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I've just got home from a school drama performance. I don't go to these very often any more—I have a few nieces and one nephew who were into drama, but they've all finished school now, and anyway, it was only the nephew who was in Sydney, so I didn't see too many of the niece's productions at their school in Canberra. And I don't have kids of my own, and I'm not a teacher any more—so what was I doing at a high school drama performance?
It was, of course, related to the day job, but this is in fact a school that, curiously, I have a strange kind of long-standing connection with.
More than ten years ago, when I was working on the Nestlé Write Around Australia program at the State Library of NSW, I got my dander up one day reading yet another tribute to private schools in the Sydney Morning Herald. This time, they reported on the end of year speech given by the principal of some posh eastern suburbs or north shore or wherever the hell it was school. Truly. The principal's speech given at the speech night. Featured news. But only if it's a private school. So I took up my pen (actually, that's sheer rhetoric; I wrote it on a computer of course) and wrote a letter to the editor that went something like this:
I look forward to the day that the end of year speech made by the principal of Rooty Hill High School is front page news in the Herald.
They published it.
The next day, the principal of Rooty Hill High School, Christine Cawsey, also had a letter published in the paper, thanking me and saying she'd be delighted to supply said speech any time the Herald cared to run it.
I was horrified, because to be honest, I wasn't even 100% sure when I wrote the letter that there WAS a Rooty Hill High School. I chose the name because Rooty Hill is such an iconic western Sydney suburb and I just knew that it would have the right resonance for the point I was trying to get make. But when Chris's letter was published, I was mostly just worried I'd inadvertently offended her, and the school and the students.
So I rang her. And she laughed and said nothing could be further from the truth. What had happened was some of the school's senior students had read my letter (extraordinary enough, because as we know, kids don't read any more, especially not newspapers and especially not kids from a suburb like Rooty Hill and even if by chance they did it would especially not be the Sydney Morning Herald*) and rushed into her office saying, Ms Cawsey! Ms Cawsey! Is your speech going to be in the paper? and so alerted her to it (because school principal really DON'T have time to read the newspaper, especially not the letters page, although knowing Chris as I now do a little, I bet she would have got to it eventually). And so she wrote her response.
And we laughed more about the whole stupidity of the media's bias towards public schools and how we'd, together, struck a blow against it, and that was that.
I heard or read Chris's name often enough over the years—she's been president of the public schools' principal association and was and is often asked to comment on a variety of issues to do with (public) education, on the radio, in the papers—but as far as my personal association with the school went, that was kind of it.
Until I started in the Day Job.
I don't write about the day job all that much on this blog. It's tricky—writing about work is always tricky, for any blogger, but made particularly so by the fact that WestWords (aka The Western Sydney Young People's Literature Project—like our fancy new nam
Amber Benson, Tara in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, on her new(ish) career as a writer and her love of, among numerous writers, Diana Wynne Jones. (And if anyone has read her middle grade novel Among the Ghosts, I want to hear from you.)
Disclaimer—Marie-Louise is a dear friend and one of the loveliest people I know. She's been a picture book artist and writer for many years, and this is her first junior novel. I'm not even going to pretend to be unbiased—I loved this book and read it in one sitting on a rainy Sunday afternoon with my cats playing tag-team on my lap and a couple of small squares of home-made chocolate fudge to hand. Perfect reading conditions, in other words.
But friendship and personal admiration aside, I really did love this book. It's a classic adventure novel, with ghosts and a type of time travel, but also with a slightly darker contemporary edge. Set in the old mill building where Marie-Louise had her artist's studio for many years, it's the story of 12 year old Jessie, recently moved to Dublin after the death of her father, who stumbles across a bead factory with her dress-designer/maker mother. The bead factory turns out to be a front for a couple of private detectives, who are actually investigating paranormal activity in the building in the shape of a mysterious portal at the top of four steps that lead to a brick wall—and a couple of ghosts.
One of these ghosts is the enormous Greenwood, who was hanged on the site of the building in 1201 and has been trying ever since to solve the riddle of the Timecatcher (a kind of vortex behind the portal where time past continues on), which he accidentally opened before his death.
The other ghost is that of G, a boy about Jessie's age, who died in an accident in the abandoned mill building some forgotten years earlier. G can't remember who he was, which he puts down to the head injury sustained in the accident. G quite likes being a ghost, but is frustrated by his inability to leave the confines of the mill, and remains angry with the friends who left him to die.
Add to the mix the evil spirit of a man hanged alongside Greenwood who is determined to re-enter the Timecatcher and steal the source of its power, chuck in a bit of Viking mythology, a great big whack of Irish history, all in the hands of a writer with great control over her narrative (voice and rather complicated plot) and you end up with a terrifically fast-paced but also intellectually challenging plot for smart kid readers (and others). Enjoy. And think of my friend M-L!
