Monday 30 June 2014

The real Summer Reading Challenge? Lari Don

Exactly a week ago, I was privileged to launch the Tesco Bank Summer Reading Challenge Scotland (I needed to take a deep breath every time I said that!) in the Mitchell Library in Glasgow. In case the title doesn’t make it clear, it’s the libraries’ Summer Reading Challenge, in Scotland, sponsored by Tesco Bank. I was also privileged to also launch the local Summer Reading Challenge in Dundee two days later.
Launching the Tesco Bank Summer Reading Challenge Scotland

This year’s theme is Mythical Maze. And there couldn’t be a better theme for me – I write collections of myths and legends, I write contemporary adventures inspired by old myths, and one of my books even has a Maze in the title.

So that’s probably why I was asked to launch this year’s theme and challenge in Scotland. (And yes, I know it seems a bit early to all of you south of the border, but we grab summer earlier up here in Scotland, so the schools are already out and the libraries are already challenging kids to read books during the holidays.)

The launches were all positive and smiley. I met kids who had done previous challenges and were keen to do it again (which was great) and I met kids who had never done it before but were keen to give it a go it this year (which was even better.) So I had hoped to post a really cheerful blog for you all about summer and reading, with these wonderful illustrations by Sarah MacIntyre.
With lovely librarian Ruth in Dundee, and a dragon behind us.

But when I posted pictures of me with posters and books and dragons and kids online last week, someone who had been involved in a campaign that I supported to keep their local library open, a campaign that sadly failed, contacted me to say, this is lovely, Lari, but what about the kids who don’t have a local library any more? 

And I didn’t have an answer. Sad face emoticons don’t really do it.

The Summer Reading Challenge brightens up and invigorates libraries all over the country and allows them to run fun family-focussed events. The different themes every year make reading relevant and exciting to lots of different children. Kids get involved, families get involved, authors get involved. It’s a brilliant scheme. Well done the Reading Agency for organising it, and Tesco Bank for supporting it in Scotland. But it can’t reach every child, because not every child has access to a library.

And perhaps that’s the real challenge for all of us.

I had intended to write a really cheerful summery sunny post for all you Awfully Big Blog fans, but the shadow over it is that even the best things we do with books can’t and don’t reach everyone. Not until we make sure every single child has access to a library.

So clearly my challenge is to get away from that dragon breathing down my neck and take up my sword again on the subject of library closures.

In the meantime, have a fun summer, losing yourself in mazes and finding new myths!

(Lari is now away polishing her sword…)

Lari Don is an occasional library campaigner, and also the award-winning author of 21 books for all ages, including a teen thriller, fantasy novels for 8 – 12s, picture books, retellings of traditional tales and novellas for reluctant readers.
Lari’s website 
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Sunday 29 June 2014

Fifty Shades of Safe - Anna Wilson

In The Guardian last weekend Matt Haig commented on the publishing industry's obsession with jumping on bandwagons. I am not going to repeat everything he said, but one phrase in particular sent a chill of recognition through me and so prompted me to write this post. He said that we are heading towards a situation where 'the once kaleidoscopic book world risks becoming fifty shades of safe'.

Those words could so easily apply to the majority of books bearing my name, I thought. After all, I am the woman who has 'churned out' (as some would see it) fourteen animal books, and my publisher now wants more of the same. Or, failing that, the Next Big Thing, which frankly is rather an Unknown Unknown, so what I am supposed to do about that?

Thing is, I am not sure I want to try and second-guess the market; a fickle thing at the best of times. I am also clear I do not want to write more of the same, just as I am not convinced that readers necessarily want to read more of the same.

I know I am not alone as a writer in feeling that the industry seems to have changed in the blink of an eye. So much has happened so fast in the way that books are sold in to retailers and sold on to the public that it was bound to affect writers and the way that publishers deal with us. However, I suppose I was not prepared for the current approach which seems very much to be along the lines of 'books as product'. I am naive, I guess. The minute that supermarkets were in on the game it was unlikely that books would be perceived to be anything other than 'product'. If you are Mr Tesco and you are looking at what books to stock, you are only interested in how the last title from a particular author performed. In other words, no matter how much blood, sweat and tears went into your new novel, no matter how good it is, how exciting, how fresh, no matter how you have performed over a number of years in the market, if your last title did not shift a respectable number of units, you will not find your name on the shelves next time around. And you will certainly not have room to develop as a writer because the market views books much as it views tins of beans - if they taste good and sell well as they are, why change them?

Except that books are not tins of beans - we all know that.

It probably sounds as though I don't understand the publishers' point of view. I do. Things have changed for them, too, obviously. Faced with the demands of the Mr Tescos of this world, 'building an author' is sadly a luxury most publishers cannot now afford, so I can hardly blame them for wanting to make money out of 'fifty shades of safe'.

