How to use this Page

extracted from Angel Publicity on behalf of HarperCollins

GEEK GIRL By Holly Smale £6.99 (PB), published on 28th February 2013. Also available in e-book formats. "My name is Harriet Manners, and I am a geek."

Acquired by HarperCollins in a five publisher auction, already due to be published in eight different languages and written by an ex-model and current blogger who has online readers in 24 countries, Geek Girl is set to be the teen launch of 2013...
Harriet Manners is well informed in random irrelevant trivia. She knows that a "jiffy" lasts 1/100th of a second, bats will always turn left when exiting a cave and peanuts are one of the ingredients of dynamite. What she doesn't know is why nobody at school seems to like her.
So when she is spotted by a top model agent, she jumps at the chance to reinvent herself as a stylish, sassy runway goddess. Even if it means stealing her best friend's dream, incurring the wrath of her archenemy Alexa, and repeatedly humiliating herself in front of the impossibly gorgeous model Nick.
Veering from one couture disaster to the next with the help of her overly enthusiastic father and her über geeky stalker, Toby, Harriet begins to realise that the world of fashion doesn't seem to like her any more than the real world did. Can Harriet go from geek to chic without ruining everything?

About the author:
Holly Smale is a debut author. Clumsy, a bit nerdy and somewhat shy, she spent the majority of her teenage years hiding in the changing room toilets at school, attempting to avoid the abuse of her peers. After a top London modelling agency unexpectedly spotted her at the age of fifteen, she believed her luck was changing but in reality she couldn't let go of her inner geek. She spent the following two years falling over on catwalks, going bright red at inappropriate moments and damaging things she couldn't afford to replace. By the time Holly had graduated from Bristol University with a BA in English Literature and an MA in Shakespeare, she had given up modelling and set herself on the much more suitable path to becoming a writer. In 2009, she very nearly found herself as a caretaker on an Australian paradise island, when she was a finalist out of 70,000 entries for the widely covered competition, "Best job in the world."
Her hugely successful blog, 'The Write Girl' has readers in over 24 countries, and Geek Girl is already lined up to be translated into eight languages, making her a worldwide phenomenon before the book is even published. Now a fully-fledged author, Holly is currently writing the sequel to Geek Girl.
Find out more on http://www.thewritegirl.co.uk/ or follow Holly on twitter @HolSmale

Neil Gaiman's BlackBerry Writing Project

A blog post in which Gaiman explains his current BlackBerry calendar tales project...

Why Children's Books Ambassadors Should Not Denigrate Other Media

In a further dispatch on the Cool Not Cute blog, Joanathan Emmett has this to say:

The following is an extract only. Do read the whole piece.

I don't think that ambassadors for books are doing themselves or books any favours by attacking TV, films or video games.... Most children listening will know from first hand experience how appealing and satisfying these other media can be.  So, by attempting to discredit them, an ambassador undermines their own credibility. If an ambassador says they hate something that a child knows and loves, why should a child trust that ambassador's judgment when he or she proclaims that books are something that ought to be loved?

I think it's nearly always better to work with the grain of a child's enthusiasm rather than against it when promoting books. If a child tells you they don't like books, ask them what they do like. If it's TV, ask them about their favourite programmes and why they like them.  Try to engage with and understand their enthusiasm -- this is easy if you like the same programmes yourself. Then, when you understand what it is the child likes about the programme and, perhaps more importantly, when the child has understood that you understand this, tell them about a book they might like that contains the same sort of content.

This approach can be made to work for most children of most ages - but not all. If a child of picture book age says they like a film like Star Wars or a TV show like Ben 10, there's little an ambassador for books can do because, as I've argued in COOL not CUTE, there are no picture books that match the content of Star Wars or Ben 10.  Unfortunately, there are an awful lot of picture book age children that like this sort of content  -- and most of them are boys.

A Day In The Life Of A Book Designer

Jack Noel, a book designer for Walker Books, recently stopped by a the Reading Agency to talkabout his job, and provide some advice for any Reading Activists with an interest in careers in illustration and design.

William Cowper My Hero

So good to see William Cowper as a subject of The Guardian's regular My Hero column (Cowper is one of my heroes too):

Chosen by Alexandra Harris:

In the English visionary tradition, Cowper has a kinship with Stanley Spencer, that 20th-century interpreter of miracles found close to home. Grass and bricks and stones are talkative in Spencer's paintings, as they are in Cowper's poetry. "The very stones in the garden walls are my intimate acquaintance," wrote Cowper.

Cowper was a hero to many who came after him. Jane Austen's characters revere him (Marianne's suitors in Sense and Sensibility must have the right tone of voice for reading Cowper). For the Romantics, Cowper showed the way towards spontaneous expression, passionate response to nature, and the sacred stillness one finds, for example, in Coleridge's "Frost at Midnight". When Virginia Woolf quoted Cowper in her novels, she assumed her readers knew the poems. No one would assume that today. During his last, protracted, breakdown, the world became to him a "universal blank". And yet there had been times - preserved in his writing - when his wonderful roving, empathetic imagination found new pleasures every day just by looking at a hedge.

