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By: Marjorie Coughlan,
on 9/11/2015
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Trees are so much a part of our daily lives, whether we take them for granted or find ourselves fighting for their survival: so it is perhaps unsurprising that there are many stories from all over the world that feature trees, woods or forests as a central theme or ‘character’… … Continue reading ... →
By: Marjorie Coughlan,
on 6/2/2015
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The Amazing Tree
by John Kilaka
(North-South Books, 2009)
In this retelling of an African folktale the animals are hungry and there’s only one tree that has fruit on … Continue reading ... →
This morning I killed someone. I got up early while the house was quiet and did it and then howled. It was tough. I hadn’t planned it. It came over me suddenly with huge conviction that it was the right thing to do. But it wasn’t easy.
I’ve known the person for two years or more and had never thought of killing her. But I did it. Now I’m bereft. But bad things happen. My story was too calm. Too stitched up at the end. How can one be working in one direction and then do such an about turn that you become a murderer overnight? And how can one feel so utterly sad about someone who is completely made up in your own head? Before writing them into the story, they didn’t exist, except in your deep consciousness. Is it the same deep consciousness that impels you to kill the person as well? I don’t know. All I know is that I hated doing it but the story is stronger.
I’m at my sea house… seems harsh to say this… when I know how cold it still is in the northern hemisphere right now… but I’m wondering if this house has an impact on my writing. In London I live so cramped and envy writers who have huge expanses of wild countryside to tramp while they solve their plots. Here I have nine kilometres of pristine sand and sea with a wild rocky outcrop at the end. As I write in the early mornings the salt air wafts in heavy with the smell of the sun on the wild indigenous coastal ‘fynbos.’
Do writers all have special places that unlock more – memory palaces not in the true mnemonic sense (I might be able to write that but can’t say it without stumbling) but places that make writing easier? Less about bricks and mortar and more about a space onto which we can project our dreams, hopes and fears? Like opening a drawer and suddenly the smell of it brings the memories and stories spilling out?
I’ve been writing this novel for more than two years now and I’m still polishing the stones of it that tumble around in my head and still finding the bleached bones buried in the sand. Perhaps now is the time to let it go? If Liz Kessler’s blog was
The Spring of Ideas… perhaps mine is
The Summer of Fruition. I’ve posted this video below on ABBA before when I originally made it as a response to place. But perhaps a bit of summer sunshine might not be misplaced. It was my first attempt at stitching visuals and music together so the loop in the music pauses in the middle but then picks up again.
Matt Haig tweeted recently: ‘
Fiction is just a dream we have that we try to externalise.”
Twitter @dihofmeyr
ZERAFFA GIRAFFA by Dianne Hofmeyr, illustrated by Jane Ray, published by Frances Lincoln made the Top 100 Classics in the past 10 years List in THE SUNDAY TIMES and the Best Picture Book List for 2014 in The Times on Saturday.
As we zoom into 2015, let's have a look at beginnings and ending. Some illustrators do endpapers, others don't – but I love them. They feel as important to me as the first paragraph of a novel ... a sort of
mise-en-scène ... an artful visual placing of what is about to happen – as powerful as walking into a theatre and confronting the curtains up, on a stage already set.
So I ransacked my shelves and have come up with 15 for you to guess at... some old, some new... titles and illustrators at the end. Some have different endpapers at the front to those at the back and some I'll give a hint of, by adding an interior pic. So here we go starting with two forests:
1.
2.
And now no 3, a book from the US with two different endpapers
3
Some illustrators prefer patterns (I'll add an interior pic of the next 4 books to give a hint)
4
5
6
7.
8
Some illustrators do multiple drawings on the endpapers
9
10
11
Some do single illustrations that add to the story
12
No 13 has different endpapers at the start and finish of the book.
13
No 14, is the double spread of the endpaper shown at the beginning of the blog with us zooming into the future of 2015. Have fun! Hope its a good year for all!
14
And finally some endpapers end with 'The beginning...'
15
How many did you get?
ANSWERS:
1. Pookie in Search of a Home by Ivy L Wallace published by Collins UK
2. Little Evie in the Wild Wood Jackie Morris illustrat by Catherine Hyde pub Frances Lincoln UK
3. Zen Ghosts by Jon J Muth published by Scholastic US
4. The Big Pets by Lane Smith published by Viking US
5. Jamela's Dress by Niki Daly published by Frances Lincoln UK
6. Ben's Trumpet by Rachel Isadora pyblished by Greenwillow books US
7. Celebration Song by James Berry illustr by Louise Brierley, Hamish Hamilton UK
8. The Magic Bojabi Tree by Dianne Hofmeyr illustr by Piet Grobler pub Frances Lincoln UK
9. Why the Sun & Moon Live in the Sky retold & illustr by Niki Daly published by Lothrop US
10. The Arrival by Shaun Tan published by Hodder UK
11. The Tree of Life by Peter Sis published by Walker UK
12. Ferdinand the Bull by Munro Leaf, drawings by Robert Lawson published by Viking US
13. Do the Whales Still Sing? By Dianne Hofmeyr illustr by Jude Daly published by Dial US
14. Rules of Summer by Shaun Tan
15. Varmints by Helen Ward illustr Marc Craste published by Templar UK
Twitter: @dihofmeyr
Latest picture book: Zeraffa Giraffa – Top 100 Children's Classics List of Past 10 years
– THE SUNDAY TIMES
I’ve found a place, which is as close to being on the moon, without ever having to leave earth. Endless swathes of sand dunes spool out along the coastline to create a mist-shrouded desert as mysterious and as surreal as its name – The Skeleton Coast.
It’s a place so silent and desolate and devoid of people, so scattered with rusting shipwrecks and bones that it would make the perfect setting for a dystopic novel.
The first indication that we’re entering a strange, surreal world is a sign on a rock. We approach the coast along a hazardous route through ghostly white fog rolling in from the cold Atlantic Ocean. Shrouded in mist it’s hard to know direction. This is not a place to wander into alone, or go off track, or run short on fuel. It’s a place of wild, haunting beauty that will swallow the casual traveller whole. Its remoteness impossible to imagine. Its dunes endless. Its coastline wild and treacherous.
Vast expanses of sand totally devoid of human life (except for the six of us clutching mugs of coffee and wrapped in more layers of clothing than I could ever imagine wearing in a desert).
But we aren’t alone. When we arrive at the coast, the sky is tinged crimson with flamingos and the sand tinged maroon with tiny amethysts, surreally interspersed with brown hyena footprints. The hyenas come down to the sea to hunt seal cubs. Oryx droppings on barren dunes show they too exist here living off dew and desert melons.
A tiny shack of rough-built wood with an unlocked door is surely one of the most remote museums in the world. Yellowed newspaper accounts of wrecks are tacked to its walls and dusty tables are strewn with ancient whalebones, old divers’ suits, anchors covered in verdegris and an ancient wooden aeroplane propeller. Brave stories of survival, not dissimilar to any dystopic novel – the only difference being that these are true.
In strong contrast to those cast up here, we lunch in the freezing mist at the edge of this isolated stretch of the Atlantic and pop open a bottle of bubbly. The return inland to our tents next to the dry Hoanib River with a dust storm fast approaching, is in silence. The mind and body stilled by the surreal day... and the desert.
twitter: @dihofmeyr
most recent picture book:
Zeraffa Giraffa illustrated by Jane Ray. Top 100 Children's Classics List – THE SUNDAY TIMES
Recently Nicola Morgan wrote a blog on
Top Tips for Tip Top Events and I found myself asking… why do we do it? Apart from the extra income, why do we put ourselves through the extra
angst? Are all authors just frustrated would-be actors? Or do we simply need to get away from our laptops and have a break from the norm? I came to the conclusion I do it for the fun of engaging with children and just generally having a good time in a group with the concept of ‘story’.
We get to be presenters, actors, musicians (if your name is John Dougherty)
and in doing so, we expand and spread the concept of story through the spoken word, or the read word, through music and song, through puppets, or working with shadow and light to create the magic – so that story becomes an alive experience that is even more powerful in a group.
Writers, musicians, puppeteers, film makers – we are all storytellers. As Mike Leigh, Director of Mr Turner put it in The Times this week: ‘we enter a conspiracy to say we are bringing something to life.’
And how do stories come to life? We imbue them with a certain magical power. There’s that silent and humbling moment when everyone sits still and waits for the story to begin. Before the first word is spoken the audience is ready to be entranced. Expressions on the faces of children from an informal camp near Cape Town at the start of a storytelling session, tell it all.