However, I wanted to write this post to see how others feel. Are you expected to come up with 'the next you', i.e. more of the same, reliable writing that conveniently places you where marketing and sales people are confident of how to pitch you in their publishing plan? Or are you throwing caution to the wind and using this climate to your advantage, to write what you really want to write, oblivious to the increasingly bland demands of the marketeers, and sending it out with all fingers and toes crossed? Is this the way forward: to write what we really want and hope it gets into the hands of readers? Or is this professional suicide?

I have decided to take the risk: to write a couple of books that have been swilling around in the back of my mind for a while, but which I have not had the confidence to develop. It may all end in a damp squib of disappointment and rejection. But I cannot sit around waiting for the crystal ball of the market place to make up its mind which tin of beans is going to be the next big thing. And I certainly do not want to be stocked on the shelves with 'fifty shades of safe'.

(with apologies to Matt Haig for nicking his excellent phrase)

Anna Wilson
www.annawilson.co.uk
www.acwilsonwriter.wordpress.com

Saturday 28 June 2014

Second thoughts on the value of reading in childhood - Clémentine Beauvais


After the let’s-call-it fruitful debate a few months ago on this blog on the value of reading, I was left uneasy. I felt that the question I was truly interested in hadn’t been addressed; instead, the discussion revolved around ‘trash’ and ‘quality’ literature, which wasn’t what I felt to be central to my post.

But I fully understand why. My original post was unnecessarily vociferous and talked about ‘trash’ without definition. I knew very well that it would be a controversial post, but I wrote it too fast and I should have anticipated that this particular aspect would dominate the discussion.

What I was really interested in was the following question: ‘Who benefits most from the notion that any reading is preferable to no reading (or to encounters with other media such as films and video games) in childhood?’

My original blog post failed in part because I was not assertive enough in expressing why there may be an issue with the valorisation of (‘just any’) reading in childhood. I tentatively said things like ‘There are problematic ideological and economic reasons why…’, but didn’t spell them out. I would like to go back to this point because I do think it’s important to have a discussion about it.

Of course, I see reading as essential – and not just because verbal literacy is an important skill. Like all of us on this blog, I do believe that there is something about reading that sets it apart from other types of artistic or fictional encounters, and I love nothing more than seeing children who enjoy reading.

However, I think we have to admit that that something is very hard to pin down, and I am unconvinced by the unspoken hierarchy which puts reading ‘above’ film-watching, video-game-playing etc. in the minds of adults who care about and look after children.

(Therefore I completely agree with all the commenters who said that there should be no hierarchy between ‘classic’ novels and comics, for instance. I said this in a comment that got buried somewhere: I am NOT a 'genre' or 'media snob': I do not classify 'low' and 'high' quality literature in terms of genres or media. On the contrary; I think such distinctions can only exist within genres and media. This is between brackets because I don’t wish to get into another conversation about ‘trash’ and ‘quality’, but go ahead if you really want to…)

I’m unconvinced by this hierarchy, but moreover I am worried about who and what it serves. Of course, it uncontroversially serves children. Having motivated and passionate mediators, teachers, librarians, parents who value reading makes children from all backgrounds more likely to encounter books and to enjoy reading.

However, the undebated claim that any reading is good is also highly profitable to the publishing industry as a whole, indiscriminately. And here I'm uncomfortable. As authors, we don’t want to criticise the publishing industry; we want to support it. Publishing is in a state of unprecedented crisis, so we don’t want to make distinctions as to which parts of the industry to support and which parts to criticise, especially on such elusive grounds as ‘quality’.

Furthermore, authors are under pressure (implicit or explicit) not to express negative opinions they may have about the publishing industry. Mid-list authors, especially, can’t afford to talk about requests they get to make books more commercial, more gendered or less political. The problem doesn’t come from individual editors of course; very often they are distraught to be making such requests. They are themselves under pressure from other departments.

Regardless; in the Anglo-Saxon market, children’s publishers profit to a very large extent from the consensus that any reading is better than no reading when it comes to children.  We should talk about this fact much more than we currently do, because it is problematic. The publishing industry has a very strong financial incentive in maintaining this consensus – and currently, I think that we (authors, mediators, teachers, librarians= 'child people') are maintaining it for them, for free.  

When we say that ‘it’s good’ that children are reading, whatever they may be reading, we are not just supporting ‘reading for pleasure’ (though I accept that we are in part). The sincere desire to be on the side of children is not met by an equally sincere wish on the part of the publishing industry, too many aspects of which are utterly unburdened by such considerations as artistic worth, child development or the value and pleasures of reading. And yes, I know, #NotAllPublishers.

Like several other commenters, I think the dichotomy between ‘reading for pleasure’ and ‘serious’ or ‘quality’ reading is hugely problematic. This dichotomy happens to profit, very conveniently, contemporary children’s publishing in its most undesirable aspects.

By ‘most undesirable aspects’ I mean extreme commercialism, market imperatives superseding or driving editorial work, reliance on formulae and ‘what sells to TV or cinema’, etc. And often, this leads to the production of books which are ideologically problematic (resting on lazy sexist, racist, classist, etc., clichĂ©s).