I loved Penni Russon's mysterious, elliptical novel of place, dreams, grief and identity. I was going to add time to that list, but that's not strictly accurate—it's not a time slip novel at all, although it feels very much like one, and reminds me of books like Charlotte Sometimes and even somehow Jill Paton Walsh's Goldengrove Unleaving. (The latter, I think, largely somehow in a shared mood or tone, as well as the non-straightforward narrative, of which, it must be said, I am a fan. It might also have something to do with the melancholia in fairy tales that Penni refers to in her author's note.) I also reckon fans of Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy would find much to be challenged and intrigued by in Only Ever Always—there are echoes of Lyra-like characterisation in Clara in particular. And from there we can also draw a line to 19th century literature, in the somewhat Dickensian overtones to Clara's world (has there ever been a more over-used word in book reviews than Dickensian?!) and the narrative courage of the great Victorian novelists.
There's a lot to say about Penni's narrative choices in Only Ever Always—in particular, the use of the second person narrative voice in certain sections of the novel, which somehow seems to draw in and implicate the reader as a participant, as a third version of Claire/Clara—but that might be best left to my teaching (and personal ruminations). What can I say, I'm a narratology geek (although not as big a one as I'd like!).
With parallel stories, worlds and characters, this is not a novel for a casual reader—it requires close attention, not just from the intellect, but from the heart. It's a book where not having all the answers is the most satisfying and in fact only conclusion—because life isn't always neat and tidy, and open endings suggest adventure and the great wonder of uncertainty—for the brave. If that sounds like a book for you— as it is a book for me—then I whole-heartedly commend Only Ever Always to you.
No, no, no, not THAT ABBA—my favourite band of the 70s (one day I will share my ABBA scrapbook with you all). No, the lovely UK writers (will you just check out that list!) who collectively blog at ABBA—An Awfully Big Blog Adventure are holding an online literary festival at the ABBA blog. Hooray!
Now, what is an online literary festival, I hear you ask. Well, to be honest, I'm not entirely sure—at least, I wasn't when I first heard about it on Facebook and Twitter. But as I've checked it out, it appears that, over 2 days this weekend (UK time), a series of blog posts from a huge range of writers will appear every half hour or so. If you go here, you can see the line-up: and if you're like me, you'll be squealing with pleasure at the wonderful names that are there. Adele Geras! Hilary McKay! Malachy Doyle! Mary Hoffman! Susan Price! and so many many others.
I am also reliably informed that there will be:
Amazing Blogs!
Stunning Videos!
Exciting Giveaways!
Fascinating Interviews!
Mind-Boggling Competitions!
So check it out. Follow it on Twitter (hashtag #ABBAlitfest) or subscribe via your preferred RSS reader. It should be brilliant fun.
I attended a talk by Valerie Lawson, biographer of PL Travers at the State Library of NSW tonight. Valerie and one of the Library's curators, Emma Gray, who put together a Mary Poppins exhibition at the library a couple of years ago, spoke about Travers' archive, held by the Mitchell Library, and a good selection of items from the collection were on display for us to look at. These included type-written notes by Travers about the script of the Disney film of Mary Poppins (which she hated), a letter from Julie Andrews during the making of the film, and a range of letters from children and people like Ted Hughes about the books. There were various editions of Travers' books (not just Poppins books, but also a copy of a children's novel called I Go By Sea, I Go By Land, which I'd really like to read), photographs and memorabilia of the film, including the program from the '65 Oscars and a program from the UK premiere which was 100% ads! (Apart from a photograph of Princess Margaret.) So some things don't change.
The talk was interesting, although I knew a fair bit of the Travers story, but it was a real treat to see the archives. These are available for the public to access, by the way, as are all the items held at the Mitchell. And I forgot to take my copy of Lawson's book (originally titled Out of the Sky She Came, the new edition is called Mary Poppins, She Wrote) and Valerie kindly offered to sign it if I send it to her, which I will do.
An added treat to the night was I at last got to meet Matthew Finch, who I've been corresponding with for a while. I'm not sure how to best sum up Matthew—he's been an academic, primary school teacher and is a writer with a steady stream of freelance from work. Matthew has a particular interest in creativity in education and is on a self-funded tour around the world to check out innovative programs in and out of schools. Matthew got in touch with me when he read a post I wrote about Patricia Wrightson after her death last year, and then to ask me more about the Paint the Town Read early literacy strategy I'm involved with in the Day Job. He's specifically here to check out Paint the Town Read, which he tells me is a world-leader in its whole-of-community approach to early literacy. He was at the Paint the Town Read reading day at Auburn last week and was totally blown away by it. Matthew's taught in areas of London with a similar demographic to Auburn and he was deeply impressed at the way parents and community members, such as the proprietor of the local Michele's cafe, were engaged with the project. He's off to Parkes next week, where Paint the Town Read began, to speak to Rhonda Brain, the project's creator, and the PTTR team out there.