The Children's Book Network in South Africa plan workshops to create and enjoy and share story through music, story telling and shadow puppets with children who normally have no access to books and then the magic begins...
Back here in London, spotlights and darkness go a long way to creating magic for
The Magic Bojabi Tree at the fantastic STORYSTOCK circus at the Bush Theatre. Behind a mask you can lose inhibitions!
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| pic from Lucie Bright's blog & review of STORYSTOCK |
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| An enormous snake at the Omnibus Theatre |
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| A small snake in a small school libary |
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| A 'stare' of giraffes at Cheltenham |
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| A spot on (strip on?) zebra T-shirt (yes I do always wear same shirt) at IOW Fest |
For anyone not yet convinced of the magic of group storytelling, watch this TED video of the creators of the War Horse puppets. I met Adrian and Basil at a friend's house in Cape Town about 25 years ago, long before their creation of
The Tall Horse or the idea that a horse puppet would take the world by storm.
Take your stories back to their origins. Tell them in the way our forefathers told story. And even if you don't have the starry skies and the flicker of firelight on cave walls to support the magic (or the expertise of master puppet-makers!) you will be entering the conspiracy and bringing something to life.
Zeraffa Giraffa, illustrated by Jane Ray and published by Frances Lincoln was recently chosen for The Sunday Times Top 100 Children's Classics of the past 10 Years.
The Magic Bojabi Tree illustrated by Piet Grobler and published by Frances Lincoln, will be performed to specially composed music, by the 65 piece Worcestershire Symphony Orchestra in Worcester on 8th Nov.
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Picture a young girl growing up in a remote part of the Cape in South Africa in a village named Riemvasmaker (meaning strap tighteners… possibly stemming from a place where the harnesses of the ox wagons were shortened before crossing over the Orange River?)
The year is 1973. The Government want the land for the military. 1 500 people are arbitrarily removed to other areas by train and lorry with some of their livestock – but not before witnessing their houses being axed and torched in front of their eyes. It is cruel and barbarous.
Six year old Pascalena Florrie finds herself deposited in Demaraland, in Namibia. Given that Namibia is the combined size of the UK and France together but only has just over 2 million inhabitants, the loneliness in the vast desert of Demaraland, can’t be imagined.
In this bleak moonscape where no towns or schools or means of transport except donkey carts exist, and where only a few natural springs provide water, Pascalena becomes goatherd to her family’s goats.
She takes them into the veld each morning to graze, along with some dogs to keep marauding leopard, desert elephant and lion at bay. No time for school – there is no school – and at night sleeping on the dung floor of a house made from unfired, mud bricks. This is no Heidi story.
On a recent visit to Demaraland, I met Lena and she told me that as soon as she heard that Wilderness Safaris was setting up a conservancy in the area, she applied for a job as waitress. In spite of the fact that she spoke only Afrikaans, the language forced on the Nama people by the Government, she was given the job. She persuaded the Camp Manager – the first white person she had ever laid eyes on – to give her list of words every day – simple words like broccoli, butter, glass, coffee, good morning.
Today Lena is Area Manager responsible for four camps in north-west Namibia and she was the first black Namibian to be appointed as a manager of a guest lodge after the country’s independence. She provides the link between Wilderness Safaris and the local communities who are joint venture partners of these four camps. She initiates local projects, hosts journalists and agents and attends the community meetings, helping them participate meaningfully as stakeholders.
On the day after I met her she attended one of these meeting and the next morning, she was beaming and said she was feeling very ‘powerful’. Such is her energy!
This is a long preamble to something meaningful for us as children’s writers. Many of you have already generously contributed books through dynamo Nicky Schmidt’s plea on Facebook, to the Children In the Wilderness Project.
Two weeks ago I met Janet Wilkinson who heads the Project and donated some of my books – both of us coincidently wearing white shirts but her's emblazoned with the Wilderness Safari logo! While chatting I realised I was about to visit some of the very camps where the children of Children In the Wilderness are hosted.
The children stay in the same camps normally taken up by tourists, to learn how to communicate not just with nature but with people too and to learn to be good stewards of the world. They hold binoculars for the first time, see the eyelash of an elephant up close, put on frog feet and goggles in the coastal camps and study the pulsating life of a jellyfish. The excitement is tangible. To this heady mix, add your books that will give them the fluidity of language to describe what they see and feel and do.
If you know the landscape into which your books are going and what the children are gaining, you will understand the need and the value attached to your contributions.
Franco Morao was born in 1983 on a remote farm. At the age of two he was put into a children’s home (the SOS Children’s Village) in Windhoek, where he stayed for most of his school life. On completion of secondary school and by a stroke of incredible timing, Wilderness Safaris' Children In The Wilderness programme approached the SOS Children's Home to bring some of the orphans out into the wilderness to experience their country's natural wonders. In this group was a young, ambitious and eager Franco.
His words on the experience…
"We were hosted at Kulala Wilderness Camp. This overwhelmed me because most of us had never had such an opportunity to learn about the environment by being in the wilderness itself. I was brought up in a very enclosed environment, so that the only life I knew was that within the orphanage. When I saw the open spaces I realised that this was where I wanted to be. I had found a new family. Where there was a sanctuary and where everyone always feels welcome."After completing the internal training that Wilderness Safaris offered, he was appointed as a trainee guide at the same lodge where his life-changing experience took place. '
Now he is one of the most loved guides in Namibia - children adore him...' says Janet. Today Franco is learning Italian, Spanish and German to be able to communicate with overseas guests and is now working as a Specialist Guide for touring groups. Unfortunately I didn’t get to meet him.
From goat-herd to Regional Manager, from orphan to Specialist Guide – just two examples of words and knowledge having made all the difference. Your books are meaningful in a landscape where libraries are few. Hopefully soon there will be a central point in the UK where donated books can be collected to save on the heavy postage costs.
Thank you dynamo Nicky for making us aware of this opportunity to give books to Children In the Wilderness that will help turn them into the more encompassing, Children
‘of ‘ the Wilderness. If these are the children who are learning to manage and conserve the world, perhaps the future of the rhino will not be so bleak. Real sustainability is realised by a culture that involves children.
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| No I didn't fly the 6 seater single prop plane! |
Photographs of Lena and Franco courtesy Wilderness Safaris
All other photographs copyright Dianne Hofmeyr
Dianne Hofmeyr's latest picture book Zeraffa Giraffa, illustrated by Jane Ray and published by Frances Lincoln, is on the UKLA longlist.
More than two years ago I finished the first draft of my 9th novel and handed three chapters over to my agent. She hated it. Picked holes in just about every paragraph. Didn’t think my characters were convincing. Thought some of my research was suspect. And generally couldn’t find anything good to say about it. I put up all sorts of arguments for it being a first draft etc etc but after she had torn it apart, the thought of fixing it was just too daunting. So the story was buried.
I knew it was a good idea and once I could stand back from all the criticism, I felt there was a kernel there that still needed to be told. But I was far too demoralized to dig deep and find the right way of telling it. After a couple of years of being involved with picture books, I recently took it out again. My son, who has had some success with an 'about to be published' first novel and a film deal, asked the burning question: what is the story about?
I rambled on and on. I was floundering.
There was the problem! I had no idea. I couldn’t be succinct enough to say what my story was about. So if I couldn’t sell my story to my agent, or even my own son, how was I going to whet the appetite of an editor or more importantly readers out there?
Anyone who listens to a premise, must be able to see the entire book unfolding in his mind. A premise has few words but must hit hard. It has to be emotionally intriguing. It has to mean something to the person hearing the idea for the first time. But it's not just a tool to use to sell a story to an editor, it's for the writer to keep crystalised in his head as he works. The little nugget from which all else springs. Nicola Morgan has written reams about writing premises but I had somehow fallen into the lazy trap of thinking because I write organically (pantster???), my premise could be equally organic.
Wrong! Basically a premise needs a compelling hero, a compelling bad guy and a compelling need or goal we as humans can identify with. Put this in a single sentence or at the most two and make it compelling enough to capture a stranger’s attention and to keep the writer focused on the kernel of the story.
What is the story about? My son’s question drew me up sharp. I couldn’t tell him in a few succinct sentences. But the moment I began to formulate and define the premise, like magic, the conflicts were brought more sharply into focus, my protagonist gained stature and I could make the bad guy just a bit more out of reach of my hero’s ability to defeat him.
