Kangaroo Kisses
written by Nandana Dev Sen, illustrated by Pippa Curnick
(Otter-Barry Books, 2016)
Children and parents alike may … Continue reading ...
Children and parents alike may … Continue reading ...
On Friday I finally made it up to Newcastle to catch the National Centre for Children’s Books, Seven Stories’ exhibition Painting with Rainbows – A Michael Foreman Exhibition, which closes today (sorry!). The good news is that it will be heading out on tour: so far, it’s … Continue reading ...
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KLQ Quizmaster Wayne Mills awarded Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit |
Winning team at KLQ NE - Hexham Middle School A |
With fellow Author's team member Lucy Coats |
With matt Cartney and winners of KLQ Central Scotland - St Thomas of Aquins B |
Julia Donaldson is one of the UK’s most popular children’s authors. As I learned in the new exhibition at at Seven Stories in Newcastle, UK , she started her career writing songs for children’s television – which I must have heard as a child watching Play School. In 1993, one of those songs was made into a book, A Squash and A Squeeze, and illustrated by Axel Scheffler, so beginning a partnership that has become renowned the world over, thanks especially to their book The Gruffalo. Other illustrators who have worked with Julia include Karen George, Emily Gravett, Lydia Monks, David Roberts and Nick Sharratt. Indeed, since 1993, Julia has written over one hundred books and plays for children and teenagers.
Last year, Julia became the UK’s Children’s Laureate. This year, there is the exhibition about her, her work and some of her illustrators and I not only had the good fortune to be there for yesterday’s opening, but also the privilege of a quick interview (you can read my post about the whole day here). I had time for just three questions…
First of all I asked about the background to her book The Magic Paintbrush, which I wrote a post about going on five (gulp) years ago… Rereading that post, yes, it’s still a favorite, which is why it wasn’t the book I took with me to ask Julia to sign: I didn’t have time to go through all the various piles of books in my boys’ rooms to find it! The Magic Paintbrush is the retelling in verse of a Chinese legend in which the heroine Shen helps her fellow villagers with food and essentials thanks to a magic paintbrush given to her by a mysterious gentleman: but things get dangerous for Shen when the Emperor finds out about the magic paintbrush and wants it for himself…
So, about the book’s background, Julia told me that a friend of hers had been running a multicultural project in Stirling, Scotland, with local women from different countries telling traditional stories from their cultures. One woman told the story of The Magic Paintbrush. After hearing the story, Julia originally envisaged writing it as a play, and in fact, often uses the book during school visits as there’s plenty of scope for getting a whole class involved in acting out the story, with Julia herself playing Shen and the teacher as the Wicked Emperor! And it’s also a great vehicle for Julia to pass on her passion for language as she invites children to come up with objects for Shen to paint and thereby make real – as long as they have two syllables to fit the rhythm of the original verse. Interestingly, Julia also acted The Magic Paintbrush out with children last year at the Scottish Storytelling Centre in Edinburgh to promote two resource packs for schools produced by Amnesty International (you can
I had an amazing day yesterday at the opening of the latest exhibition at Seven Stories in Newcastle, UK: A Squash and a Squeeze: Sharing Stories with Julia Donaldson.
The exhibition is a glorious extravaganza where fans of Julia‘s books will be able to revel in the worlds of all their favorite characters. Each section takes you into one of her books and as always at Seven Stories, there’s something for everyone – plenty of interactive activities to absorb the youngest visitor while older children and the grown-ups revel in the archival material such as Julia’s notebooks and the original artwork on display. There are buttons at toddler height; lots of opportunities for dressing up; and a house full of animals to get squashed and squeezed in. There’s a monster-sized Gruffalo and even a gruffalo stage with lots of costumes, and a juke box playing Julia’s songs – I think that’s one of Julia’s favourite displays. It is very special to see so much original artwork by her illustrators: Axel Scheffler of course, and also Karen George, Emily Gravett, Lydia Monks, David Roberts and Nick Sharratt (who also figures prominently in Seven Stories other current exhibition about Jacqueline Wilson). One of my favorite bits is a letter from Julia to her publisher about Room on the Broom, which was and is my dad’s favorite book to read to my two. In it Julia asks for the witch to look more scatty as she’s come to realise the witch is based on her as far as putting things down and not remembering where she’s put them! Another gem is the film entitled The Gruffalo’s Mum, a mini-documentary about Julia, with a specially written poem that she enacts to takes us through her day, with a few surprises along the way. I don’t think you can say “typical day” for Julia…
As Julia said in her speech to declare the exhibition open, she is “thrilled that it encapsulates some of my themes as Children’s Laureate” – namely music, drama and making stories accessible to deaf children. For Bessie-Belle, the partially deaf fairy in Julia’s Freddie and the Fairy guides visitors through the exhibition; Seven Stories has worked with ITV Signed Stories to produce signed films of some of the stories profiled; and visitors can learn to handsign book titles and key words from the stories.