There is always the argument, of course, that those profit-driven aspects of the publishing industry serve to fund the more niche, quality books. This argument may be valid in part, but it’s too neat a defence to convince me fully.

I’m not naĂŻve – I know very well that ‘publishing isn’t a charity’ (that’s something we hear a lot as writers - another mantra we gradually internalise.) I don’t think there is an easy solution to these problems. Other countries do things differently, privileging quality and accepting very niche books, but writers earn much less money than we do here (yes, it’s possible…) and there’s virtually no way of scraping a living out of writing.

I do believe that a quiet way of making a small difference could be to stop condoning the indiscriminate statement that any reading is a good thing (which doesn’t mean ripping books out of children’s hands – just saying this in case someone is tempted to pull the ‘censorship alert’ cord).

A not-so-quiet way is to have this kind of debate, politely but firmly, on a public forum such as this one. 
_____________________________________

Clementine Beauvais writes children's books in both French and English. She blogs here about children's literature and academia and is on Twitter @blueclementine

Friday 27 June 2014

“More out of books than out of real life” - Lily Hyde


This quote, from Russian Menshevik Lydia Dan, is one of the epigraphs to my work in progress (one of them), a novel about Russian and Ukrainian revolutionaries.

Lydia Dan, a nice girl from a nice upper middle class family of Russian Jewish intellectuals, ended up touring Moscow factories agitating for workers rights among people she had barely a common language with, staying the night with prostitutes to avoid being picked up by the secret police, marrying not just one but two revolutionaries, losing her child, choosing the wrong side (Trotsky’s Mensheviks over Lenin’s Bolsheviks), and living long enough to see a revolution she dedicated her life to, turn distinctly sour and bitter.

“As people we were much more out of books than out of real life,” Dan says, in an extended interview with Leopold Haimson published in The Making of Three Russian Revolutionaries. She means that in her young days, she and her fellow idealists who sat up or walked the streets all night discussing the revolution to come, had seen nothing of ‘real life’. They got their world view from reading Marx and Chernyshevsky and Gorky; the first time Dan actually met a real-life prostitute all she could think about were scenes she had read in Maupassant. They were so busy theorizing about the revolution, and inhabiting its weird, underground, anti-social existence of ideas, that they did not know how to hold down a job, pay a bill, mend a coat, look after a baby…

For me, writing about such people a century later, the quote has a second meaning. Dan and her fellow revolutionaries seem to me like characters out of books: utterly recognisable in their loves and hates and idiocies and heroics, but larger than life, more vivid and interesting, coming from a complete and absorbing world that exists safely between the pages. In other words, fictional.

These last few months in Ukraine, I’ve met the contemporary reincarnation of Dan and her fellow revolutionaries. They are here in all their guises: the ones who make bombs and pick up guns, the ones who write heartfelt tracts or disseminate poisonously attractive lies, the ones who look after the poor and the dispossessed, the ones who spy and betray, the ones who are ready to die for ‘the people’ and the ones who kill, rob and torture people in the name of making a profit. 

Again and again, I keep coming across characters who are straight from 1917.

It’s all amazing, amazing material for my novel, of course. But I realise that maybe I am more like Dan than I thought. My ideas for that novel came more out of reading than from experience: I thought those revolutionaries were safely between the pages.

It is terrifying to realise that the people who are tearing a country I love to pieces, or trying desperately to hold it together, are in fact, much more out of real life than out of books. 

Dream Land - A novel about the Crimean Tatars' deportation and return to Crimea

Thursday 26 June 2014

Happy endings not (always) required - Cavan Scott

"Oooh, that's a bit bleak..."

I'd just told a friend of mine the plot of a short story I am about to pitch to a reluctant reader publisher. And he was right. The ending isn't just a bit bleak - it's abysmally bleak. A real kick you in the stomach-type affair.

But I don't think I could tell it any other way. The story needs to ends with a sucker punch. If everything turns out fine and dandy, it would lose all of its meaning.

It has made me think though. This week, I received copies of my latest reluctant readers from Badger Learning - Billy Button and Pest Control. Both of them end with the protagonist in deep water. Come to think of it, my last two books for Badger were pretty bleak too.

It's probably because they've been conjured up from the same part of my brain that used to enjoy late-night Amicus portmanteau movies such as Vault of Horror and From Beyond the Grave. In fact, what am I saying? I still enjoy them today! Horrible things happening to horrible people - and even sometimes nice people as well. The 70s and 80s were full of horrid little morality tales like these, from the wonderfully macabre Tales of the Unexpected to excesses of Hammer House of Horror.

I guess my recent run of reluctant reader books have come from the same stable. Stories to unsettle and to chill.

And why not? Children like to be scared. It stimulates a different part of their imagination and teaches them valuable lessons - that darkness is just as much a part of life as light. And where better than to experience these emotions than safely curled up reading a book.