So writing a good premise is a great step in the right direction. Ask yourself is this story about someone:
I can identify with
I can learn from
I have a compelling reason to follow
I believe deserves to win
Has weaknesses that are overcome in the end (the hero's arc)
Has stakes that are primal and ring true?
Now as I’m picking up on my story again, I’m visualizing a short and hugely dramatic first image and then I’m going into the beats of the story like they do in film-scripts. What is the right way to pace this story? I’m even writing out index cards and am putting them up on a cork-board. And having read Lori Don’s recent
blogpost on ABBA where he writes:
I know that I’m just discovering the story, not finding the perfect way of telling it first time around. And I know that it takes a lot of work to make that original mess of scribbled ideas into a book, I’ve realized that keeping track of the beats in a story is far easier if you’ve already written the first draft. Heaven forbid I would ever have to work out the beats in a story I hadn’t drafted first.
Now after the premise and that riveting first image and the initial set-up of time, place and characters, what is the catalyst? The moment of no turning back? Crossing the threshold? The door of no return? Should I go? Dare I go? I’m talking about
me… not my hero! And for those of you who recognise some of the above – yes, I have read Blake Snyder’s
Save the Cat and yes I think both he, my son and my agent have hopefully saved my manuscript.
And finally as an aside, I don’t believe my research is suspect – m
y notebooks are full of distracting and time-wasting detail that help me 'play' and doodle my way through the story.
www.diannehofmeyr.com Dianne Hofmeyr's most recent picture book Zeraffa Giraffa published by Frances Lincoln, is illustrated by Jane Ray and has been translated into 6 languages other than English. Her previous picture book The Name of the Tree is Bojabi, also published by Frances Lincoln and illustrated by Piet Grobler, was nominated for the 2014 Kate Greenaway.
Malorie Blackman has asked for more stories of people of colour in YA fiction. And in The Times on July 15th in
My Hunt for Stories about Children that look a bit like mine, Nikita Lalwani quotes the Dominican American writer, Junot Diaz who says vampires reputedly have no mirror reflection and in his work he sets out ‘
to make mirrors so that kids like me, might see themselves reflected back and might not feel so monstrous for it.’ And on TED the writer
Chimamanda Adichie speaks on the danger of the single story and warns that ‘
if we hear only a single story about another person or country, we risk a critical misunderstanding. Our lives, our cultures, are composed of many overlapping stories.’ The exciting news – YA might be lagging in showing people of colour, but picture books aren’t. To kick off as its summer, I’m beginning with one of my favouritea –
The Boy on the Beach published by Bloomsbury in 1999. Why is this book out of print? Safeguard it if you have a copy. Niki Daly has jumped across borders and shown us a boy on a hot summer’s day. Sheer joy and energy on every page. You can smell the sea, hear the seagulls and feel the sticky ice-cream running down your chin. Of course the boy gets lost as many children do on crowded beaches, and is found by a lifeguard and rewarded with an ice-cream but can’t interrupt licking it for one second to tell his name... which he writes with his toe in the sand.
Diversity needs to be unselfconscious – telling about children of all cultures and all skin colours in all situations. The Tamarind list has picture book stories like
The Silence Seeker by Ben Morley, illustrated by Carl Pearce where a boy from a family of asylum seekers moves in next door, and Joe thinks they are ‘silence seekers’ and tries to find a quiet place in the city for the boy. Modern, dynamic, comic style illustrations.
On their list too are:
Mum's Late, by Elizabeth Hawkins illustrated by Pamela Venus, where a boy waiting for his mum, worries and imagines everything that might have happened to her, or
My Mummy is Magic, by Dawn Richards, illustrated by Jane Massey which depicts a mixed-race family or
Siddharth and Rinki by Addy Farmer, illustrated by Karin Littlewood, where Siddharth dreams of India where he used to live. Now in England when his toy elephant gets lost, he feels lonelier than ever.
Frances Lincoln has always forged ahead with picture books that represent children of all colour in a way that doesn't feel forced or pigeonholed, as in Mary Hoffman’s
Amazing Grace books, illustrated by Caroline Binch, and Niki Daly’s
Jamela stories as well as his
The Herd Boy,
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or in Piet Grobler's zany illustrations of a mixed race family
'Fussy Freya' by Katerine Quarmby.
Then there are older books like One Round Moon (Bodley Head 1994) written by Ingrid Mennen and also illustrated by Niki Daly. These books depict many overlapping stories of children both rural and of the city – children who have high aspirations, who believe they can do anything they imagine, children who love dressing up, herd boys who dream of being presidents, children who are fussy eaters, children who are jealous of new born brothers.
The illustrator Karin Littlewood's name pops up continually also on the Frances Lincoln list. Leslie Beake’s Home Now is about a little girl, Sieta, who has lost her mother to AIDS and finds comfort by befriending an orphan elephant. It shows the deep loss any child experiences at the death of a mother.
Other books illustrated by Littlewood, like
Chanda by Margaret Bateson Hill,
Leah’s Christmas Story by Bateson Hill,
Home for Christmas by Sally Grindley, and
The Colour of Home by Mary Hoffman all present overlapping stories with abundant energy.
In the early 80’s when South Africa was in the midst of our apartheid years, I started collecting picture books that depicted black children as heroes and looked to the US (simple because I was travelling there more regularly than to the UK) with illustrators like Jack Ezra Keats, Jerry Pinkney and John Steptoe in his very handsome depiction of Mufaro’s Beautiful Daughters – a Cinderella story of two sisters who compete for the hand of a king. (though I'm not fond of Steptoe's pastiche approach to the landscape of Africa with Mount Kilamanjaro, a jumping springbok and proteas all depicted on one page... things that occur some 2000 Km apart)
An all time favourite of mine from those years, is
Ben’s Trumpet published in 1979 by Greenwillow Books, written and illustrated by Rachel Isadora, an ex ballet dancer. Set in the Jazz Age it tells of a little boy who hangs about listening to music and longs to play the trumpet but doesn't own one and so plays his imaginary trumpet. It’s as pertinent now as it was in the Jazz Age, or even in 1979 with its message of inspiration for all young musicians.
Picture books seem to encapsulate these overlapping stories in very visual terms. The heroes in them are every shade of brown and reflect all cultures. I'm neither an academic or a librarian. How can I ever hope to make this dip into picture books an entire rich experience of what's available and out there. Please add your titles in the comments below or your personal favourites on Twitter of Facebook, so we are armed with a list that won’t tell a single story but will tell overlapping stories, so that children don't risk 'critical misunderstanding' and will see themselves reflected back in all shades and from all cultures – heroes all of them!
www.diannehofmeyr.comDianne Hofmeyr's latest picture book,
Zeraffa Giraffa, is illustrated by Jane Ray. On Twitter
@dihofmeyr
The winners of the 2014 Carnegie, Kevin Brooks, and the Kate Greenaway, Jon Klassen, are both crowned, adding to a list of illustrious writers and illustrators. Recently
C. J. Bushby wrote about how we judge quality in children’s novels and analysed the criteria for judging the Carnegie. Today's blog focuses on how we judge picture books in the Greenaway.
The blurb on the back cover of the darkly comic book and daring book – THIS IS NOT MY HAT – is its simple premise.
A fish has stolen a hat.
And he’ll probably get away with it.
Probably.
Without getting further than the murky end papers, the reader knows something untoward might happen in the dark depths of this book, where the text clearly doesn’t coincide with what’s happening in the pictures.
The first line:
This hat is not mine. I just stole it… is a startling and daring line for openers in a picture book. Tension on the first page. Solid black page on left with a tiny fish wearing a hat and stark black print on a white page to the right. Even the simple black dot of the fish’s eye suggests apprehension.
How can an artist get tension in a single black dot inside a white orb? But if your name happens to be Jon Klassen anything is possible. And when the little fish announces about the big fish that...
the reader is already saying... uh oh! And when a crab gestures one way and his eyes look another, the reader already knows the crab is a traitor, because that's the brilliance of Jon Klassen.
The Greenaway is judged very differently to the Carnegie. It’s not about writers but about artists and outstanding artistic quality and about satisfying a visual experience which leaves a lasting impression. I went back to the guidelines to be sure.
http://www.carnegiegreenaway.org.uk/greenaway/award_criteria.phpApart from the aesthetic qualities, the illustrations must offer the reader either new experiences, or reflect pre-existing experiences. And it should also work at different levels for different readers. The artistic style of the design has also to be integral to the book… cover, endpaper, title page, font, spacing, format, shape and size… often decisions made by an art director but hopefully with the illustrator’s input. And if there is text, there should be synergy between the text and the illustration.