There's not actually a central website for Paint the Town Read, so I'll link to the Blue Mountains version, Paint the Blue Read.
Matthew and I headed out after the Travers session and found a caf
I first used this phrase in my blog post about this year's Sydney Writers' Festival in context of the panel I chaired on the young adult/adult cross-over novel that was, rather ironically I thought, called "When is a children's book not a children's book" (ironic, because it wasn't about children's books at all). This is what I wrote:
given the title, I also brought in the question of Whither the
Children's Book in a world when YA and the cross-over gets all the
attention
but to be honest, we didn't really answer the question. I think, from memory, we all kind of agreed that children's books don't get much attention and then moved on to questions.
Because not a lot seems to be about the children's book, these days. The children's novel, to be precise. YA gets vastly more of the blog space, media attention and arguably, reviews—although the picture book probably gets a fair bit of review space as well (and Shaun Tan's done a hell of a lot to make the picture book an acceptable topic of conversation in adult society). And increasingly, I've noticed that when a children's novel does get critical attention, it's suddenly claimed as being young adult.
It happened to The Graveyard Book. It happened to When You Reach Me. And these are both classics examples of children's literature, as far as I am concerned. I've argued the toss on this online and elsewhere, especially about The Graveyard Book, which people seem to want to claim as YA primarily, I think, because it deals with death and because of the extremely scary opening scene where the family is murdered (oh shut up, that's not a spoiler). My argument about The Graveyard Book is this: it ends at the point where most YA takes up: Bod has to leave the graveyard to find his agency, and we don't get to see that process. The rest of the novel—Bod finding who he is in the context of the only family he knows, through adventures that are often perilous, coupled with the exploration of friendship—is the classic stuff of the children's novel.
The claim for When You Reach Me as YA puzzles me even more. Thematically, it shares nothing in common with the typical YA novel, but is firmly in the tradition of the great children's novels—Harriet the Spy, A Wrinkle in Time. Andre Norton's Octagon Magic springs to mind for some reason. I'm also thinking of The Game of the Goose and the lesser known The Games Board Map—children's novels with a puzzle to be solved at the heart. There's no subtext of the achieving of subjectivity, such a classic feature of the YA novel. These are all novels about children, with the concerns of children at their heart—friendship and family and belonging and home.
(For the record, I had a conversation about this with Rebecca Stead at Reading Matters last month, and she is firmly of the opinion that she writes children's novels—and she says the letters she gets from her readers bears this out. So there.)
The only thing I can put the claim for such books to be YA down to is this—that they are books that are literary, meta-textual, substantial books full of ideas and complex plotting. They'
I caught up with my one-time student Roberta Lowing during Sydney Writers' Festival, where she was on the program to talk about her first novel, Notorious, published by Allen and Unwin late last year. Roberta was in a class I taught in writing for children and young adults in the MA in creative writing at the University of Sydney about 8 years ago now, I guess. I've bumped into Roberta and several other students from that class over the years, but I hadn't seen her for a while and hadn't caught up with the news of her novel.
So imagine how thrilled I was to discover that Notorious was shortlisted for the Prime Minister's Literary Awards! I haven't had the chance to read the book yet—it's longish, and looks like it needs some serious time to concentrate on it, and most of my reading is done in shortish bursts these days. Congratulations Roberta! It's such exciting news. And Roberta tells me she's planning on going back to her children's novel next, which pleases me very much!
And of course, which reminds me that I didn't blog the announcement of the shortlists for the children's and young adult books either. I have friends on these lists, which is wonderful of course, but they are both also just really strong, interesting lists, and while I have my personal favourites, I think any of them would be most worthy of the top gong. And the good news, of course, is that the $100,00 prize money is being shared around the shortlistees. So heartiest congratulations to the following—the winners are announced early July.
They snuck up on me this year! I always have in my head that the shortlists are announced around Easter, but as I'm not actually even sure when Easter is this year, I suppose I am just mostly entirely out of the loop.
I had a flex day from work today, and was looking forward to an internet and email-free day spent with my boys and my books (by which I mean books that I want to read* rather than books that I have to read**, although there is a huge cross over in that particular Venn diagram...). But internet junky that I am, I couldn't help just checking in on Facebook and Twitter, only to discover that today was the day—and not only that, that the Notables were going up a good couple of hours before the shortlist announcement. So that kind of disrupted my work-free day, because with a job like mine, any time stuff comes up that's kids' book-related, it's always kind of work. (There's that Venn Diagram again.)
So then the Notables went up. (Not sure when exactly—maybe 10ish Sydney time? Wasn't wearing a watch. Flex day, remember?) And my first reaction was what a strong list it was, across all the five categories. (You can read it here—far too long to post.) Many of the titles in the older readers list were books I'd read for the NSW Premier's Awards (not all as there are different pub dates for eligibility for the two awards) and so I can attest to the strength of the Notables in this category in particular.
