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James Roy, On The Writing of his Latest Book, City

A guest blog post on WestWords:

Cities are different from towns - we know this. They're bigger, for a start. Much, much bigger, both geographically and in terms of population. By virtue of that, they generally cover a much more diverse range of characters. Of course many of those characters are connected, but it's the way they're connected that really caught my attention: it's often in anonymous ways, such as through found objects, chance meetings or random acquaintances. It fascinates me that in small communities we think we know everything there is to know about pretty much everyone (even if we actually don't) while those of us who live in cities will think nothing of driving for an hour across town to have coffee with a friend, yet we don't know that name of the lady who's lived across the hall from us for years. If the story about taking the cricket catch by accident was the first seed-point for Town, this book started with a couple. One was Veronica, or Ronnie, from Town, who was the much-maligned 'scarlet woman' at the high school. It was Ronnie who found herself stranded up in a dark bush clearing with a bunch of drunk and sex-crazed guys, and had to do some rapid diplomacy to make a terrible situation a little less bad. Perhaps more than any other, The Clearing was the story that people most liked to talk about when we discussed the book. But as is usually the case with the short form, the character's story continues on after the last full-stop...

Roy's earlier book, Town:

NZ Post Children's Book Awards To Be Held In Christchurch Next Year...

Next year's New Zealand Post Children Book Awards and the Booksellers NZ annual conference are to be held in Christchurch on June 23-24 at the Addington Raceway and Events Centre...

Great YA Books By Australian Authors

A few brief recommendations...

Children's Bookshops in NZ

Danielle Wright visits independent children's booksellers before the New Zealand Post Children's Book Awards' Festival, starting tomorrow...

Book Recommendations For Boys

The Guardian asked:

What books could teachers use to get the reluctant readers in their class hooked on reading? We went straight to the Guardian's children's books editor Julia Eccleshare to get her recommendations....

Margaret Mahy to be remembered at a public service at Christchurch's Hagley Park on Wednesday

The life of New Zealand's most acclaimed and colourful children's author Margaret Mahy will be celebrated at a public service in Christchurch on Wednesday this week...

2012 Australian Indie Awards Shortlists"

Children's Shortlists

• The Jewel Fish of Karnak (Graeme Base, Penguin)
• The Little Refugee (Anh & Suzanne Do, illus Bruce Whatley, A&U)
• The Coming of the Whirlpool: Ship Kings 1 (Andrew McGahan, A&U)
• The 13-Storey Treehouse (Andy Griffiths, Macmillan).

Fllow the link for the other shortlists...

Paddington Bear Inspired By Evacuees

from the BBC

Paddington Bear may have emerged in 1958 but much of his character was developed from memories of life immediately before and during World War II, according to the bear's creator author Michael Bond...

NZ iPad App & Title

from Scoop.co.nz:

Kiwi (New Zealand) company Nabee Productions has released their first interactive children's book for the iPad and has already made it to No.1 on the Top iPad Books in New Zealand within a day of its release. Nabee, which means "butterfly" in Korean, takes its readers on a journey of metamorphosis through its lesson-filled books, breathing magic back into storytelling.