Indeed, according to Kevin Brooks, recently crowned winner of the Carnegie medal, books should actively show children that life doesn't always include happy endings. He wasn't talking about the cheap scares of 70s horror movies of course, but novels that deal with the harsher sides of life, subject matter that is sometimes difficult to write about, let alone to read.

Quoted in the Telegraph, Brooks says:

“There is a school of thought that no matter how dark or difficult a novel is, it should contain at least an element of hope.
"As readers, children – and teens in particular – don’t need to be cossetted with artificial hope that there will always be a happy ending. They want to be immersed in all aspects of life, not just the easy stuff. They’re not babies, they don’t need to be told not to worry, that everything will be all right in the end, because they’re perfectly aware that in real life things aren’t always all right in the end."

He concludes by saying:

“To be patronizing, condescending towards the reader is, to me, the worst thing a Young Adult fiction author can do.”

I found myself applauding as I read Brooks' words. It's not to say that I never write happy endings - hey, I can do heartwarming as well as bleak - but being over-cautious will just kill your writing dead. And children will see through it anyway. They know all too well what real life is like. 

_________________

Cavan Scott is the author of over 60 books and audio dramas including the Sunday Times Bestseller, Who-ology: The Official Doctor Who Miscellany, co-written with Mark Wright.

He's written for Doctor WhoSkylandersJudge Dredd, Angry Birds and Warhammer 40,000 among others. He also writes Roger the Dodger and Bananaman for The Beano as well as books for reluctant readers of all ages.

Cavan's website
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Wednesday 25 June 2014

Why Writers are Magpies - Tamsyn Murray

It struck me recently that writers are a bit like magpies. We look out for snippets of pretty shiny things to appropriate for our stories - a line of dialogue here, a character description there - and secrete them away until we need them. Then, when we're ready, we gather all our scraps up and weave them together to make something out of them. And I decided that this process reminded me a little of nest building.

Think about it: we build the structure first - these are the hard twigs, the acts and the scenes. Sometimes the twigs need to be broken a bit to make them fit but that's OK. Once our twigs are all knitted together, we add feathers and bits of moss - the characters, settings, description and dialogue. We make the story a good place to be. It can take several attempts to get the feathers in exactly the right place so that we achieve the effect of making the nest user so comfortable that they forget they are in a nest at all. And lastly, we add our shiny borrowed snippets - the decoration that sparkles and twists in the wind and makes our nest stand out from all the other nests.

I freely admit to being a magpie. In fact, I have a whole notebook of stolen snippets. Last night, on the train, I borrowed an old soldier who was on his way home. I stole sneaky little glances and captured every detail about him, from his spit and polish shiny boots to the brass buttons on his cuffs and the regiment badge on his jacket.

So come on, writers, admit your true nature and tell me what you've taken recently for your nests. Magpies love company.

Tuesday 24 June 2014

Writing the Wrongs - Liz Kessler


Last month, something rather horrible happened. The elections for members of the European parliament led to a widespread vote for far right parties, fuelled by a wave of anti-immigrant feeling.

The day the results came out, I could barely bring myself to get out of bed. I felt depressed, disappointed and quite hopeless. In fact, it started before that. In the voting booth, faced with a ballot paper that seemed to list one far right organisation after another, I felt ashamed and perplexed. Was this really where we were? Was this honestly what people wanted? 

Then the results came out, and I felt much, much worse. Was this the best that we, as a society, could do? Had we learned nothing from the lessons that history has taught us? It seemed not.

So what could I do? I spent the day asking myself this question, over and over again. In the morning, the only thing I could think to do was pull the quilt back over my head and hide away from the world until I felt I could face it again. In the afternoon, I decided I would become an MP – despite never having been a member of any political party in my whole life. By the evening, thanks to one of my lovely writer friends, Elen Caldecott, I realised that neither of these options was really credible, but there was a third.

‘We’re writers, we’re artists,’ Elen said. ‘We have a voice. We have our books. That’s where we can make the change. That’s where we argue for a better world. That’s where we have power.’

She was right, of course, and she was the first person to say anything that actually started to pull me out of my slump.

I thought about her words all day, all week in fact. I thought about how privileged we are to do what we do, to have a job that means our words, our thoughts, our beliefs can find their way into the hands and thoughts of a generation of children: the people who will create the future. Could there really be a more powerful idea than this?

But how to go about it? You can’t exactly write a book that says, ‘Hey kids, here’s what you have to do. Treat everyone nicely; go about your dealings in life with fairness; accept others even if they are different from you; and please don’t ever vote for UKIP or the BNP.’ For one thing, it wouldn’t make for a very interesting read, and for another, no one likes to be lectured – especially whilst they’re doing something that is meant to be fun.

So then I thought about it a bit more, and realised that actually I already do say all those things. I say them all the time. I never intend to, but they always find their way into my books. I think I’m writing about mermaids or fairies or time travel, but time and again, I’m writing about social injustice, about standing up for what you believe in, about accepting yourself and others.