But then that also made me realise that two books that we in fact shortlisted—Belinda Jeffrey's Big River Little Fish and Kirsty Eagar's Saltwater Vampires—didn't even make the Notables. Now, I'm not suggesting for a moment that all awards should have huge cross-over on their lists—on the contrary, the great thing I think about the various state awards is that they do throw up titles that often get overlooked elsewhere. By which I guess I mean reviews and the CBC list, which is, after all, the main game for children's and YA books in this country. I'm cool with the differences between our shortlists (although damn I wish my dear friend Cassandra Golds's The Three Loves of Persimmon had made it past the Notables!***) but I really cannot understand why year after year some of what I consider to be the finest and most interesting books don't even get a Notables nod. And that's two out of two misses for Belinda and Kirsty—writers who I know are held in the highest regard in the broader YA community. Perhaps there's a limit to how many books they list—but it doesn't look like it, if you compare this year's long Older Readers Notables list to last year's paltry 16 (or was that the year before? I think it was last year). So I guess we should be grateful it's as long and as comprehensive as it is. It is a good longlist—I just feel desperately sorry that some really good writers seem to get consistently overlooked.
The Younger Readers notables list is also very healthy, but I still think there's not as many longer novels being recognised for this age group. I often feel like they fall through the cracks, and I wonder where books by the likes of Patricia Wrightson or Lilith Norman or Ivan Southall would end up these days.
But look, I don't mean to be too hard on the awards, because I think these are really strong Notable and Shortlists—and look, I haven't even really got to the Shortlists yet! I guess I think they are a really good representation of what was a bit of a corker year on Australian's children's and YA publishing. And knowing that the majority of the really extraordinary YA books from last year were by women (sorry chaps—some good s
There's been so many articles and blog posts about Diana Wynne Jones in the week since her death—more, I think, than I can remember for any other author. And I've read so many people say, on places like Facebook and in the comments to obituaries and In Memoriams, "Oh, I've never heard of this author before, but now I want to read her". And so in the way of these things, a whole new generation (and by that I don't mean age) of Diana Wynne Jones fans is about to be born.
And so, as we all knew, her legacy will live on through her books. But I had a conversation with a friend last night, who, enquiring how I was in the wake of Diana's death (a few people have done that, it's been very touching), said something very beautiful to me. Neil had read my blog (I assume!), or anyway, he knows the story of why Diana means so much to me, and her influence on, and he said to me last night that she will live on, not simply through her books, although certainly that, but through the line of writers that will follow in her wake precisely because of the influence her work had on people like me, who in turn, and as a result, are helping new writers grow. That's kind of a clumsy way of putting it—Neil is much more adept than me at Plain English—but it was such a wonderful way of thinking about Diana's heritage-to-come that I wanted to share it.
Anyway, I've decided to try and aggregate as many of the online media, blogs and other tributes to Diana I can find. Someone wondered out loud on the Diana Wynne Jones listserve if anyone was somehow collecting the vast amount of words that have been said about her this past week, and so I offered. I'll keep adding to this as I find new material, so please fell free to send me any links and I'll add to it. And I've also been given permission to post some of the emails sent to the listserve. Feel free to use the comments to add your own tribute if you feel so moved.
This is the paper I gave at Diana Wynne Jone: A Conference, in at the University of the West of England, Bristol, July 2009. It's a mix of personal anecdote and analysis of English fantasy and Australian children's fiction of the 60s and 70s. But mostly it was, and is, my heartfelt thanks and tribute to Diana Wynne Jones and everything she and her books have meant to me. (I had a bit of trouble with the formatting, bringing this over from Word, so apologies for the funny spacing etc.)
_______________
From Alice to Aiken in the
Antipodes:
An Australian Childhood spent in
Fantasy England
or
How Diana Wynne Jones Changed My
Life
I’d like to begin by explaining that this paper is not as perhaps as Diana Wynne
Jones-focused as most of the papers you have heard this weekend, which I am
sure is probably clear to you from the title and my abstract. It is, as you
might have guessed, something of a perambulation through my childhood reading,
which in fact did not include Diana’s books at all—nor Joan Aiken’s for that
matter, as far as I can remember, although her name was certainly familiar to
me and I have read and forgotten far more books as a child than my poor old 45
year old brain can recall. You’ll have to forgive me that small fib in my paper
title—I liked the assonance too much. On hindsight, it could have been from
Alice to Uttley, as Uttley’s A Traveller in Time, while not a fantasy of the sort
I’ll be mostly addressing tod
As many of you will have heard, Diana Wynne Jones died yesterday. Although Diana's death was not unexpected—she was diagnosed with lung cancer two years ago—it has nevertheless come as a great shock, and a great sadness, to her legions of fans. Not least of all me.
