potter was accepted for publication by Bloomsbury. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone quickly became a bestseller on publication in 1997. As the book was translated into other languages, Harry Potter started spreading round the globe – and J.K. Rowling was soon receiving thousands of letters from fans.

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The thrill of the Golden Ticket, the wonderment of a chocolate factory and the whimsy of the Oompa-Loompas: The sugary sweet world imagined in Roald Dahl’s book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory has made it one of the most beloved tales in children’s literature.

But for Dahl, the story was the result of decades of an idea marinating in his head mixed with a period of family tragedy. “It starts always with a tiny little seed of an idea, a little germ, and that even doesn’t come very easily,” the British author told Scholastic of his story ideas. But ultimately it was his love for childlike fun that helped create a universal story with such iconic characters. “My lucky thing is I laugh at exactly the same jokes that children laugh at.”

At the age of 13, Dahl left his first British boarding school of St. Peter’s in Weston-super-Mare in 1929 and moved to Repton School in South Derbyshire. And his new school came with an unexpected perk: free chocolate!

The Cadbury chocolate company would send samples to the students in nondescript packaging to get their thoughts as a test audience. Dahl’s experience as a teenage chocolate taster got his wheels spinning about what the candy-making process must be like.

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Joanne Rowling better known by her pen name J. K. Rowling is a British author, philanthropist, film producer, television producer, and screenwriter.

The seven-year period that followed saw the death of her mother, birth of her first child, divorce from her first husband, and relative poverty until the first novel in the series, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, was published in 1997. There were six sequels, of which the last was released in 2007. Since then, Rowling has written several books for adult readers: The Casual Vacancy (2012) and—under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith—the crime fiction Cormoran Strike series. In 2020, her "political fairytale" for children, The Ickabog, was released in instalments in an online version.

“When I was a child, I really wanted to be called Ella Galbraith, I’ve no idea why. The name had a fascination for me. I actually considered calling myself L.A. Galbraith for the Strike series, but for fairly obvious reasons decided that initials were a bad idea”, Ms. Rowling said.

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Perseus "Percy" Jackson is an eighteen-year-old Greek demigod, the son of Poseidon and Sally Jackson. He is the main protagonist and narrator of the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series, and one of the main characters of The Heroes of Olympus series. 

Shortly after the defeat of Gaea and the Giants in The Blood of Olympus, Percy was asked by a publisher in New York to record and write down what he knows about the Olympian gods, to which the young demigod agreed, reasoning that it would help inexperienced demigods survive any unexpected divine encounters with a major Olympian. Percy proceeds to compile all of the stories that the demigods of Camp Half-Blood and Camp Jupiter told him over the years.

After finishing his narration of the book, Percy mentions being late to a meeting with Annabeth, which worries him.

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