Here’s a selection of photos from the day. The good ones, with an asterisk, are kindly provided by Seven Stories.
I paused on my drive north for a coffee at the lovely White Rose Books in Thirsk and lo and behold, was straight into the Gruffalo theme…
First stop at Seven Stories: their bookshop…
One of
The Seven Stories Bookshop in Newcastle has launched a range of bespoke licensed products featuring Nick Sharratt's illustrations to tie in with a new Jacqueline Wilson exhibition that launched at the Seven Stories centre last weekend.
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On Wednesday, Older Brother, Little Brother and I had the thrill of hearing this year’s Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award winner Shaun Tan speak at Seven Stories in Newcastle, during his whistle-stop visit to the UK. I’ve loved his work since being mesmerised by The Arrival four years ago; and we’ve also had the privilege of featuring Shaun’s work in our PaperTigers Gallery. Shaun’s picture books truly tap into something essential in our existence so that no matter how old you are and whatever your life experience, there is something there for everyone to absorb and distill. His books have had a big impact on the boys too, and it was a real eye-opener for them to meet their creator and hear about the drawn out process and sheer hard work that goes into producing a book. Now we are all desperate to see the Oscar-winning short of The Lost Thing!
Older Brother was most struck by Shaun saying that imperfection was a “very important concept for an artist”; and that he is always aiming for simplicity, because it’s through that apparent simplicity that he can achieve layer upon layer of meaning. Then accompanying the text with unexpected illustrations to create further tensions – but he pointed out that he wouldn’t call his work surreal per se: rather, the unexpected juxtaposition of familiar objects in his work is what is surreal.
Little Brother especially loved the first in Shaun’s series of cartoons depicting a day in his life: Waking to the Sound of a Solitary Cicada – a huge cicada looming in through the open window. He’s still laughing about that (but, as is so often the case with Shaun’s work, for me, the more I think about it, the more the funniness is tempered with a feeling of unease…). Little Brother also came home thinking about the humor and tensions achieved by people/creatures doing extrordinary things as though they are completely normal – like feeding Christmas decorations to a huge, friendly monster-machine aka the Lost Thing. And when Shaun pointed out that, as per the element of the familiar present in all his creations, the Lost Thing is a cross between a dog, a horse and an elephant, yes, you can absolutely see it.
I was bowled over by Shaun’s generosity in handing over his creations to their audience with an open invitation to interpret. He told us how in his writing, he pares the words down, excluding any emotional words because he wants the readers to have space to bring their own interpretation to his work. And he took us through his creation of the water buffalo giving directions to the little girl with a box from Tales from Outer Suburbia (you can see it in Shaun’s interview with Drawn here): how initially there was something peeping out of the box, and how he felt it wasn’t fair on the viewer to be so prescriptive, so he left it up to each person to imagine what was in the box.
It was also a real treat to see two extracts from the animated version of The Lost Thing and to hear about the ten-year project to bring the book to the screen, including Shaun’s determination to retain the fl
Following on from my brief post yesterday, here’s a fuller account of the Award Ceremony for the 2011 Frances Lincoln Diverse Voices Children’s Book Award, hosted at Seven Stories, who play a prominent role in administering the award – not least in coordinating the many volunteers who read through the entries and compile the shortlist.
This year’s award was won by Helen Limon for her story Om Shanti, Babe, “a story about growing up, family and friendship” described by the judges as “Fabulous . . . laugh-out-loud funny.” They were looking for a “strong story that an 8 to 12-year-old would want to read rather than a worthy book
that overtly explores social issues.” We were treated to an extract from the book and it certainly sounds like they found what they were looking for. Now we will have to be patient while we wait for the manuscript to go through its due process towards publication. To whet your appetite, here’s a brief synopsis:
Teenager Cassia joins her mother, who runs a fair trade craft shop, on a buying trip to India, a country that she mostly knows from her Bollywood dance routines. Troubled by a friendship gone sour at home, and feeling out of place in a new culture that challenges her assumptions, she reacts badly to her mother’s relationship with an Indian colleague. As Cassia sheds some of her preconceived ideas, she finds friends where she least expects to and starts to realise her dream to follow her mother into business. The story emcompasses fair trade and environmental issues alongside her spiky tussles with fashion-mad friend-to-be Priyanka, and her crushes on pop star Jonny Gold and Dev, a boy she meets on a train.