My Emily Windsnap books are at their heart a series about two very different societies who have every reason to mistrust and dislike each other, but who learn to coexist. Emily Windsnap’s family is put in charge of making sure this happens. Emily herself stands up in a court and demands that people are legally allowed to love and marry who they want.

My other books have a habit of doing this, too. Readers quite often write to me and say things like, ‘Your book told me it was OK to be me,’ or ‘Your book gave me the courage to stand up to bullies.’

Really? Did it? I thought it was just about a girl and her fairy godsister.

I honestly have no idea that I am writing about these things at the time, but perhaps it is inevitable that they will be at the heart of my books, when they are at the core of who I am and have been ever since I was a teenager. I’m not really that different now. I just do it more quietly than I did in my twenties.

Yep, that really was me. And yes, Mum and Dad, I really am smoking. Sorry!

Back then I protested against injustice by going on marches and getting people to sign petitions. Now I do it, mostly without even realising it, in my books. But whichever route it is, fighting for a better world, a fairer society and a place where people learn to be confident about who they are and accepting of others are the things that I care about.

So, in fact, all I have to do is carry on doing what I’m doing. One day I might write a book that deals with these themes more explicitly. In fact, I already have an idea brewing for such a book, and am quite excited by it. But till then, what an amazing honour and privilege it is to be able to simply write stories that I love and feel passionate about, and know that as I do so, I am sharing the ideas and beliefs that are at the heart of who I am. To know that every time a child enjoys one of my books, there is a small possibility that they may in fact take its message to their heart – perhaps without realising that they have done so, just as I don’t realise I’m putting the message there in the first place.

This whole idea feels revolutionary. It doesn’t mean that from now on I’m going to pile a load of messages into my books. I believe that this is the quickest way to kill a story flat dead and I would never do it. For me, books have to be first and foremost about the story and the characters. If you approach it from any other angle than this, I think it shows. But the exciting thing is that, as long as I continue to do this, I can trust that the rest will follow.

What a privilege. What a gift.

So no, I’m not about to seek election as an MP. I’m not going to pull the covers over my head in despair in the mornings, either. I’m just going to carry on doing what I love. I’m going to trust that as I do it, I’m gently, quietly and unobtrusively saying what I need to say. And I’m going to hope, hope, hope that if enough of us are doing the same thing, a whole generation of children will grow up with love, acceptance and equality being the values that rule their world, rather than xenophobia, hatred and fear.

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Monday 23 June 2014

The Composition - Maeve Friel

I am not a great football fan but I must admit that this World Cup business looks very different when you are in Latin America.
I visited an ethnic Kuna community in the San Blas islands just as the football got under way and  children were out in force,  many of them barefoot but wearing Brazilian shirts as they played makeshift games on the island´s airstrip (there is only one flight a day so the rest of the time, it becomes a play area!)
In Panama city, cars are decked out with Colombian or Venezuelan flags. Flat screen tvs have appeared in shopping malls and coffee shops, attracting audiences cheering for Uruguay or Mexico or Argentina or Chile.  There is widespread desire for the Cup to stay in Latin America.


As I am trying to track down and read children´s literature from Central and South America at the moment, I was delighted to come across this month a very powerful book by Chilean writer, Antonio Skármeta, The Composition (illustrated by Alfonso Ruano) which not only has a football crazy protagonist but also addresses what life is like for children living during a dictatorship.  And, heaven knows, so many Central and South American countries have suffered under dictatorships.


Skármeta spent many years during the Pinochet dictatorship in Germany - you may know him as the screenwriter of the film Il Postino which tells the story of the friendship between Chilean poet Pablo Neruda and his postman. You may be as surprised to learn as I was that the book is set entirely on an island in Chile, not in Italy. The film was great - the books sounds even better.

The Composition opens with Pedro´s disappointment that his parents have given him a plastic soccer ball for his birthday instead of a white leather ball with black patches, like the ones real soccer players use.

The streets are full of soldiers with machine guns.  Pedro´s parents are fearful and distressed. They huddle around the radio, listening to foreign radio stations, turned on at a very low volume. One day when he is playing soccer on the street, he sees soldiers arrest the father of one of his friends. When he asks his parents if he is for or against the government, his mother tells him that children are not for or against anything.

At school, an army officer announces a cash prize for the best composition on the children "What My Family Do At Night". What will Pedro do?
The writing is subtle and humorous and effectively shows how children are capable of understanding situations and making moral decisions.
It is only at the last page when Pedro´s father says "We´d better get a chess set then", that we learn that Pedro wrote in his composition that he plays soccer and does his homework and his parents sit on the sofa and play chess all evening.

From July, I will be a little less "scattered" - after almost two years in Panama, I am moving back home to Spain (with I hope frequent visits to England and Ireland). Now if I could only get a decent first draft of my book finished before I leave...

www.maevefriel.com
www.maevefriel.com/blog
I´m on Facebook too.