All Change - Predictions For 2013 Gathered By BfK

This from Sarah Odedina of Hot Key:

'We have all been talking about digital publishing for sometime but it seems to me that we are finally becoming clear on what it means to us as publishers both in terms of a usable and saleable format as well as a predictable revenue stream.  2013 will see us consolidate on all we have learnt from the last three or four years of rapid growth in digital sales and also allow us to be more focused in marketing our digital books to readers. Having said this, I do think that this will be particularly relevant for books for older readers and that books for younger readers will still pose a challenge in the digital format.'

And from Barry Cunningham of Chicken House:

'The lesson from history is that now is the time for small, clever, targeted and personal publishing. Because readers, not retailers, have the power now. Exciting, isn't it?'

Templar Buys Piccadilly Press

from Publishers Weekly:

In a notable children's deal in the U.K., Piccadilly Press, the children's book publisher founded by Brenda Gardner 29 years ago, has been acquired by Templar Publishing, the children's publisher owned by Bonnier Publishing Ltd. Under Gardner's direction, Piccadilly Press has established a strong position in the teenage fiction market; the company also has a successful picture book list, a young readers' list plus a growing line for parents. ...

Templar Publishing is best known for its children's novelty titles as well as publishing award winning authors including Michael Morpurgo. More recently its has developed a children's fiction list.

The Traction Codex Now Available As An Individual Purchase

from the Philip Reeve blog:

A couple of years ago I spent a very pleasant few days with Jeremy Levett in Bristol, coming up with something called The Traction Codex. It's a sort of encyclopaedia/history of the World of Mortal Engines, featuring all those things you Always Wanted To Know But Could Never Be Bothered To Ask, like, how did Airhaven get airborne? Why do the cities use heavier-than-air fighters while the Green Storm stick to airships? Who was Red Loki? etc, etc.  We've also added some details which never made it into the books, like the alarming sport of 'Traktionturnieren' or civic jousting...

The codex has recently been bundled with ebook editions of Mortal Engines as an appendix, but readers who already own copies of the print books can now acquire the Codex as a separate purchase (for just 85p):

Cool Not Cute

Are boys put off books at a crucial age because they perceive them as too cute and feminine?

Read the very well-argued pdf and see what you think.

It's my experience [says Emmett] that a great many books that the industry perceives as having cross-gender appeal (including many I've written) are actually far more appealing to girls. And, while books targeted at girls are usually uncompromising in the way that they maximise their girl-appeal, books targeted at boys usually have their boy-appeal compromised to some degree. In short, the picture book industry is biased towards producing books that appeal more to girls than boys.

Do read the whole piece. It really is worth your time.

Julia Donaldson Criticizes New Scottish Curriculum

"If a child is whimsical and chatty, but very interested in foxes, on their report card teachers cannot say, 'loves foxes, but I wish she wouldn't chat so much', they have to say she could be a more responsible citizen.

"I feel sorry for teachers having to toe the line and tick the boxes...

Authors Live

Darren Shan appears on Authors Live today at 11am.

Authors Live is a series of live webcasts, presented in partnership with the Scottish Book Trust, featuring some of the biggest names writing books for children today.

On the website you can currently watch 116 video clips from the series....

And there are some full-length broadcasts viewable on iPlayer...

Shaun Tan Interview

Extract from the end of a Lee Wind blog interview with Shaun Tan:

Lee:  As a writer, I'm familiar with the revision process for words. What's your revision process for images?

Shaun:  Very similar actually, like moving paragraphs around, rewording sentences, adding and subtracting here and there. For images, I tend to do equivalent visual adjustments by drawing over the top of previous draft sketches using a lightbox. I keep the bits I like - trace them off - and rework the bits I don't like. I'll sometimes use scissors and tape to cut out and rearrange parts; since working digitally, I can do a lot of this in Photoshop too. In fact, although almost all my final art is hand-made, there's a lot of digital editing that goes in in my preliminary sketches.

Lee:  That's fascinating! What have you learned over the course of your career so far that you wish you had known when you started?

Shaun:  I think to just relax and have more faith in my intuition. As a younger artist, I worried too much about where my work fit in, its significance and so on, not to mention the problems of generating income. Most of those issues resolved when I just trusted in my own ideas, beginning with a picture book 'The Rabbits', where I more or less thought, to hell with it, I'll just do whatever I want and not care if it all falls in a heap or even gets published. As it turns out, that book was the turning point in my career as an illustrator, doing something nobody else had really seen before (including me!).