My great love and admiration for Diana and her work is well known, I think, and I have found myself deeply upset by the news of her death in ways I hadn't anticipated. I have been thinking about her and her family and the people I know who knew and loved her—Charlie and Farah and Sharyn especially—all day today. And remembering the time I spent with her on her one trip to Sydney, more than 20 years ago now. I was so privileged to introduce her to an audience of fans at the State Library of NSW, when I was so young and really, knew so little about anything to do with writing, and to spend an evening over dinner with her at the Sydney Theatre Company restaurant, where I recorded our conversation, which became my first published author interview.
Somewhere I have a letter from her, which I will always treasure, and a more recent email, after I sent her a package of books by Australian writer friends who are fans and admirers, send to help her through the long and difficult periods of treatment and recuperation. And the tapes from that interview, which I imagine I should donate to the archive at Seven Stories Centre for the Children's Book—maybe before I do I'll listen to those tapes and hear her voice and that wonderful, rich laugh.
There will be much written about Diana and her work in the coming weeks. One of my Facebook friends noted that Diana "knew flowers and cats better than any writer I've ever encountered"—and I would add to that children. She has always written about children with a great sense of and respect for their dignity and capability, even while she understood how difficult it can sometimes be to be a child in a world controlled by adults who sometimes put their own interests and vanities first.
I hope and trust that she will be given the due recognition for her genius and her deep understanding of human beings in all their complexity.
And let's not forget how funny she was.
I've often said that Diana changed my life, and I have never, ever meant that in any way flippantly or without the deepest sense of sincerity and gratitude. I've told the story many times, most recently at the conference held in her honour in 2009. I've been meaning since then to make the final changes I made by hand in my little university student bedroom at the conference to the electronic version of the paper I gave, and I'm going to do that at last and upload the paper here. So if you haven't heard the story, you'll just have to wait a day or two longer.
Godspeed, Diana, and thank you for all the spells—For, as Paolo and Tonino Montana were told over and over again, a spell is the right words delivered in the right way.
The Aurealis Awards are Australia's spec fiction awards, and the shortlists have been announced today. I've copied the lists of most interest to the children's and YA community, and the rest of the list is up at the website (you need to download a pdf). Turns out I know quite a lot of the non-kids/youth shortlisted writers from Twitter and Facebook! Cool! Congratulations to all the shortlistees. The awards are announced in Sydney on May 21 (during Sydney Writers' Festival, alas for me—don't think I'll be able to make it.)
CHILDREN'S FICTION (told primarily through words)
Grimsdon, Deborah Abela, Random House
Ranger's Apprentice #9: Halt's Peril, John Flanagan, Random House
The Vulture of Sommerset, Stephen M Giles, Pan Macmillan
The Keepers, Lian Tanner, Allen & Unwin
Haggis MacGregor and the Night of the Skull, Jen Storer & Gug Gordon, Aussie Nibbles (Penguin)
CHILDREN'S FICTION (told primarily through pictures)
Night School, Isobelle Carmody (writer) & Anne Spudvilas (illustrator), Penguin Viking
Apparently, I have been given a "One Lovely Blog" award by a reader. I don't really know who this reader is, but they have a genealogy blog and are apparently a regular Misrule reader. Well, as regular as anyone can be, given how sporadic my blogging has been lately. (Yes, I am still thinking about my 15 books lists—sigh. Premier's Lit Award reading got in the way and I guess I I have lost a bit of momentum.) So thanks, family history reader! And I'll try and do better in the regular posting stakes.
As you may know, I was on the judging panel of the Ethel Turner Prize in the 2011 NSW Premier's Literary Awards. The shortlists were announced today—alas, no awards event, as is usually the case, as we're only two weeks out from a state election. A pity—the shortlist announcements are always fun. Oh well.
Anyway, here, in case you haven't already seen them, are the shortlists for the Ethel Turner and Patricia Wrightson Prizes:
Ethel Turner Prize for Young People's Literature
The Ethel Turner Prize ($30,000), named in honour of the acclaimed author of the children's classic Seven Little Australians, is offered for a work of fiction, non-fiction or poetry written for young people of secondary school level.
Patricia Wrightson Prize for Children's Literature
The Patricia Wrightson Prize ($30,000) is offered for a work of
fiction, non-fiction or poetry written for children up to secondary
school level.
The prize is named in honour of children’s author
Patricia Wrightson, whose books have won many prestigious awards world -
wide including the Hans Christian Andersen Medal (1986) for The Nargun and the Stars.
No, not the blog—me. And the cats. And several thousand books. One week from today and we move to this house:
Many of you will already know this, from Facebook and Twitter. The house is in South Windsor and was built in the 1870s. It's on a large block of land and has 3 bedrooms, plus a studio out the back (2 rooms plus en suite) that writer friends on Facebook have been dibs on for a writers' retreat. (The studio is going to be named—what else?!—Misrule. The house itself is called Medlow.)