I found the idea of the text being optional, interesting, because of course there is always text for a picture book whether it appears printed or not. It works in the same way that a film can’t exist without a screenplay.
Interestingly I went back to the past 10 years of Greenaway winners – names that include Chris Riddell, Emily Gravett (twice), Mini Grey, Catherine Rayner, Freya Blackwood, Graham Baker Smith, Jim Kay, Levi Penfold and of course now the brilliant Jon Klassen. And out of 10 books only two had separate writers. Perhaps I’ve cheated a bit as I haven’t counted Chris Riddell’s 2004 win with Gulliver’s Travels, having a separate writer because of it being an adaptation Martin Jenkins please forgive me... as a writer I know adaptations are never just adaptions but intricately written, almost new stories.
Even if we bring the figure up to 7 out of 10 as being illustrator written, the balance is still tipped. Does this mean that judges are finding picture books written and illustrated by the same person, to be stronger and more worthy of a Kate Greenaway? Is there more synergy? More artistic merit? Is the book more seamless… more acceptable… more exciting?
So where does this leave the picture book writer? If we only write but don’t illustrate, are we a breed that will be done away with soon? Is this a wordless ending for us?
Dianne Hofmeyr's latest picture book, Zeraffa Giraffa was illustrated by Jane Ray and published by Frances Lincoln
BOOKS FOR KEEPS 5 Star review – ‘A fairytale that just happens to be true. Each spread is a delight, a chapter in itself, with so much to read, observe and wonder at. A very special book indeed.’
My first bit of advice – Never share the stage with a python or an unwieldy elephant when your audience is under five, as you’ll have a hard job keeping them off the stage and trying to get in on the act. Three to five year olds love nothing better than to play with a 12 foot long snake and however many times you arrange the coiled snake around the tree, turn your back and one (or more) of the audience will be unwinding it for you, before you can even begin.
And on the subject of an audience, resist having your grandchildren at the event. They will take the story into their own hands and try on the masks and be very helpful at inappropriate times. Although older grandchildren
can be helpful because they prompt you loudly at the parts you’ve forgotten. You'll follow what I mean, in this sequence below – grandson helps himself to 'zebra' while I'm doing 'lion' act ...
then dons 'zebra' while I'm doing 'monkey' act...
Finally with perseverance 'zebra' finds his place at the right moment in the story worn by a non-related member of the audience while a non-related little girl is about to play the coconut clappers for zebra hoof sounds.
If you are making a stuffed snake do NOT make it 12 foot long because you will be returning time and time again to get more stuffing for it from Peter Jones/John Lewis or wherever. Learn from nature. Pythons can swallow entire antelopes in a few gulps. This one swallowed 6 bags of stuffing and 3 metres of wadding and still it looked lean and hungry.
And do not make your elephant unwieldy never mind how large you want him to appear … because wire has a way of doing its own thing. So practice, practice, practice. (preferably behind a closed bathroom door although with space so minimal, the trunk keeps getting caught up on the towels.) Do NOT on any account make tusks for the elephant as you will contravene some Health and Safety law when you spear a child.
Also make sure your grown-up son is not in the audience because he is bound to take a video of you acting silly and then put it on Facebook so all his friends can see what a crazy mother he has!
And expect the unexpected. When you are in mid-sentence at the most dramatic moment of the story and drawing in a breath to make the most terrifying roar (that you have practised nightly behind closed doors in the bathroom) be prepared to accept an empty crisp packet from a little boy who has obviously been brought up well and hands it over to you with great seriousness and says: 'Here’s some litter!'
And while we are talking roars, if you are prone to throat tickles, I can recommend a black lozenge called Vocal Zone that opera singers use before performances… except don’t breath on anyone especially the adults as it has a slightly alcoholic odour and parents will look at you suspiciously especially if there is dancing involved in your event.
And speaking of dancing – this is very important – go to gym for a few sessions to get your knees and joints in working condition. Limber up every day for a few weeks because if you tell stories you need to crouch down and jump and clamber and crawl and be a little crazy never mind that you are 60 years older than anyone else in the room! And then there is the dancing, so get into the groove and get some music on and practice, practice… get your hips swinging. African Marimba music is all about dancing! But be prepared to be no taller than the tallest child. Someone might need to stand 'in' or 'up' for you so your instructions can be followed.
And finally … thank you to everyone at the OMNIBUS Theatre in Clapham, especially Felicity Paterson and Marie McCarthy, for their amazing organisation for this event of THE MAGIC BOJABI TREE and for the huge turn-out they generated, with some people even been turned away at the door. What a wonderful child-friendly venue Omnibus is – with a lovely coffee bar and great atmosphere and even a chance to make snakes with glue and glitter and paint and afterwards an acting workshop with Hester Welch. THANK YOU! I had a great time! And thank you to Clapham Books too, for providing the books.
Most important tip – have fun! If you're having fun, the children will too.
THE MAGIC BOJABI TREE, published by Frances Lincoln and illustrated by Piet Grobler, was on the nomination list for the 2014 KATE GREENAWAY.
ZERAFFA GIRAFFA, also published by Frances Lincoln and illustrated by Jane Ray, received a 5 Star review in Books for Keeps.
 |
| Pam Dix from the IBBY committee UK with the President of IBBY Korea, Su-Jung Kim and writer Sang-Hee Lee. |
I remember my first London Book Fair in 1998... I wandered aimlessly about wondering what on earth I was doing there. Everyone seemed to be rushing with purpose, while I trundled about feeling distinctly insignificant and redundant. It’s odd how the actual creators of books, can feel so inconsequential at a Book Fair. But over the years I've realised that most of the best encounters take place without planning, in the corridors between the stands, or in the numerous seminar sessions – even if it’s just to put a face to an editor you’ve never met, or meet one new person who will be a springboard to other projects, or just one new author or illustrator who has similar interests.
The most striking children’s book stand this year goes to Egmont. Not only did they have the best sweets in their jars and a balloon-floating Pooh bear... but alongside an earnest table discussion, I spotted a pram! So authors with babies do manage to get appointments!
The Artworks also made a child-friendly statement with open tables and chairs.
Some of the larger publishing house stands with their 'gate-keepers', protect their editors and rights people as well as the books from anyone who might want to browse a book. A few get around this this with digital posters of new books on their hoarding. Daughters of Time, the History Girls anthology showed up well on one of these massive digital screens. But there are others, where one is hard pressed to know they actually publish a thing called a book.
The most thought-provoking stand was Book Aid International, where I met Judith Henderson, the project manager. It was a shack built of bits of wood with tin-plate, a hand-painted library sign, empty shelves and a single locked cupboard showing how books are so precious and few in Africa, that they are literally locked up. Figuratively locked away too as so few people have access to books in Africa. Book Aid works in partnership with libraries in Africa providing new books and resources and training. They were the LBF's Charity of the Year and to mark their 60th anniversary they plan 60 new child friendly library spaces. The ABBA blog isn’t about fund-raising but if you are interested in donating visit:
www.bookaid.org/LBF.
The seminars and workshops were many and varied with accomplished speakers in their fields – Julia Eccleshare leading the panel on
What the judges are looking for, Sophie Hallam from Booktrust and Ben O'Donell speaking on C
hildren’s reading habits, Lynn Taylor from the Reading Agency facilitating a talk on Chatterbox Groups and Mike Jolley, Chris Wormell and Tom Cole on
The Spectrum of Experience – from first time picture book to lasting career. The Authors Hub was crowded and noisy and too small.
Malorie Blackman with her huge enthusiasm and energy, was Author of the Day on the final day.
Korea was the guest country of this year’s Fair and the Korea IBBY stand had a magnificent display of Award Winning Korean picture books. What struck me is they often dealt with children with difficulties and disabilities but because many were wordless, could easily be enjoyed not just by Korean children but children across all cultures. So here we are... an IBBY UK and KIBBY gathering on the last day of the Fair.
Many of the Korean books on display had won the Bologna Ragazzi Award, which is given to picture books prominent in technical expression and stories with great creativity, educational values and artistic design. The foreign Bologna Ragazzi books are often picked up by other publishers like the Tate.
The Lion in Paris translated from French,
being a good example of this.
Here are four picture books with Korean artwork to enjoy:
The images in
Last Night by Hyewon Yum which won the 2009 Bologna Raggazi Award, are full of playfulness and beautifully rendered in textured print with bold shapes and a striking way of showing light and shadow. It's a wordless picture book that tells of a grumpy child going out at night with her bedtime bear who has been transformed.