Orion Acquires Twi Novels From Tania Unsworth

from The Bookseller:

Orion Children's Books has acquired two novels by Tania Unsworth, her first for children, with plans to publish in spring 2014 in the UK.
Managing director and publisher for Orion Children's Books Fiona Kennedy bought world rights, excluding USA, in Unsworth's novels from Rebecca Carter at Janklow and Nesbit.
The first title, The One Safe Place, is set in the near future, where the gulf between the technology-owning rich and the technology-lacking poor is immense.
Kennedy said: "The One Safe Place is one of those scripts that I really could not put down - a measured, beautifully imagined novel, rich and insightful. It has characters easy to warm to and care about, an extraordinary sense of place and a truly page turning plot. It's suspenseful, thrilling, disconcerting and uplifting. We are thrilled to be working with Tania and look forward to publishing her impressive children's debut."
Unsworth has previously published two novels for adults with Viking/Fig Tree, and is the daughter of the late author Barry Unsworth.

Teen Titles 55

The ACHUKA office recently took delivery of the new Teen Titles , now on edition #55.

Produced by the City of Edinburgh Council, this continues to be a fantastically colourful and salivating survey of all the latest teenage reading, with reviews written by teenage readers themselves (from Scottish schools).

In addition to the reviews each copy includes various features (in #55 these include an interview with Cassandra Clare, author of Mortal Instruments and Infernal Devices, and new Author Factfiles of, amongst others, M G Harris, Gill Lewis and Rosie Rushton.)

Another interview is with Georgina Merry, a former Teen Titles reviewer and now published novelist. The first part of a trilogy called The Devil's Light, Georgina's debut novel is The Ferryman's Wife, described as a "fast-paced and funny fantasy adventure novel" by one of its reviewers.

To find out how you can subscribe to Teen Titles, either as an individual, a school or a library, follow the link above.

from Publishers Weekly:

Roughly a year after the Amazon Children's Publishing division launched, it has announced two new imprints. Two Lions will be home to picture books, chapter books and middle-grade fiction, and Skyscape will be devoted to titles for young adults, encompassing works from both established authors and new voices. Margery Cuyler is editorial manager for Two Lions, and Tim Ditlow is editorial manager for Skyscape. Amazon Children's Publishing's general manager is Amy Hosford; Larry Kirshbaum, publisher for Amazon Publishing, oversees the editorial leadership for the company's Seattle and New York adult imprints, as well as Amazon Children's Publishing.

Amazon Publishing acquired more than 450 titles from Marshall Cavendish Children's Books in late 2011 and Cuyler, who had been publisher of MCCB (and is also an author), retained her title when she joined Amazon at that time. Ditlow came on board as associate publisher of Amazon's children's publishing unit in January of last year.

The launch season for the two new imprints is spring 2013. Titles on the inaugural Two Lions list include Gandhi: A March to the Sea by Alice B. McGinty, illustrated by Thomas Gonzalez, a biography written in free-verse; and Poco Loco, a debut picture book about a mouse inventor by J.R. Krause, illustrated by Maria Chua. Titles under the Skyscape umbrella include You Know What You Have to Do by Bonnie Shimko, about a 15-year-old girl who hears voices in her head telling her to kill people; and Reason to Breathe, the first book in the Breathing Series trilogy by Rebecca Donovan, an initially self-published title that had already earned a dedicated readership.

I Used To Think...

Ruth Symes and Five Misconceptions about Being A Writer

The Book Corner

Nice straightforward Tumblr blog recommending picture books...
Also can be followed on Twitter @TheBookCornerUK

Short Story Competition Longlist

Ali Smith, Toby Litt, Mark Haddon, Orange prize-winning Helen Dunmore, Adam Foulds, Sarah Hall and Booker Prize-winning Graham Swift, are among those in the running for the £30,000 Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award - the richest prize in the world for an individual short story.

12 out of the 16 stories on the longlist come from UK- based authors. In its previous three years, the Award has not yet been won by a Briton, with the top prize going to New Zealand, the USA and Ireland so far.

From over 500 entries the judges have arrived at a longlist of 16 - six women and ten men.

The 16 longlisted writers and the titles of their short stories:

Caroline Adderson - 'Erection Man'   
Junot Diaz - 'Miss Lora' 
Helen Dunmore - 'Spotted Dick'
Adam Foulds - 'Tunnelling'
Mark Haddon - 'The Gun'
Sarah Hall - 'Evie'
Cynan Jones - 'The Dig'
Philomena Kearney Byrne - 'Honda Fifty'
Toby Litt - 'Call it "The Bug" Because I Have No Time to Think of a Better Title'
Belinda McKeon - 'Eyes on Me, Eyes on You'
Mark McNay - 'Ten Years Too Late'
C D Rose - 'Arkady Who Couldn't See and Artem Who Couldn't Hear'
Ali Smith - 'The Beholder'
Graham Swift - 'I Live Alone'
Claire Vaye Watkins - 'Rondine al Nido'
Samuel Wright - 'Best Friend'
 
The winner will receive £30,000, and the five other shortlisted writers will each receive £1,000. The shortlist will be announced in The Sunday Times on 24 February.