Much of this year has been taken up with real estate—open houses on the weekend (looking and then selling my flat) and work has been insanely busy (all good but BUSY!) so I haven't had nearly as much time to read as I a.) want to and b.) need to. Hasn't stopped me buying a heap of books, but! Gleebooks, my favourite bookshop, has just opened a store in Dulwich Hill (yup, just as I'm about to leave the inner west) and I did my fair share of contributing to their first week's takings. And I've had to drop into their children's shop and main shop in Glebe once or twice as well... Yes, very sensible, buying new books as fast as I am packing the existing library... But, oh, Charlotte Wood read at the Dulwich Hill opening weekend, and I had been meaning to buy Brothers & Sisters for ages, and then I discovered that Lynne Rae Perkins has a new novel out, and I had a bunch of birthday presents to buy and, well, you know how it goes...!
Reading my way through the shortlist I have to say I am impressed by both the strength and diversity of the selections. There's not a dud on the list, and a pleasing range of style and subjects. The two I hadn't read—David Metzenthen's Jarvis 24 and Glenda Millard's A Small Free Kiss on the Dark—are clearly examples of writers at the top of their form.
Hair! It's everywhere! But more of that in a minute.
I had a very theatrical day today. First thing, I had the opportunity to see the wonderful Monkey Baa Theatreproduction based on the picture book Fox by Margaret Wild and Ron Brooks. (For those of you who aren't familiar with them, Monkey Baa specialises
in children's theatre, adapting children's and young adult books for the
stage. I have now seen three of their productions and they have all
been wonderful.)
This production (a partnership with Siren Theatre Co) takes Margaret's beautiful text and turns it into an opera, performed by a singer-narrator (The Spirit) and three dancers, using costume, puppets and cloth to represent Dog, Magpie and Fox, and their joyful and desperate races across the Australian landscape.
The auditorium at Parramatta Riverside Theatre was well-packed with primary school aged children, and although I sat up the very back, you could just tell they were completely enthralled with the performance—even despite the perhaps challenging score and that it was likely the first time any of them had experienced operatic singing. I sat behind some boys who looked to me to be about Year 5, and they weren't the least bit restless. And the questions asked of the cast the end were mature, insightful, and surprisingly sophisticated. One student asked about the relationship between the narrator Spirit and Magpie—was Spirit meant to be a bird of prey somehow connected to Magpie. And indeed, something very like that had been part of their discussions in developing the piece for performance.
It was such a pleasure to experience this performance—I was teary at the very beginning, seeing the friendship of Dog and Magpie portrayed and knowing what was to come. I was actually working with Margaret at ABC Books when she wrote Fox, and I was privileged to read it in early draft form, so it's a book that I hold very dear for that reason alone—but also because I think it's in the top handful of best picture books every published in this country.
I met with Tim and Eva from Monkey Baa (and their intern Katie) just yesterday to discuss our respective work and we hope to work together on some projects as soon as the spring school holidays. I'm extremely pleased about that! And what lovely folk they are. I was heavily involved in theatre at university (Good heavens! Dramac has a website!) and while it's not my first love it is a great one.
And so to the rest of my day—and hair! (No, not Hair, despite my subject heading, although it's a favourite!)
Although the Western Sydney Young People's Literature Project is a regional project, it is hosted by Blacktown City Council, and so the fabulous staff at the Blacktown Arts Centre are my colleagues. The Arts Centre offers visual and performing arts residencies, and today the two women who had just completed their performing arts residency presented the work they've been working on over the past three weeks. I'm not going to go into too much detail here, as the residency is absolutely the start of the development of the work, and it's not my place to reveal their creative ideas so early on in the piece, but I can say that it is on the theme of hair, and women's (in particular) relationship to their hair and what our hair has to do with our sense of identity, beauty, cul
I've been enjoying watching book trailers since they emerged in the past couple of years, and I think they could be a terrific project to work on with young people. I'm wondering if anyone has done this, if they have guidelines or "how tos" or even any ideas about what you think makes for a good, effective book trailer. Also, where do people get the music from without breaking copyright? I'm really keen to start collecting and developing resources on book trailers, so please use the comments section to voice your thoughts on the topic, or if you already have resources you're willing to share, please email me: judith dot ridge at gmail dot com
I think I've linked to the odd book trailer before, and I'm going to again here. Kirsty Eager, who wrote what I think is one of 2009's most over-looked YA novels, Raw Blue, has her second novel, Saltwater Vampires, due in September. Kirsty has a terrific book trailer for Saltwater Vampires, which had me as soon as I read the word Batavia*. But even if you don't know the history of that terrible shipwreck (and Kirsty tells me she has taken some liberties with the history, as you might expect from the title), I think the trailer works fantastically well as an extremely atmospheric and creepy teaser for the novel. I for one can't wait for the book. And I am entirely confident there's not a sparkly vampire to be found!
