Hey, check me out - I'm on a list with George Orwell. That's a Good Thing.

As has been very helpfully pointed out to me in a comment, below, Jimmy Coates: Sabotage has been picked by the Independent newspaper as one of the Ten Best Books for Teenagers.

Not the ten best of the week, the month or the year - just the ten best. And there's a 'Joe Craig' book on that list, nestled gently between Malorie Blackman and Siobhan Dowd, mingling with Dodie Smith, Anthony Horowitz, Jacqueline Wilson, Stella Gibbons and George Orwell.

www.independent.co.uk/best will tell you more.

While I'm here, let's make this a rare double-topic blog entry. I just invented that concept. There should be a name for it. Work on that, people. OK, I'm going to move on before this becomes a triple-topic entry.

Anybody remotely considering becoming an author - especially a children's author, should check out these excellent pages in which wise and perceptive literary experts tell you about school visits and book events:

BookMoot's advice about visiting schools

Rick Riordan talking about 'overnight' success

Some entertaining reflections on school visits from other authors

I did 103 school events last year, including a handful in the USA, so it's all incredibly useful stuff for me. I might even put a few of my thoughts together about visiting schools and post them here another time...

Meanwhile, I'm off to compile my list of top ten independent British newspapers...