Helen had put together a display of pictures and objects she had brought back from a trip to Kerola, India in 2009, which was the inspiration for her book:
“Talking to the mothers about their lives and their ambitions for their families, and listening to
what the children said they wanted, inspired the story and made me conscious of the social and environmental themes that are woven into the book.“My characters are not the sort of children that get written about much and I lived most of my life not in
England, so I do sort of know what it is like to be different inside your head even if you look like everyone
else on the outside.”
Runner-up in the competition was Karon Aldermon for her story For Keeps about Benedicta (Ben), her mother and younger sister who are asylum seekers from Cameroon. “While their uncertain future and
I will be posting properly about the Award tomorrow – just to let you know the news in the meantime that Helen Limon is the winner of this year’s 2011 Frances Lincoln Diverse Voices Children’s Book Award for Om Shanti, Babe. Runner-up was Karon Alderman for For Keeps, and Michelle Richardson received a Special Mention for Tek.
The Award was announced at Seven Stories in Newcastle, and the occasion also marked the launch of Too Much Trouble, winner of the Award last year, by Tom Avery, and of The Filth Licker by Christy Burne, a sequel to her 2009 winner Takeshita Demons
This great official photo shows (l-r) Helen, Tom and Karon with the three published books. You can also see some of my photos from the Awards Ceremony here; and read more about the Francves Lincoln Divers Voices Award here.
Teacher Tom Avery has won this year’s Frances Lincoln Diverse Voices Children’s Book Award with his book Too Much Trouble. The award is given to a previously unpublished author for a manuscript for 8-12 year olds which “celebrates cultural diversity in the widest possible sense”.
Too Much Trouble is the story of two [illegal immigrant] brothers, Emmanuel and Prince. Emmanuel tells us his story as he looks back on how events led to him holding a gun to a man’s head. The story opens on an ordinary day for the boys at school where they strive to go unnoticed, fending for themselves on handouts fom their drug-dealer uncle and living in a house where they compete for space with their uncle’s marijuana. But life changes completely when their temperamental uncle decides the boys are too much trouble and withdraws his already limited support. Left to look after themselves, the brothers are led into a life of crime from which Emmanuel cannot see a way out.
I have just returned home from Seven Stories in Newcastle, where the annoucement was made – and was lucky enough to hear Tom reading an extract from Too Much Trouble – it was part of where Emmanuel describes his last “ordinary day” – and I wished he could have continued a little longer. Instead, we will be looking forward to this time next year when Too Much Trouble will be published – just like the winner of last year’s inaugural Frances Lincoln Diverse Voices Award, Cristy Burne’s Takeshita Demons, which was launched today (and do read Cristy’s great blog, which charts the book’s progress from manuscript to print…).
In my review of Takeshita Demons, I said I hoped there might be a sequel – well, it was really welcome news to hear today that not only will there be a second book published next year, with the intriguing title The Filth Licker, but in 2012 a third title will be published to complete the trilogy: The Matsui Monster.
Not only that, but Takeshita Demons is to be featured in Booktrust’s Children’s Book Week Pack, which will be sent to all UK primary schools, and has also been selected for this year’s Booked Up list, which gives a free book to every child in their first year at secondary school.
I will be writing a bit more about the awards evening soon &n
Following on from my post on Friday, I just wanted to share with you some of the official photographs from the opening of the new exhibition at Seven Stories, UK, From The Tiger Who Came to Tea to Mog & Pink Rabbit: A Judith Kerr Retrospective - especially this fabulous one of Judith Kerr and two children who had worked on the Their Past Your Future project having tea with the amazing, very friendly and very tactile 3-D recreation of her tiger. Thank you to Jemma Stocks from Seven Stories for sending them to me.
… now you know what one of the surprises was that I mentioned!
And here are the others:
For details about visiting the exhibition, go to the Seven Stories website.
Ten days ago I reported on the Frances Lincoln Diverse Voices Book Award Presentation, which took place at Seven Stories, The Centre for Children’s Books in Newcastle, UK – and I definitely want to tell you more about this wonderful place! We’re lucky – we live reasonably close to Newcastle, though far enough away that it took us a few years of living here to get ourselves there, which we did in the last school-holidays. I now know that the path will start to become a well-travelled one…
The name of Seven Stories not only refers to the axiom that there are but seven stories in the world told in an infinite variety of ways, but is also played out in the Centre’s daily life: it is housed in a seven storey building that is open seven days a week for a seven hours a day.