A day at the beach by Kim Su-yeon, is about a blind fisherman who has no one to help him in his advanced years. The text in its entirety only amounts to five lines, but the illustrations show how the old man leads a full life. It was one of the winning entries in the student category of the V&A Illustration Awards 2006.
Readers follow the blind man as he goes fishing with his dog. He is mending his nets when a seagull snatches a line out of his hands and the dog, chasing the seagull, suddenly morphs into the seagull. The dog-seagull returns the line to the old man. In the meantime the old man is reeling in a big white fish. The white fish swims off with the newly returned line and the old man, turning into a black fish, pursues it. The dog-seagull follows him under the sea, and turns into a large boulder when a shark threatens to gobble up the black fish. Then the boulder turns into the old man, and the black fish turns into the dog. Coming back to the surface, the old man and the dog go home with the big fish in their basket. The story finishes with the line, “
Tomorrow they will repeat their life of today.”
A runs across every page of the book suggesting that the old man, even though blind and isolated, is not abandoned by the world but is always connected to something – his dog, seagulls, fish, and by extension to nature itself. Powerful and imaginative.
The Story of Ppibi by Jin-Heon Song reflects the childhood memories of the author. Ppibi is an autistic child who comes to play in the forest, the neighborhood playground, but is shunned by other children. The narrator befriends Ppibi and the two boys explore the forest together. The forest is shown in fine pointillistic pencil marks, shadowy at times and at other times like a nebula of light dust, giving the sense of a cloud around the characters which suggests perhaps the autism.
Wave by Suzy Lee published in 2009 made the IBBY Silent books Lampedusa Project Honour List. A little girl visits the beach and overcomes her fear of the ocean. No words, just the sky and the sea, the seagulls and a girl – very fluid and immediate – done in only two colours. One can almost hear the waves and seagulls squawking and smell the sea. Simple and wonderful.
Excuse the light-heartedness. It's Spring after all. So pop the champagne corks, blow the party hooters… today a picture book story I wrote 15 years ago is being launched at The Illustration Cupboard in London. The timing seems right. Everywhere I look there are giraffes galore – in the windows of Kath Kidson, in the Louis Vuitton ads ...
... but best of all on the cover of my new book, Zeraffa Giraffa.
In my notebook I found the date when my story started taking shape – August 1999.
I’d just read the historical account in Michael Allin’s book Zarafa of the giraffe that was sent to Paris by the Pasha Muhammed Ali in 1827 – the second giraffe ever to be seen in Europe. But my fascination with giraffes began as a teenager when I’d come up really close to them in the wild on horseback in Zimbabwe – that graceful walk, their necks stretching out above the tree-line like exotic flowers, their lolloping gallop, their bizarre stance when drinking and their stares of curiosity.
So why did my manuscript take 15 years to be published?
Take heart those of you who have texts in your bottom drawer. Some stories are often just not right in a certain market – the perfect illustrator can’t be found… the economics don’t work. Then in 2004 I saw the magnificent life-size puppet performance of The Tall Horse based on the same story I'd written, produced by the Handspring puppet company in South Africa (it went on to tour in the US and Europe as well). The Handspring is the same company who much later produced the horse in War Horse. Their 5 metre tall giraffe of my story was made of carbon fibre rods, with two puppeteers on stilts inside the body frame, operating the turn of the head, the twitch of a tail or ear and the swaying, graceful gait. I was so mesmerized by the poetic performance that I still have the program and ticket. I can tell you that on Thursday 9th Sept 2004, I sat in seat N1 at the Baxter Theatre, Cape Town. |
| the giraffe puppet from the production The Tall Horse |
Her palette is strong, her colours intense, the detail sublime – tiny dots of gold highlight the texture on the giraffe’s horn, a sinuous, long, black tongue entwines the curls of the equally black French railing, an inquisitive monkey on the dhow, strange boxes with Arabic font and measurement ... what do they contain?... scraps of maps embedded in the sea suggesting the journey – wonderful, tiny, visual codes that will be picked up by an astute child. (perhaps even by an adult?)
While I was writing Zeraffa Giraffa, I went to the Jardin des Plantes alongside the Seine in Paris to see the building of La Rotonde where the giraffe was housed together with her keeper, Atir. He slept up on a platform close to her face and remained with her for the rest of the 18 years she lived. I tried to imagine the bond that must have existed between them … two exiles from Africa… a boy who had never been further than Khartoum and a giraffe who had lost her savannah ... both alone in this strange, foreign city. What memories did they hold on to?
Then a few days ago I saw an article in a newspaper about Mario, a zookeeper who has a brain tumour and can no longer walk, whose last wish was to see his beloved giraffes he’d looked after at the Rotterdam zoo. He was taken there by the Ambulance Wish Foundation. The newspaper shows a photograph of a tall giraffe bending low over a fence and nuzzling the face of the zookeeper as he lies strapped to his ambulance stretcher. What greater bond than that?
If you visit La Rotonde on a quiet day, close your eyes and perhaps you’ll feel the hot wind of Africa and imagine yourself standing there with Zeraffa and her keeper Atir, while he whispers stories to her of a land far away. My giraffe and I have been on a long, long journey together. The giraffe’s journey took two years, mine took fifteen. Thank you Jane you’ve made the story come alive. Let’s pop those corks and blow the party hooters. Perhaps like the bakers of Paris, we might even celebrate with giraffe biscuits!
Zeraffa Giraffa, by Dianne Hofmeyr, illustrated by Jane Ray, published by Frances Lincoln, April 2014, translated so far as well, into Danish, Swedish, Korean and Afrikaans.www.diannehofmeyr.com
I've always found that there are certain characters in books of whom I get so fond that I don't want to say goodbye to them when the book ends. The hobbits were like that; when I finished The Lord of the Rings, I walked around in mourning for some days because I was no longer in a world where they were. Perhaps oddly, Horatio, in Hamlet, is another. There's something I really like about Horatio. He's on the edge of things, watching, but loyal and caring and clever. I picture him with a long scarf wound round his neck, glasses, a shock of dark hair, a wry smile. A bit like a French assistant we had when I was in the sixth form, as it happens!
And it's the same with the books I write. A few years ago, I wrote a book about Alfred the Great. It was called Warrior King. It's out of print now, but like Arnie, it'll be back. Soonish, I hope! There was a character in there called Cerys, a magic lady, a wise woman, with silver eyes. I really liked her.
She emerged from my imagination, but the other character from that book who stayed in my mind was real. She was Alfred's daughter, Aethelflaed (though in the book I called her Fleda - it made it less confusing, because there were so many other Aethel-whatnots hanging around). I discovered her when I was looking for a child who could be my point-of-view character when telling the story of Alfred - it was such a gift when I discovered that his oldest child was a daughter who would be just the right age at the time of the events in my story.
But Fleda became much more than that. I grew very fond of her. She was warm, impulsive, brave, and she could be defiant when she was defending something she believed in. I knew she must have been like that, because I knew that later, after the scope of my book, she married the Lord of the Mercians - and after his death, she became the Lady of the Mercians, Myrcna Hlaefdige, their de facto queen. She led them into battle and rebuilt their towns, and after her death, she was named in the Annals of Ulster as 'famosissima regina Saxonum', that most famous queen of the Saxons.
So when I got the chance to write a story for an anthology called Daughters of Time, a collection of stories about remarkable women from British history, written by contributors to the History Girls blog, it took no thinking at all to decide whom I would choose. I wrote about Aethelflaed at a time of transition for her, when she went from being princess of Wessex to wife of the Lord of the Mercians. It was an absolute joy to spend more time with her.
The only trouble is that the more I read about her, the more interesting she became. She had one daughter, Aelfwyn. She fostered her brother's oldest (but not quite legitimate) son, Aethelstan (who later became a great king of England): her brother was Edward, who succeeded Alfred. She fought alongside her brother; they must surely have been close. Yet after Aethelflaed's death, when Aelfwyn should have succeeded her, Edward rode in and carried Aelfwyn away into Wessex... and nothing more was heard of her. Edward became King then of Mercia as well as Wessex. Maybe she was put into a nunnery - or maybe not.
How much conflict and conniving, triumph and sadness, lie behind those few bare facts! I'd love to spend more time with Aethelflaed - and with Aethelstan and Aelfwyn. I'd love to explore their stories and try to understand their lives. One day, perhaps!