 


Sunday 22 June 2014

You don't have to wear your pants on your head - Nicola Morgan

Don't get me wrong: humour is an essential part of life and wellbeing. The ability to make an audience laugh is a laudable one. When kids come out of an author visit still laughing, the endorphins fizzing round their brains, it's a happy result indeed. It's visibly A Success.

But authors should not feel they have to "do funny" and I wouldn't like schools to fall into the trap of thinking that the only engaged audience is one falling off its chairs with laughter. I say this because I've seen children's authors recently worry that their events aren't "funny enough" and comparing themselves unfavourably with talented comic authors and speakers.

We should not forget that not everyone always wants to be made to laugh; not everyone laughs at the same things; and some people have different needs. I, for one, given the choice between an hour of laughter and an hour of having my heart and mind spun dizzy with new ideas or shocked into a new groove by fresh images and stories, would opt for dizzy or shocked. And I was always like that. Doesn't mean I don't have a sense of humour or like laughing, just that they are not at the top of my priority list. They are fairly high up it, but not at the top. I know I'm not alone.

If our books don't feature pants, slime or slapstick, our talks may not lend themselves to funny. I've written funny - and in my talks on Chicken Friend, yes, it was great to see the kids laughing when I chose the funny bits to read, though I preferred the more thoughtful bits, the bits where my main character really struggled with things in her world. But my YA novels are far from funny. A mastectomy without anaesthetic isn't funny; nor is being stalked; nor is mental illness or alcoholism. Even my talks on the teenage brain - which some adults might say, unjokingly, was a genuine comedic mine - only look for the occasional release of laughter. And that's usually when I quote Shakespeare.

I'll have a go at funny if appropriate - a Burns Supper "reply from the lassies" or after dinner speeches - and I think an introduction to any speech is improved by something to smile at. And, of course, it's heart-warming when people laugh (assuming you meant them to), as humour is social glue. But it's not the only glue and I'm not most interested in making people laugh. I prefer the echoing silence or some nodding or the way they will come up afterwards or email and tell me something about their own lives that they now see differently. With The Teenage Guide to Stress, what I like most is responses such as the girl who emailed to tell me my talk had "settled" her mind.

She didn't want to laugh about her stress - even though laughing about serious things is no bad thing. She wanted her mind to be "settled". A book and a talk should do whatever they should do: inspire laughter or excitement or thoughts or emotions or resolution, whatever.

Today, I'm heading to Gordonstoun for two days of almost entirely unfunny events. However, I will at one point wear a knitted brain on my head (thanks, Cat!) and people will laugh. That's fine. Especially since the brief laughter will flood their brains with chemicals which will make them better able to absorb the serious stuff.

But the value of an event is not measured in the decibels of laughter. If you set out to be funny, then it is, of course; if you set out to be thought-provoking, you might measure it in the silence and stillness. Or in the chatter afterwards. Or in a single question or email. Measure it how you like but don't be overwhelmed by the hegemony of humour.

So, to my fellow authors planning events: you do not have to wear your pants (or a knitted brain) on your head. Just wear your best ones.

The Teenage Guide to Stress is published on July 3rd by Walker Books. It's not funny so don't laugh.


Saturday 21 June 2014

Talking about Books - Megan Rix

I've been having a nail biting, train zooming, speed-writing, brain tingling time recently. Deadlines have loomed and thankfully been achieved. Awards received (thank you Stockton-on-Tees and Shrewsbury) and talks and presentations for children and adults given.



My first Hay Festival talk went well (even though my dogs who'd been given special dispensation to come along too decided to lie in muddy puddles just before and had to be washed off with bought bottled water from the Co-op.) They're appearing in Edinburgh next.
I got final edits done and lots of emails from my website replied to whilst on the train to Roehampton University to talk to final year teaching students for Reading Zone and more done on the train up to Manchester to talk to teachers and student teachers with Andy Seed, Kate Pankhurst and Jon Mayhew about Reading to Inspire. We were invited by the lovely Nikki Gamble from Just Imagine. Andy told everyone how when he was a teacher the books he pitched to the children were the ones that were most read and it reinforced how important it is that adults show how much they enjoy reading and talk about books they love to inspire children. Our enthusiasm rubs off.
I love days when I can cuddle up with a good book and be transported into another world. It's just the best. I especially used to like Diana Wynne Jones's Howl's Moving Castle as a comfort book.
But my favourite book of all time is Charlotte’s Web. It was read and re-read more than once when I had whooping cough as a child and had a whole term off school. Every week my mum would bring me back all the books she could from the library and I went from a non-reader at the start of my illness to a child with the reading bug by the end.