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*While we're on the subject, which one of you lot borrowed my (signed) copy of Gary Crew's Strange Objects?
Over the past year or so, as part of my day job, I've been partnering on a number of Paint the Town Read projects in western Sydney. Paint the Town Read is a community reading and early literacy initiative, developed more than 12 years ago in Parkes by the dynamic Rhonda Brain, then the principal at Parkes PS. Rhonda was concerned about the literacy levels of the schools' students, and so decided to put all their resources into literacy programs for the K-2 students (Stage 1 in NSW).This made a difference, but they were still only getting about 85% of their kids up to benchmark, and what the teachers determined was that the children who were falling behind weren't coming to school with the required degree of literacy-readiness—they were coming from text-poor home environments, where they weren't read to or exposed adequately to language through books, talking, singing, rhymes and so on.
So Rhonda decided a community education and awareness-raising project was needed, and so Paint the Town Read was born. 12 years later, the project's mascot the Reading Bug turns up at all community events; business around town carry posters and coasters and flyers about the importance of reading to your baby, tips for reading with your children, there's an annual community reading day, and it's just generally been absorbed into the fabric of community life. According to Rhonda, a local police chief said something to the effect of "In [insert name of another large western NSW town here] they steal cars; in Parkes they read books." Men in singlets in the local RSL club can be heard extolling the pleasures of reading with their children. And when the Reading Bug had a baby bug, the entire town turned out to welcome the new arrival.
(I wish there were a central site to link to, but there's not as yet, although Rhonda is busy working to make PTTR a national strategy for early literacy and I imagine a website is now just a matter of time. In the mean time, if you search for Paint the Town Read you will find a range of links that go to resources and a variety of local community PTTR projects.)
Paint the Town Read is taking off all over the place in western Sydney. In the Blue Mountains, Paint the Blue Read has been working effectively for more than a year. Launches for the St Marys area were held last year at Oxley Park and St Marys South Public Schools, events were held in Riverstone and Mount Druitt and the program is starting as we speak in Blacktown, Auburn and Parramatta. In time, I'm hoping it might spread across to south western Sydney as well. The projects are being driven by community workers from Mission Australia and the like, and I've been helping to provide resources and authors for events, and sitting on some of the steering committees.
Oxley Park PS has become something of a hub for the project in St Marys,and has established a weekly reading morning at the school, where parents are encouraged to read with their children before school begins. (I was able to donate a box of the many review copies of picture books I receive at work for Oxley Park's reading tent.) To launch this new addition to the school calendar, they held a special reading day a couple of weeks ago, and I was invited along to be one of the guest readers. We were asked to bring along favourite books from our own childhood to share with the students. (Other reading guests included the Canteen Lady and groundsman, I believe, so I was in excellent company!)
I took along three books, not knowing what age I'd be reading to—Add a Comment
Last time Neil Gaiman swept the awards with the fabulous The Graveyard Book, I did my damndest to track all the online coverage. Idiot. Gaiman must be one of the net's highest profiled and followed authors, and I just couldn't keep up. So this time I'm not going to try. He has won the Carnegie medal for The Graveyard Book and you can set up your own damn google alerts.
(Or else you can just follow his blog, and read this post where he describes his delight at winning and his frustration at stoopid vampire-obsessed media coverage. Also, he has a new dawg. Nice. Congrats, Neil. I can well imagine how treasured this particular medal is to you.)
Equally or perhaps even more exciting is the news that Our Own Freya Blackwood has won the Greenaway Award for illustration for the beautiful Harry and Hopper, written by my dear friend and one-time colleague Margaret Wild. Margaret is without question Australia's most distinguished picture book author, and I am thrilled that her lovely book has received this recognition, but the Greenaway is for illustration, so full kudos and Woot! Woot! to Ms Blackwood. Her work has always been beautiful, and it has perhaps never been better than in Harry and Hopper.
I have been holding off (for weeks!) writing my final post about Sydney Writers' Festival as I've been hoping the recording of my panel session with Melina Marchetta and David Levithan might become available. And I never got word it was, and I kind of forgot to chase it up, and then life went on...
And then today, before the Penrith Migrant and Refugee Stories launch began, my friend and colleague Libby Gleeson said to me, you know you're on Radio National? Well, no, I didn't know that, and I was a bit discombobulated, because only last night a friend on Twitter said to me, have you seen the meanland article you get a mention The incalculable cultural significance of The Library, and no, I hadn't seen the MeanLand article, and when I read it I discovered that the author assumed I was a librarian.
Now, I have often been assumed to be a librarian, but I'm not. And then when I make the correction, the assumers apologise. And there's nothing to apologise for. I kinda wish I were a librarian, but I certainly can't lay claim to a qualification and a profession I do not have. Thus my correction (which is not remotely a disavowal).
Anyhoo...