The late-nineteenth-century building was originally a mill warehouse. Many original features have been restored and the interior spaces have been designed with imagination and children in mind. The criss-cross of original beams in the top-floor room, beautiful to behold, also gives you a start, as you realise that there is a weird, curvy beam, winding its way through all the other beams – what structural use can it possibly be? Aaah – it is a bookshelf! And as it snakes its way down almost to floor-level, it houses enough copies of Julia Donaldson’s Playtime! for young visitors (and older ones too!) to come together and put on a play in the theatre corner, with the help of a sumptuous array of costumes. These include Donaldson’s and Axel Sheffler’s creation, the Gruffalo and the Mouse (and by the way, read this lovely interview with Julia Donaldson by Vulpis Libris - Part 1 and Part 2). Under this panoply of beams are also to be found a story-teller’s area complete with its exuberant throne, and a vast selection of books for a family storytime.
The current exhibitions are All Aboard, Away We Go! and From Toad Hall to Pooh Corner – both a feast for the eyes, ears and hands, and each with its own beautifully produced interactive trail. During our family visit, we chanted Mrs Armitage’s Mantra (“What we need, what we really need…”) and flew a plane while marvelling at Robert Crowther’s intricate paper-engineering from his book Flight. We discovered new-to-us old stories, like The Little Train, ostensibly by Dorothy Craigie but really written by Graham Greene and illustrated by Dorothy Glover (read this great post from Bear Alley for the full story…). We toot-tooted our way to (imaginary!) destruction in Toad’s car and, the highlight for me, we gazed on original’s of Robert Ingpen’s beautiful illustrations for Wind in the Willows, then looked at them in the book, while listening to the appropriate extract, seated in a replica, from the illustration, of Badger’s kitchen. Perfect!
I was astounded, when speaking to Lynda Jackson, Seven Stories’ Exhibitions Curator, to discover that these exhibitions are not permanent but usually run for about eighteen months – and the really good news is that they can tour elsewhere after their space in Newcastle has been taken over by something else… And I was given a sneak preview of what the next something else, From The Tiger Who Came to Tea to Mog and Pink Rabbit: A Judith Kerr Retrospective, will look like. So we’ll definitely be going back in September and I’ll tell you all about it!
In the meantime, I’ll be posting again soon about Seven Stories, with a closer look at its background and its role as a keeper of British children’s books, not to mention its superb children’s bookshop.
The first winner of the ground-breaking new Frances Lincoln Diverse Voices Children’s Book Award is Cristy Burne for her manuscript Takeshita Demons, “a fast-paced adventure story” about a Japanese schoolgirl in the UK who confronts the demons that have followed her family from Japan. She wins £1,500 and the option of having her novel published by Frances Lincoln Limited. Christy, who has Australian/ New Zealand dual nationality, currently lives in the UK. As well as studying Japanese at school, she has lived and worked in Japan, which is when she first heard about the yokai. Speaking about these supernatural spirits in an interview with Geraldine Brennan, one of the Award’s judges, Christy explained:
“There are dozens of supernatural yokai that most Japanese people will be familiar with. They appear over and over again in all kinds of stories. Some are benign, some are nasty and some you’re just not quite sure. The demons that Miku [the book’s young heroine] has to deal with include the nukekubi, a kind of child-eating flying-head demon, and the noppera-bo, a faceless demon that can take on other personae.
Most Western children don’t know about these yokai in the way that they know about vampires and werewolves, but just as vampires fear garlic, the demons often have an Achilles heel or fatal flaw. The nukekubi, for example, must leave its body somewhere while its hungry head flies around, and you can destroy the head by destroying the body. I chose the demons I thought would have the most potential for an adventure story, but there are plenty more for future stories. I like to write about children, especially strong girls, having great adventures.”
Created in memory of publisher Frances Lincoln, who died in 2001, the award was co-founded by Frances Lincoln Publishers and Seven Stories, the Centre for Children’s Books in Newcastle in the UK. The Award was announced on Thursday at Seven Stories, which was a magical and perfectly fitting place to host the evening and I will be devoting a separate post to it next week. This is a photo of Hannah Green, archivist at Seven Stories, with a display of books and manuscripts from the collection.
In her introduction to this inaugural presentation of the Award, Kate Edwards, Chief Executive of Seven Stories, talked about the importance of highlighting global communication in a way that will promote understanding; and of finding the right voices to communicate with the 8-12 age group. She made a very striking point about considering books as cultural mirrors – sometimes they offer a true reflection of their contemporary society; sometimes they distort or play with that reflection.
John Nicoll, Managing Director of Frances Lincoln Limited, then spoke as Frances’ husband of his quest to establish the right kind of project in her memory: and this, he felt, was exactly what she would have supported, in its promotion both of new talent and of good stories to provide a bridge for people who find the unknown challenging.