The winner will be announced at a gala dinner at The Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival on 22 March.

by the author of Legend

'A romantic thriller set in a post-apocalyptic world where nothing is what it seems--Legend is impossible to put down and even harder to forget.' Kami Garcia, New York Times bestselling author of Beautiful Creatures

'I could only stand up and cheer, therefore, for Marie Lu's 'Legend.' A fine example of commercial fiction with razor-sharp plotting, depth of character and emotional arc, 'Legend' doesn't merely survive the hype, it deserves it.' New York Times

'Marie Lu's dystopian novel is a 'Legend' in the making' USA Today

Publishing in the UK at the end of January.
Look out for a chance to win a copy in one of ACHUKA's New Year competition giveaways.

Jungle Tales by Horacio Quiroga - Fully Illustrated English Translation

American English teacher Jeff Zorrilla and Argentine film critic Natalia Cortesi have just published a fully illustrated English translation of the popular Latin American children's book Cuentos de la Selva by Uruguayan writer Horacio Quiroga.

Jungle Tales (Cuentos de la Selva) is a collection of eight short stories by Horacio Quiroga that was published to enormous success in 1918. To this day children in elementary schools across all Latin America read this book as a part of their curriculum. Quiroga captures the magic of the jungle, which is the scene of great and exciting adventures illuminated by nature in all its splendor. A place where snakes throw glamorous parties with flamingoes, stingrays join forces to fight off man-eating jaguars, and a giant tortoise carries a wounded man on its shell for hundreds of kilometers to bring him to safety.

While these stories have been translated into over 10 languages, Zorrilla and Cortesi were astonished to find out that there is no English translation available. Zorrilla explains:

Dutch artist Bert Van Wijk has done all full-color illustrations of the book.

Best Younger Children's Books - Evening Standard

A Christmas roundup from the London Evening Standard

Top 10 Trends In Children's Books 2013

Accoridng to the editors at Scholastic US:

1. Bullying is THE Timely Topic in Kids' Books.
2. 2013 Will be a Lucky Number for Science Fiction Fans.
3. Intriguing Nonfiction.
4. Novels-in-Cartoons.
5. Kid Lit on the Screen.
6. War.
7. Tough Girls.
8. Survival Stories.
9. Spotlight on Diversity.
10. Nature Runs Amok.

Weblink carries explanation of each prediction.

There should be plenty of books and plenty of time, and teachers should leave children alone, says Pullman

Philip Pullman accuses teachers of torture, according to Todayonline (via Daily Telegraph)

Bestselling children's author Philip Pullman has compared the way in which books are taught in schools to torture.

The award-winning writer of the fantasy trilogy His Dark Materials criticised teachers for the "painful" way they tore stories apart to try to reveal what they "really mean".

The result is pupils who end up hating the books, he said. Instead of being drilled and quizzed about them, children should be given time to enjoy the stories.

When you read a book, "you should get magic from it", he said.

"There should be plenty of books and plenty of time, and teachers should leave children alone.

...

Mr Pullman, 66, was speaking last week after reading extracts from his latest book, Grimm Tales for Young and Old, his retelling of the classic Brothers Grimm fairytales.

He said that if he were UK Education Secretary Michael Gove, he would buy every school in the country a copy of the Grimms' fairytales, Katharine Briggs' British folk stories, Italo Calvino's collection of Italian folk tales and Alexander Afanasyev's stories from Russia.

He added: "I'd add in the letter accompanying that went round to all schools a quotation from Albert Einstein, a great scientist: 'If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairytales, and if you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairytales'." THE DAILY TELEGRAPH

from Publishing Perspectives:

Brazilian publishers are very optimistic about the arrival of the international retailers and happy that the long negotiation process is over. "We went through a lot of details, because in digital business you have to foresee every possible situation, it took a long time to negotiate," said Fabio Uehara, the executive responsible for digital business at publisher Companhia das Letras. "We are very happy that, after all the brouhaha, it has actually started: Kobo's store is open, Apple's etc. I think this Christmas is going to be great," he added.

According to Fernando Baracchini, president of publisher Novo Conceito, Amazon's arrival is a watershed: "There will be now a 'pre-Amazon' and a 'post-Amazon' period," and the 'post' period will be better, it is a serious and competent company. I am not afraid, I am very enthusiastic about it."

Waterstones Owner Makes $19m - but not from books

Waterstones billionaire Russian owner, Alexander Mamut, will see his bank balance jump by $19 million (£12 million) after an investment in the FTSE 100 miner Polymetal paid a special dividend...

Good news for Waterstones employees I guess