Thumbs up to the brand new reading group for 8-12's  @suttonlibrary that launched on Saturday 7th June. Hope you all keep on having a brilliant time.
bomberdogdrawing
At the Shrewsbury Bookfest the children were so passionate and knowledgable about the short-listed books. They even made book trailers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jFPl5xbxxQ and had videos of them talking about their favourite books. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qJvlICSuOA
This week I received a letter from a school I visited during my last book tour:

'Every time we go into one of our classrooms, we see someone reading one of the books that they bought when you visited- Even one of our teachers, who isn't an animal-person, read your book overnight and loved it. 
When we knew we were going to write to you we wondered what our friends thought of your books -so we asked them! Ben in year 6 said they took me into another dimension in my learning about World War 2 and I found it hard to escape. Year 3 came up with words like 'awesome', 'epic' and 'can't wait 'til the next one.' And finally, Jessica in year 5 actually made up a new word - 'AMAZEYBULLS!'

Nothing beats letters and emails from happy readers.

I've been taking Traffy in to listen to children read at our local school. She loves it and the children love it and I'm very pleased to say that the children who've been seeing her each week have shown significant improvement in their reading. 
I'll be at the Higgins Museum for the first Bedford Bookfest on Saturday 5th July at 11am talking about 'A Soldier's Friend'. Sadly Traffy and Bella won't be allowed because of the risk of dog fur on the exhibits (probably just as well!) :)


Friday 20 June 2014

Sometimes it's the Devil's Elbow - Joan Lennon


It's not as if I'm doing a lot of writing - well, I am, but not writing writing.  Not novels.  And it's no secret that a novel-writer who is between novels is not a pretty sight.  But I do have one, short piece of fiction writing to do, for an anthology.  I said I'd do it.  I want to do it.  And how's that going for me?  Well, look at the photo.  Says it all.

(Though, you'll notice, in the photo the passengers have helpfully disembarked, ready, no doubt, to give a shove if needed.  Catch my characters doing that.  Fat chance.)

Writing's like that sometimes.  A stalled bus on a virtually vertical hairpin turn.  You know that.  I know that.  And it'll get going again, some time, some how.  But in the meantime ...

... sigh.



[Photo is of the infamous Devil's Elbow in Glenshee, from Maurice Fleming's book More Old Blairgowrie and Rattray]


Joan Lennon's website.
Joan Lennon's blog.
and, for news of a bus of quite a different nature,
Patron of Reading for a Bus blog.

Thursday 19 June 2014

'Pernicious' Fairytales and Shame-Inducing YA - Lucy Coats

Children's books have spawned an excess of silliness in the media lately. First of all there was Ruth Graham's article on Slate, which told its readers, in no uncertain terms that:
 "Adults should be ashamed of reading literature written for children". 
Oh dear. That's me with my knuckles rapped, then.


The same day, the perennially anti-escapism Richard Dawkins weighed in with his opinions on fantasy and fairytales, saying 
"I think it's rather pernicious to inculcate into a child a view of the world which includes supernaturalism".
Now I took issue with Professor Dawkins (aka 'The Frog') on this very subject back in 2008, with a piece called 'Long Live the Fairytale', and I still stand by the words I wrote. 

To be honest, I'm just a bit fed up with having to get up and shout against this sort of thing, so I'm not going to go into a long and involved rant here. Luckily for me, there are many other people who can do that far better and more articulately - Non Pratt (on reading YA) last week, and Philip Pullman (on Fairytales) back in 2011 - to name just two.

From a personal point of view, I am what might be called an omnivorous reader. Last week it was Jennifer Worth's accounts of midwifery in 1950's London, before that Jung Chang's fascinating biography of the Dowager Empress Cixi, as well as some excellent UKYA by Tanya Landman and Claire McFall - one a historical novel about the American Civil War and the other an almost literally heart-stopping thriller. I read letters, I read diaries (because I'm damned nosy). I read literary novels, I read crap detective stories. I read erotica and travel, politics, the classics and deep, dusty tomes on mythology, ancient religions and shamanism, picture books, chapter books and middle-grade fiction. Even the backs of cereal packets if I'm really desperate (I recommend Rude Health ones).

I write all sorts of different stuff too - from very young picture books about grubby pirates and tree-snipping bears through retellings of old myth and folklore to novels about fairy folk, dragons and ancient queens.

The point I'm trying to make here is that I'm not ashamed of any of it. Not the reading, not the writing - and why the hell would anyone think they have the right to tell me I should be? I LIKE reading YA. It gives me a different sort of reading pleasure to, say, Austen or Tolstoy or Zadie Smith or Donna Tartt or Malcolm Gladwell - but I happen to think that's ok.

Same goes for the writing. I LIKE making weird and fantastical stories up for kids of all ages (including ones about fairies and gods). From the fan-mail I get, and the interactions I have with kids in the schools I visit, I think my readers appreciate it too. In my opinion, fairytales and fantasy feed the mind, they don't corrupt it, and I still don't think Mr Dawkins gives children enough credit for intelligence. What I said back in 2008 is as relevant to me today as it was then, so I'll leave you with this thought:

"A child’s mind is absolutely capable of containing many ‘once upon a times’ and evidential scientific formulae all at the same time—and what’s more, distinguishing entirely successfully between the two without any harmful effects whatsoever.