Daughters of Time is published this weekend. My story of the Lady of the Mercians is in there, but so are twelve other fascinating stories, many by writers who have blogged on An Awfully Big blog Adventure: Penny Dolan, for example, has written about Mary Wollstonecraft, Joan Lennon about Mary Anning, Catherine Johnson about Mary Seacole, Dianne Hofmeyr about Elizabeth Stuart. If you don't know much about any of these - as I didn't - you know what you need to do!
Where in the world will you be for World Book Day?
Maybe lucky enough to be celebrating books in some exotic corner while the rest of us languish in rain-soaked England? But wherever, World Book Day is an opportunity to celebrate not just books but special people who do so much to promote the love of books.
Did you read the recent post by Maeve Friel –
The Magic of the Hay Cartagena Festival –
where she tells of a man who wheels his library cart through the streets of Cartagena lending books to all in need of a story?
As Barry Lopez says in his book ‘
Crow and Weasel’:
‘The stories people tell have a way of taking care of them. If stories come to you, care for them. And learn to give them away where they are needed. Sometimes a person needs a story more than food to keep them alive.’
Mercy Jonathan works in a tiny shop called Make Africa owned by Janet Holding, in a village next to the sea on the southern tip of Africa in a place called Plettenberg Bay. The shop sells baskets and beads and fabrics from every part of Africa. It smells of the hot countries the objects come from… smoky wood and dried grass. But its also sells books.
Mercy is my special book person for World Book Day.
Her memories of story come from her childhood growing up on a farm in Malawi where her grandmother told her the story of Hare and Baboon and a jar of peanut butter. Of course old trickster Hare was faster than Baboon and finished the peanut butter in a matter of moments and was off and away, leaving nothing for Baboon. Sharing was the theme. And it’s no co-incidence that this is what Mercy does at Make Africa… she shares the creativity of all the artisans whose work she displays and shares the stories of the books she sells.
Loved by all her customers… the steady stream of foreign tourists who browse through the shop, as well as the locals popping in for a scrap of African cloth, she speaks four languages and is known for her flamboyant style of dress, her plaited hairstyles and her elaborate headscarves. I’m sorry to admit I visited her the first time without a camera and then returned again without warning on one of her less flamboyant days… but her smiling face says it all.
Piles of my picture book The Name of the Tree is Bojabi (The Magic Bojabi Tree in South Africa) have literally vanished because of her charm. She’s the best bookseller I know who just happens to live on the southern tip of Africa.
But with World Book Day coming up, there must be masses of other great booksellers in the UK, as well as in other corners of the earth, who authors need to recognise. What about doing a series of blogs on the best of them… and I don’t mean shops… I mean the person who holds the book and touches the pages and places it in the hands of the reader with a secret smile? Let's salute them! Thank you Mercy!
www.diannehofmeyr.comTHE NAME OF THE TREE IS BOJABI - Dianne Hofmeyr, illustrated by Piet Grobler, published by Frances Lincoln
With the snow still piled up in drifts and Artic winds blowing, I thought I'd introduce a bit of warmth with a hot African story... THE MAGIC BOJABI TREE
'Long ago a dry wind blew across the plains of Africa.
No rain fell. The grass shrivelled. Trees died.
The earth was as dry as a piece of old leather.
Elephant, Giraffe, Zebra, Monkey and Tortoise trudged
across the cracked earth looking for a smidgen to eat.'
I won't give a page by page account of the story. Suffice to say... when the animals discover a splendid tree covered in exotic fruit, guarded by a HUGE python, they need someone clever, brave and without hubris to save them.
I don't know about being clever... but you certainly have to be brave and without hubris if you take your books into schools.
But what I have discovered is how readily young children warm to storytelling... much more so, than when having the story read to them. They seem to respond more when they're able to use their imaginations to conjure up the sounds and atmosphere in a story, than when they are confined to seeing printed words and pictures on a page.
When telling a story you can't be too fixated about using the exact words. A few might get left out and each time you tell the story, it might be a little different, but something vital happens when you get off your chair and become the lion or the elephant or do the 'chitter chatter' silly monkey bit. A few musical affects to stretch the pause and the tension... a single bang on a xylophone, the sharp clap of a coconut clapper or the twang of a thumb piano... all help. You don't have to be musically gifted. Children are very forgiving.
Here are my very simple musical accompaniments for THE MAGIC BOJABI TREE.
And with a pair of pliers, some twists of wire and and a bit of imagination I now have an elephant 'in the making' (the wire contraption... not my son!)
And with an enlargement of Piet's tortoise, to use as a rod puppet, I'm all set.
So stand aside War Horse... THE MAGIC BOJABI TREE is ready to take you on!!!
And since my animals now speak fluent Brazilian Portuguese, German, Japanese and Afrikaans, if anyone needs them to go on tour beyond the hot plains of Africa, they'll be happy to do so. Their puppet-master unfortunately is not too fluent in these languages but hopefully the action will be enough to free the imagination.
P.S. They speak English too.
THE MAGIC BOJABI TREE, illustrated with gusto by the amazing Piet Grobler and published by Frances Lincoln, is out on 4th April.
Anyone who remembers Saturday matinees with comic swapping sessions, and being given the ‘funnies’ comic strip section of the newspaper on a Sunday, will understand the concept of a Benday dot. Those of you too young to remember the comic book era, think of the cyan, magenta, yellow and black dots made by an ink-jet printer or look closely at most modern printed matter and you’ll be seeing halftone dots… the close brother of the original Benday.
With Roy Lichtenstein’s retrospective showing at the Tate Modern right now, Benday dots are going to be as commonplace as freckles in summer. The dots fool the eye into seeing an infinite range of different shades just like the Pointillists did when they placed yellow paint next to blue to read green. The Benday dots had a slightly crude look. In early comic books the dots showed clearly against the cheap paper and sometimes when misprinted the images were annoyingly blurry.
The dots are named after Benjamin Henry Day whose father was the founder of the first mass newspaper in the US. They allowed an illustrator to rub the dots from a pre-made sheet directly onto their original artwork rather like Letraset.
Lichtenstein’s first cartoon image was a result of his son challenging him to paint Mickey Mouse. Not all of us rise to our son’s challenges quite as well. The painting from 1961, hangs in the Tate exhibition with the faces of Mickey and Donald Duck dotted in with a paint-covered dog-grooming brush. The breakthrough came when Lichtenstein created his own stencils for the dots. In his early images he painstakingly replicates the look of the popular comic book right down to not lining up the colours so a white space shows or to mis-registering the dots to create optical illusions that make the image shimmer. He was copying but restating the copied thing in other terms.
Along with Richard Hamilton and Eduardo Paolozzi in Britain and Andy Warhol in the US, he became part of the Pop Art movement. It’s aim to deal with things that were everyday fitted with his own. Ordinary objects from the supermarket and the American soda-parlour like the sandwich, the frosted glass with a paper straw wrapper, and the roasted turkey were some of his themes.
His cartoon-based images are often a mixture of sweetness and innocence, like an early Hollywood movie, but also show tension in the sharp black shapes. They are often melodramatic as in '
Drowning Girl', or women in states of stress as in '
Oh, Jeff I love you too... but…’, with clichéd gender roles as shown in mass media. They show a single ‘pregnant’ moment from which the whole story can be imagined. This idea of a single moment is also used in his war images by cropping and reworking existing comic images as in ‘
Whaam!’ Lichtenstein said: '
A minor purpose of my war paintings is to put military aggressiveness in an absurd light.’ His
Brushstroke series can be seen as a parody of Abstract Expressionism where the brush marks on the canvas were all important. He gives the impression of the paintings being executed with sweeping gestures, paint dripping, extraordinarily free and fluid, as if a large paintbrush has been swept across the work. But don't be fooled... in '
Little Big Painting' the ribbon-like strokes of colour are carefully planned even though the surface has the freshness of a quickly painted canvas. Each stroke is painted in... ironically without any sign of brushwork in the flat colour of the so-called brush marks.
In all his work, whether reproducing a comic image, or reassembling an image made famous by other artists like Picasso, Matisse and Monet, he seems to be suggesting in a playful way that art as the spontaneous expression of an artist’s feelings can also be a very controlled act.
Get to the Tate Modern quickly before the momentum builds up. Go early to avoid the crowds and choose a Tuesday if possible. Apparently it’s the quietest day. Take time to look up at his three dimensional constructions of explosions. Take a notebook and expand his stories. No cameras allowed. You’ll find yourself smiling at the energy of it all... and maybe feeling a quietened by the mystical tones of the last room when death was just around the corner for him.
