A TEACHER has lived up to the adage that everyone has a book in them.

But first-time author Alison Gangel is proving an instant success in the literary world within days of her maiden book being published.

The Scottish-born English and music teacher from Burnopfield, County Durham, is having to get to grips with unexpected new-found fame.

The Sun Hasn’t Fallen from the Sky, her memoir of her early life growing up in a care home in the west of Scotland, is earning good reviews.

The book charts her educational and musical development under the tutelage of inspirational teacher Albert Shaughnessy.

It has already been named book of the month in Scottish branches of Waterstone’s and will be featured as BBC Radio 4’s Book of the Week from January 24 to 28, with a preview on Woman’s Hour the previous Friday.

Mrs Gangel’s “very supportive”

headteacher at Gateshead’s Cardinal Hume RC School, Nick Hurn, has allowed her to take a day off to travel to the BBC studios in London for the programme, on January 21.

Interest in the book has been particularly high in Scotland and Mrs Gangel has been asked to attend the Edinburgh Book Festival and the I Write Festival, in Glasgow, later in the year.

“Everything is coming thick and fast at the moment,” she said.

“It’s a little scary, but very exciting,”

she said. “And what is particularly pleasing is the interest it seems to have attracted among the kids at school.

“Quite a few have bought it and have asked me to sign it.

“I love my subject anyway and maybe now they are thinking, ‘She really does like her subject if she does it at home in her spare time’.”

The novice novelist, a mother of two daughters, said she has been dabbling with the book for several years.

She finally completed it in the past 12 months and, with the help of an agent, it was accepted for publication by Bloomsbury, the publisher of the Harry Potter series.

“With teaching fulltime and being a mother I was writing a bit here and there, but then I would have my doubts and stop for a while,” she said.

“But then the urge would come back and I would do a bit more.

“When you do your first book you just want it to be published, but to have all this on top is incredible really.”

■ The Sun Hasn’t Fallen from the Sky, in hardback, is available from Waterstone’s for £16.99, or from £11 via Amazon. It will be launched at the City Library, in New Bridge Street West, Newcastle, on Wednesday, February 2, at 6.15pm. Tickets are free but must be ordered in advance from the library, on 0191-277-4100.