Stick that where the sun don't shine, Professor. Thanks all the same, but I'd rather listen to Einstein.


Lucy's new picture book, Captain Beastlie's Pirate Party is now out from Nosy Crow!
"A rollicking story and a quite gloriously disgusting book that children (especially boys) will adore!" Parents In Touch magazine
"A splendidly riotous romp…Miss the Captain’s party at your peril." Jill Bennett
"An early candidate for piratey book of the year!" ReadItDaddy blog
"A star of a book." Child-Led Chaos blog
Atticus the Storyteller's 100 Greek Myths is available from Orion Children's Books.
"A splendid reminder of the wonder of the oldest of stories…should be in every home and classroom" The Bookseller
Lucy's brand-new and sparkly Website

Lucy is represented by Sophie Hicks at The Sophie Hicks Agency

Wednesday 18 June 2014

Every day is different. I love it! - Linda Strachan

My shed- 'Tuscany'
One of the best things about being a writer is that no two days are the same. I love having the chance to stay locked away in my shed at the end of the garden, losing myself in my characters and their world, and shutting out the everyday things of real life.  
But writing is only part of the picture, soon it comes time to put on the glad rags and go out to meet the readers, and other writers, and do all the other things that are part of being a writer - particularly a children's writer.

I have a lovely time with my books for younger children and I get to spend time with my cuddly friend Hamish McHaggis.  I never thought almost 10 years ago when I started to write the Hamish stories, that I would have such fun or that children would take him to their hearts.
Hamish at Wee Write Children's festival (at Aye Write Book Festival)
Visitor Centre

I love the variety and the moments of delight when something unexpected happens. Recently I received a package in the post of wonderful stories written by a primary school class based around the Hamish McHaggis characters. Each story had a colourful and carefully drawn book cover.  

Sometimes when I visit schools I discover that they have been working on Hamish related activities for an entire term, often using the great free classroom resources   based on the Hamish series and produced by the Scottish Book Trust. Their classrooms are full of all kinds of wonderful pictures, letters to and from Hamish and models of Hamish's Whirry Bang (vehicle), the Loch Ness Monster and their own visitor's centre
 From 'The Search for the Loch Ness Monster'



With Hamish illustrator Sally J Collins




Tattie Bogles (Scarecrows) 



Versions of Hamish's Whirry Bang














Hamish's little Hoggle (home) in Coorie Doon

This weekend I will be speaking to a sell-out crowd of Hamish fans at the Coastword Festiival in Dunbar, East Lothian.


But Hamish is just one aspect of my life as a writer.  At Coastword Festival I will also be speaking about my YA novels, about Joyriding, (Spider) Knife crime (Dead Boy Talking) and Don't Judge Me which involves fire-setting, quite a change from stories about cuddly Hamish McHaggis!

Although I love speaking to little children I also enjoy the challenge of writing and speaking to a young adult audience. But I suppose in some ways the challenge is the same.  It is my job to be saying something that will grab their interest, whether they are 2 or 8, 12  or 18.

Auchtermuchty
I enjoy travelling,  and visiting libraries and schools on my own is great but I do love it when I get the chance to meet up with other writers as part of an organised event.  
Having the opportunity to visit schools abroad is wonderful and I have found that children love stories wherever they live and often ask the same questions whether they are in Cairo or New Zealand, Scotland, England or Wales.

Mass Lobby for School Libraries in Edinburgh



Writers also need to have a voice and to get out and about to promote and protect facilities for our readers and supporters. Independent bookshops and public libraries (and their librarians), and school librarians are under threat and we must raise our voices to support them.

Another aspect of my writing life is being a creative writing tutor and I get great pleasure in assisting aspiring writers, in all areas of writing, to realise their potential. I found tutoring the week-long Arvon Foundation courses an amazing challenge, with so many different kinds of people at all stages in their writing. 
At Moniack Mhor
I also really enjoy running shorter, day long or weekend courses with adults, such as the Words in The Landscape workshops recently at Moniack Mhor Scotland's Creative Writing Centre, in conjunction with the Abriachan Forest Trust. 
It is important to get any group to work well together and foster a sense of trust, so that people feel they can share their writing for fair and constructive criticism.




I love the scenery I discover on my travels, the wonderful wilds that inspire stories of all kinds.
 And most of all the amazing and interesting people I meet along the way.






I feel privileged to be able to have such a wonderful and varied career. As with anything there are times when things don't go well, frustrations and of course there are disappointments but these are the times when I  go back to my shed and disappear into my writing. By the time I emerge nothing ever seems quite so bad. 



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Linda Strachan is the author of over 60 books for all ages from picture books to teenage novels and the writing handbook Writing For Children  


Her latest YA novel is Don't Judge Me  


Linda  is  Patron of Reading to Liberton High School, Edinburgh 


website:  www.lindastrachan.com
blog:  Bookwords