I went on the coldest day of this year and came away warmed and happy. And you’ll never look at a piece of gridwork sheeting with perforated holes in the Underground, or anywhere else again, without imagining how Lichtenstein might have put it to use.
Dianne Hofmeyr is co-author together with Louisa Sherman of:
Directions in Art – MODERN PRINTMAKING
So you've come up with a blurb… what’s the recipe? Take an air of mystery, a sense of character, add a pinch of place and a little pace and mix all together so whoever picks up the book, senses the heady whiff and tastes adventure before he or she even takes a bite… (and thinks ‘I must have this book in my life. Off to the till I go!’)
If only! In a very short space with the average person’s very short attention span, we have to capture the buyer. And different writers will produce widely different blurbs but all blurbs have the same function – to convince a bookshop customer to buy the book they have in their hands.
So what are the basic concepts of a blurb?
– they are short
– they tend to have attention-grabbing words
– they use active rather than passive voice
– they tend to pose questions
– they might end with an ellipsis (…) so the reader has to imagine an outcome.
Other factors to consider:
– Who is the book being marketed to? The blurb must speak directly. A blurb for a teenage reader will be very different to one on a picture book bought by an adult to read to a child.
– What is the most interesting aspect of your book? Is it the character, the setting, the moral conflict? As we emerge from the fog of having written the book, we often can’t find an aspect to focus on. Get a friend to give you another crisp slant on the story with a few phrases and words.
– Make a list of words that give insight into the story. Find exciting synonyms that evoke atmosphere – replace ‘scared’ with ‘terrified’, ‘lonely’ with ‘desolate’, ‘hiding’ with ‘lurking’, ‘very’ cold with ‘murderously’ cold (see below). Okay this is ABC stuff for a writer
– Never summarize the story. You want to keep the reader guessing.
– Perhaps find a particular phrase or piece of dialogue in the story to use as a tagline.
– Don’t introduce too many characters. Don't confuse.
Marcus Sedgewick’s blurb for his book, Revolver, ticks all the boxes.
‘It’s 1910. In a cabin north of the Artic Circle, in a place murderously cold and desolate, Sig Andersson is alone.
Except for the corpse of his father, frozen to death that morning when he fell through the ice on the lake.
The cabin is silent, so silent and then there’s a knock at the door
It’s a stranger, and as his extraordinary story of dust and gold lust unwinds, Sig’s thoughts run more and more to his father’s prized possession, a Colt revolver, hidden in the storeroom.
A revolver just waiting to be used …’
Why am I so blurb obsessed? Because I’ve just written one for my latest book, Oliver Strange and the Ghosts of Madagascar and have fallen into and have tried to drag myself out of all the pitfalls – which included making reference to the ‘place du diable’, the place of the devil, which works in the context of the entire book but not in a blurb where someone might think the book is about devil worship!
Here’s the final result (cropped to make it legible) for a mid-range book… easy language, questions, quite different to a teenage novel, but should I have started with the tagline: ‘A modern day pirate story…’ ? I’m not sure.
If you have any blurbs to share – your own, or a brilliant one you’ve come across, please put them up or share any other recipe tips for a ‘tasty’ blurb.
www.diannehofmeyr.com
My New Year’s resolution is to enjoy all the simple things I forget to enjoy.
I’ll look at the things at my feet.
And have fun with the things on my feet.
I’ll watch cats play.
And play more often too.
I’ll think of my sister when I remember that huge moth on the red cement of her farmhouse verandah.
I’ll look at the things in my kitchen with fresh eyes.
I’ll get pleasure from plates of simple food.
I'll make homemade pizza more often for the yeasty smell of dough rising and vegetables grilling.
I’ll enjoy my coffee not because I’m a coffee addict but because I love that first sip in the morning.
I’ll enjoy the textures and simplicity of silvery displays catching the light.
I'll find texture in landscapes from scenes that have become too familiar.
I'll watch clouds and I'll dream.
And while I’m doing all this I’ll forget about deadlines.
All the best for a great year ahead to anyone making resolutions.
www.diannehofmeyr.comPlease don't use my photographs without permission.
Pity the poor writer… you have the scene playing out in your head, imagination flaring, fingers itching but before you can set pen to paper, finger to qwerty key, there are the practicalities and technicalities. How exactly does a flintlock pistol fire? What formation was used by Nubian foot soldiers? How big is the turning circle of a chariot? How did the Svenn Foyn harpoon gun, invented in 1870, work so effectively that it managed to just about annihilate the world whale population in a matter of years after its invention.
(For those who need to know… skip if you’re squeamish ... it consisted of a cannon set on a pivot so it was capable of pointing in any direction as the boat bobbed about. It fired a barbed explosive-head harpoon. Aimed and fired, the harpoon barb would hook into the whale. A moment later the explosive charge in the head of the harpoon would inflict a mortal wound.)
There are always experts willing to share, and there’s Google and a heap of books to explore but sometimes there’s a niggle that unless you’ve done something hands on, maybe you haven’t got the facts quite right and some smart reader will be only too happy to put you right.
I recently wrote a short story for an anthology for older teens called
Face of a Killer, that required me to know how to make a bomb. Having no access to a laboratory, I went the Google route and was admonished by a friend for putting something like making a bomb into a story for teenagers, which I thought odd. If I could find it online so could any teenager and much faster too.
In the absolute search for truth some writers have been known to take up hang-gliding, parachuting, sword fighting, kick-boxing, abseiling and numerous other pursuits that might not be suitable for someone whose closest encounter with extreme activity is cosying up to a laptop in a closeted room.
I can’t say I’ve wrestled a python to its knees but I’ve faced an elephant in the wild (that’s my black cap in the video) canoed with crocodiles and hippos and have a fair idea of how a flintlock works.
(When the trigger is pulled, it swings the jaws that hold the flint across a metal frizzen plate and produces a shower of sparks. The plate kicks forward to uncover the flash pan with a sprinkling of gunpowder. The sparks ignite the powder and the flash passes through a small hole in the barrel that leads to the combustion chamber. It ignites the main powder charge already rammed down the muzzle and discharges the bullet.)
So while some of us rely heavily on Google, I know others who have gone to great lengths and done some very brave extreme activity stuff, all in the interest of research. Please share.
Awards, translations, migrations and a mix of people from 52 countries, were all part of the hectic week-end that comprised the International IBBY Conference hosted by IBBY UK here in London at the end of August.
There were too many absolutely brilliant workshops and talks to identify individually. UK authors and illustrators - Michael Rosen, Marcus Sedgewick, Michael Morourgo, Aiden Chambers and Anthony Browne were there but into the mix came other heady spice, texture and flavour from international experts in children’s literature and luminaries such as Shaun Tan, Peter Sis, Bart Moeyaert and Kitty Crowther, winner of the Astrid Lingen Award for Illustration.
Highlight of the week-end had to be the Hans Christian Andersen Ceremony with the Author award going to María Teresa Andruetto from Argentina and Illustrator award going to Peter Sis from the Czech Republic. I couldn’t help feeling that the venue of the Science Museum at night with its surreal spotlights was the perfect setting for Peter Sis’s drawings. The machines seem to take on a life of their own...
Some of the work of the short-listed illustrators and some IBBY Honour titles are shown below - exciting, unusual, different. For more events and people see Candy Gourlay’s blog.
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The work of Alenka Sottler, an illustrator from Slovenia, depicting the story of Cinderella - Pepelka - with almost Seurat-like pointillism.
In Piroulito and Rosalia Effie Lada from Greece has speech impaired characters wearing beautiful masks and Eg Kan Ikkje Sove No (I Can't Sleep Now) shows the wonderful silhouetted work of Oyvind Torsetter from Norway... and lots more, snapped at random.
And finally I was delighted to meet Australian author, Mark Greenwood and his illustrator wife, Frane Lessac from Freemantle...
delighted to have Peter Sis sign my books...
and delighted to be in the heady atmosphere of such creative energy. Thank you IBBY UK for playing such excellent hosts.
What is landscape to a writer?
Waterland, Wuthering Heights, Far From the Madding Crowd are novels I read a long time ago without ever visiting the terrain and yet the landscape seeped into my consciousness… strong, powerful… never to be forgotten. If we start with books read from childhood, the list might go on forever of experiencing a landscape for the first time through the eyes of a writer. And this is what makes the new exhibition at the British Library:
Writing Britain – Wasteland to Wonderland, so fascinating.