In all, there were fifty entries, mostly from the UK but also from Australia, Canada, Germany, India, New Zealand, Singapore, Sweden, Switzerland and the US, from writers from a wide range of ethnic backgrounds. These were whittled down by Seven Stories to a shortlist of ten and the panel of four judges selected the final four (who were all presented with a copy of the superb We Are All Born Free):
Winner: Takeshita Demons by Cristy Burne;
Highly Commended: The Gift by Gemma Birss;
Commended: The Ever-changing Mum by Ruth Patterson;
Special Mention: The Queen of Sheba’s Feet by Clare Reddaway.
The judges treated us to an outline of each of these books – and Cristy then read us a very exciting extract from Takeshita Demons, seated in Seven Stories’ glorious Storyteller’s throne. We will now have to be patient and wait for the book to go through the practical publishing process before we’ll be able to read the rest of it. And it was tantalising too to hear about the other three novels and not be able to run and pick them up afterwards!
At the beginning of this post I described the award as ground-breaking: this is because it seeks both to celebrate diversity and to foster new talent. Entries must be unpublished manuscripts aimed at 8-12 year olds from writers who have not previously published a novel for children (although they may have contributed to an anthology of prose or poetry). The Award’s stated purpose is fourfold:
To take positive steps to increase the representation of people writing from or about different cultural perspectives whose work is published in Britain today;
To promote new writing for children, especially by or about people whose culture and voice is currently under-represented;
To recognise that as children’s books shape our earliest perceptions of the world and its cultures, promoting writing that represents diversity will contribute to social and cultural tolerance;
To support the process of writing rather than, as with the majority of prizes, promoting the publication.
The closing date for entries for the 2010 Frances Lincoln Diverse Voices Children’s Book Award is 26 February 2010.
You can read more about the Award on both Seven Stories’ and Frances Lincoln’s websites, including how to enter…
(Click on event name for more information)
Guadalajara Book Fair~ ongoing until Dec 7, Guadalajara, Mexico
Jewish Book Month~ ongoing until Dec 22, Canada and USA
Artifacts of Childhood: 700 Years of Children’s Books Exhibition~ ongoing until Jan 17, Chicago, IL, USA
Summer Reading Club 2009~ ongoing until Feb 15, Australia
Over Rainbows and Down Rabbit Holes: The Art of Children’s Books Exhibition~ ongoing until Mar 8, Amherst, MA, USA
Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI Tokyo) Illustrators Exhibition~ Dec 1 - 14, Tokyo, Japan
Australian Poetry Slam 2008 - National Finals~ Dec 4, Sydney, Australia
Dromkeen Annual Literary Luncheon and Presentation of the Dromkeen’s Librarian Award~ Dec 5, Riddells Creek, Australia
University of the Philippine’s Writer’s Day~ Dec 5, Manila, Philippines
Barefoot Books Young Storyteller Competition Winners Announced~ Dec 6, Bath, United Kingdom
5th Annual Frostburg Storybook Holiday: A Community Celebration Through Children’s Literature~ Dec 6, Frostburg, MD, USA
Nordic Festival at Seven Stories, The Centre for Children’s Books~ Dec 6 - 7, Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom
PJ Lynch “The Champion of Picture Book Illustration in Ireland”~ Dec 8, Dublin, Ireland
Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) Meet the Author Event~ Dec 10, Paris, France
2008 Governor General’s Literary Awards Presentation~ Dec 10, Ottawa, ON, Canada
1st International Conference on Popular Culture and Education in Asia~ Dec 11 - 13, Hong Kong
American Identity in Children’s Literature Symposium~ Dec 13, Chicago, IL, USA
Exhibit: The Magical Toy Shop -Trade and Enterprise in Children’s Books~ Dec 13 - Mar 6, Toronto, ON, Canada
The Best of the Best in 2008: Distinguished American Picture Books for Children~ Dec 13, Amherst, MA, USA
Mantles of Myth – The Narrative in Indian Textiles~ Dec 13 - 15, Jaipur, India
6th Annual Houston Latino Book & Family Festival~ Dec 13 - 14, Houston, TX, USA
4th Karachi International Book Fair~ Dec 26 - 30, Karachi, Pakistan
This sounds great, Lucy!
Great post and never considered doing a joint event. Brilliant idea - hope all future ones go well.
Sounds great! and congratulations on your bearthday!
Sounds wonderful, Lucy! Huge congratulations and luck. Sorry i'm a bit late to the party. Hope everything goes wonderfully for your lovely book.xx