Anyone who is slightly voyeuristic (what writers aren’t?) will find the exhibition utterly intriguing. Access to so many writers’ journals, diaries, notes, sketches, edits, proofs and musings, is the height of voyeurism. In the dimly lit quiet rooms it’s like being a ghost peering over the writer’s shoulder.
Fortify yourself. The exhibition is huge. But as writers or lovers of books, you’ll be richly rewarded. It moves from rural dreams, to the satanic mills of industry and from wild places to water lands, the city and places beyond the city to show how stories are shaped not just by the physical but the imagined physical. If you have an idea of the extent of the exhibition beforehand, you can set the pace. A break in the middle for lunch or coffee is a good option. The dim lighting, lack of bright visuals and... odd to say as a writer – the predominance of text and need to be up close to each glass case to read the words, even the stance of reading standing upright, make it tiring. But the rewards are there.
As I experienced the swirls and loops and fluid flow of ink from Wordsworth's pen, Bronté’s neat and spidery hand, Katherine Mansfield’s firm script in her
Suburban Fairy tale, Angela Carter’s italic in her manuscript for
Wise Children, the neat child-like hand of Lewis Carroll in his
Alice’s Adventure Underground and the fat cursive letters of Virginia Woolf writing her newspaper as a child – it occurred to me that I’m becoming unused to deciphering and reading real handwriting. Will our children’s children lose this skill entirely?
But it’s not just the script and inkblots that makes this all so personal. It’s the very true feeling of knowing how the writer has anguished and altered the words – drawings by John Betjeman overlaid with words, Thomas Hardy’s handwritten insertions on the proof copy of Far from the Madding Crowd, JK Rowling corrections to Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. And what must come as comforting to any writer the huge red crossings-out of James Joyce on a handwritten page of Ulysseswhere the amount of red far outweighs the written word.
It’s a heady mix. Interviews with writers talking about landscape, recordings of writers reading their work, poems of Sylvia Plath, Fay Godwin’s haun
So what is so hard about endings?
I’ve just written the last word on my first draft of a Work in Progress and have employed all the brain strain I can muster to get it right. There's no easy answer. The ending is what the reader walks away with – the resonance of the entire story. Wrap up the novel well – deepen the reading experience – and you’ll knock your readers out! But how?
Opening lines grab attention but it’s that final sentence that leaves the reader with a lasting impression. I flipped through a few last sentences of recent novels and found brilliant ending sentences harder to find than brilliant opening sentences. Maybe this sums it up. Most authors struggle.
What is it about endings? At its simplest there are only three options.
- Positive ending. Protagonist gets what he wants.
- Negative ending. Protagonist doesn’t get what he wants.
- Ambiguous ending. We don’t know if the protagonist will get what he wants.
Slight twists can turn each option into something more complex. In the positive ending the protagonist may get what he wants, but with a negative result i.o.w. at moral cost. In the negative ending he might have to give up what he wants, but gains by doing what’s right. This is often used in a ‘battle’ ending. At the end of my Egyptian novel Eye of the Moon, my hero had to give up what he’d hoped for throughout the novel… to regain the crown of Egypt… because the battle was at too great a cost. Too many lives were being lost. Not to give the protagonist his goal, is a risk for an author because readers want success but sacrifice can also be very powerful.
The ambiguous ending is sometimes the only choice. But don’t think of it as being weak. Sometimes it just ‘feels’ right and its power lies in it being able to generate discussion. What now? A good example of a powerful ambiguous ending is The Road. I won’t do the spoiler thing here.
What worked for me this time around (I’m a non plotter) – somewhere in the middle of writing the first draft I brainstormed all possible endings, however feasible or silly. Then with a list in hand I reduced them to the three strongest possibilities. And finally I found the one that felt right.
Once I had the right option there was still the business of needing to write it well. What makes an ending resonate? In my struggles, I came up with this:
- feels right for this type of story
- is not predictable and still has an element of surprise (hard one that)
-
14 Comments on END GAME - Dianne Hofmeyr, last added: 11/22/2011
If you've never seen a water buffalo giving directions, or had a strange visitor who's questioned your ideas and opinions, or had toys disappear in a garden visited by a faceless, barnacled diver, or discovered a dugong on your lawn, or heard a chorus of dogs howling at the night, or found that maps actually
can lead you to the edge of the world, then I'll direct you (not with a pointy hoof I must say) to go immediately to a certain secret door to a cupboard that is marked
The Illustration Cupboard at no 22 Bury Place in St James, London where you'll be '
surprised, relieved and delighted' at what you find.
Once as I was strolling through the gardens of the People’s Culture Park just outside the Forbidden City in Beijing, I was stopped in my tracks by a man writing on the pathway. He used large sweeping movements across the stone with a brush dipped in nothing more than water. As fast as he wrote so the characters evaporated and disappeared like an invisible memory of the city. The temporality of the water writing took my breath away… it seemed as futile and at the same time as purposeful as shouting words on the wind.
There’s a similar concept in the work of Andrew van der Merwe who catches ephemeral moments, not in water but in wet sand. He uses the wide open vistas of the sea – sand, sky and rocks – to inform his work. The script appears totally at one with the landscape. The marks are as mysterious as runic or cuneiform inscriptions and seem to echo and almost emphasize the ripples left by waves and like mirror mosaics they catch glimpses of the sky in the water that collects in the hollows and grooves. The patterns and marks are precise. He has devised special tools to make them and he leaves no trace of footprints or upturned sand.
The work focuses on the fleeting moment as we wait for the wind to dry and blur the script, or waves to come and wash it away. Remember doing this with sandcastles? Rushing down to the beach the next day to see what had happened? It’s an ever-changing process –in his case, a tactile merging of words with the physical. To me the marks themselves together with the idea of being transitory – that sense of temporariness and ephemerality – seem to focus and accentuate glimpses of atmospheres, memories, sounds and movements that go unnoticed and sometimes even unseen.
So since it’s August and some of us are at our desks and not at the sea… here we are then…
Dianne Hofmeyr: www.diannehofmeyr.com
For a review of the 2011 Kate Greenaway:
http://awfullybigreviews.blogspot.com/2011/07/grahame-baker-smiths-farther-flies-off.ht
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As I experienced the swirls and loops and fluid flow of ink from Wordsworth's pen, Bronté’s neat and spidery hand, Katherine Mansfield’s firm script in her Suburban Fairy tale, Angela Carter’s italic in her manuscript for Wise Children, the neat child-like hand of Lewis Carroll in his Alice’s Adventure Underground and the fat cursive letters of Virginia Woolf writing her newspaper as a child – it occurred to me that I’m becoming unused to deciphering and reading real handwriting. Will our children’s children lose this skill entirely? 
9 Comments on Tales from Outer Suburbia, Bird Kings and other things- Dianne Hofmeyr, last added: 9/8/2011
Oh. this is one of my absolute favourite stories for telling to younger children - although the tree's name in "my" version is different.
So lovely to see the illustrations and colours in this version!
Sounds entrancing!
Sounds wonderful, and I love the illustrations!
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Just beautiful, Dianne. Lovely to see such a super story getting the illustrations it deserves. And I hope it's as successful as War Horse!
Does anyone know how to get rid of comments that aren't applicable?
Penny there seem to be so many names for this tree. Was yours called Ungali by any chance? A Canadian Storyteller Celia Barker Lottridge uses this name. I think the story has West African origins but is told throughout Africa.My War Horse comment is of course tongue in cheek Adele but thanks for all your good wishes.
I love this story, Diane, and you did a great job of reading it to us at the last SAS retreat. You should do a youtube video' it really brings the story to life and enhances the experience of reading the book
Thanks Saviour... will have to improve my technique first...
But how odd that you should review another lion book... The Lion who Ate my Arm on the ABBA Review today. Talk about synchronicity! And what a pity my book was too for the lion event you mentioned there.
'too late" is what I was trying to say there.
Di, your reading of this story last year at Folly Farm was absolutely magical. Storytelling is as much about the teller as the story - and you are an absolute expert and joy to watch! xx
Go Di! Wishing your multi-lingual animals great success on their journey!
Very warming on a frigid day. But I expect this story will work all the same on a hot day too! It is very imaginative. Congrats Di!
Lovely! I too want to hear (and see) you read it, Dianne.
Thanks everyone. It's great to have a new picture book out there. Good news! Apparently picture books were strong at Bologna.
All the best for your new book Di.
Love James