So Libby said to me, you know you're on Radio National, and no, I didn't know that, but it turned out that an edited version of the Sydney Writers' Festival session with Melina and David, which, as you know, I chaired, was being broadcast on Radio National's Book Show.
Which was jolly decent of them, given how often I have taken the Book Show (and its presenter) to task over its track record on discussion of children's and youth literature.
At the end of the Penrith launch, I checked Twitter, only to find a veritable plethora of tweets about the panel being on RN, which was kinda exciting.
So here, in case you missed it, is the link to the broadcast. (I'd love to get a copy of the recording of the full hour, so the search continues...)
I was a bit naughty posting the link to the video the other day. The filmmaker, University of Western SydneyCommunications student Andres Rios, didn't mean for the rough cut to be made public, and he's now taken it down so the link no longer works. However, we now have a finished cut of the video, which was shown at today's launch of the anthology of stories that came out of the project.
I'm afraid I don't have any photos, but the launch was lovely. Erin Vincent, who led the workshops with the students, wasn't able to be there, but she sent a lovely video message to the students. Dr Stepan Kerkyasharian AM, Chair of the Community Relations Commission, launched the book, and his speech was wonderful. He'd done his homework about the Penrith region and its history of migration (Henry Parkes was an early migrant resident of the area) and referred to some of the stories in the anthology as examples of the hardships and losses, but also the joys experienced by those who choose—or are forced to choose—to leave their homes and move to another country.
It was lovely to see the students again (although unfortunately one school couldn't make it—we're planning on organising an assembly at the school to present them with their books) and to see the students and their storytellers reunite.
We're hoping at some point that the stories will be available online. In the meantime, hard copies of the book will go into libraries and community centres in Penrith, and I will also organise for a copy to be sent to both the Mitchell Library and the National Library of Australia.
And now, here's the finished video. Apparently a longer version will be screened on community television station TVS, so if I hear when, I'll post. (And apologies, I can't figure out how to post this without the code showing. I used to be so good at this...)
This is very short notice, but Libby Gleeson will be on Margaret Throsby's show on ABC Classic FM at 10 am tomorrow morning (23 June 2010). She is hoping to find a opportunity to talk about the Western Sydney Young People's Literature Project, which would be excellent. (Libby is chair of our advisory group.) If not, she'll just be fabulous on her own terms as a writer, teacher and children's and youth literature advocate. And if you miss it, you'll be able to listen later online. Cheers!
An opinion piece in today's Sydney Morning
Herald: claims, as per its title, that young people—by which he means university students—have lost the art of reading together. By which I think he (Rick Gekoski, who I've never heard of before now but who is here for Sydney Writers' Festival) means—well, I'm not exactly sure. Here's a quote.
"So if we asked a bunch of literate university students today what they had
read, what they had all read - what would be the answer? The answer would
be: nothing. Not a thing. Not that young people don't read, but they
don't read together. They haven't got a common culture - books to devour
and discuss and be formed by.
Gekoski goes on to talk about the "hottest novels and books of poetry, but philosophy, psychology,
feminism, politics and what is now called media studies" that he and his fellow university students read collectively, apparently, in his youth. Unfortunately, though, he doesn't name these shared books, which might have given some insight into not just how they were apparently reading, but what exactly captured their collective interest—but more significantly, he doesn't give any actual evidence for the assertion about today's university undergraduates. He hasn't been a university lecturer, apparently, since 1984, so how in touch is he really with today's students and their social reading habits?
I don't know myself—I'm not in touch with undergraduates myself, but if Gekoski is right, it may be less a personality defect of today's young people and more a reflection, perhaps, of the fact that most of them are too busy working to pay off their HECS debts (or the UK equivalent) and planning a post-university career path in a rapidly-changing working environment (as this article suggests) to have time to sit around deconstructing de Beauvoir, Greer and McLuhan in the union bar.
My gut instincts says that at best this is a
baby boomer* lamenting his lost youth passing around Portnoy's Complaint, and at worst a thinly veiled (and uninformed) lament about today's wretched non-reading youth
but maybe I'm being uncharitable. I mean, he does acknowledge the shared reading experiences of young Youff—Potter and Twilight and even Pullman (although for godssakes can't some copyeditor on some broadsheet somewhere please spell Stephenie Meyer's name correctly?!)—but in the context of the rest of the article it seems grudging at best.
But does he have a point? Am I missing it? Oh well, at least it's given me some more material to chat with David and Melina about next Sunday!**
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*Although various generational definitions attempt to claim me as a baby boomer, I refuse the classification. Born in January 1964, I am too young to be a boomer (missed out on all that hippy-free-love-outa-sight)
Oh dear, if it's not bad enough that I don't blog often enough, I've just realised I had a bunch of unapproved comments from people who should be approved, so sorry about that. And that has made me realise don't always respond to comments and I really ought to—it's very bad blog etiquette when you all write such fantastic and often moving comments. (I'm looking at you, dear Jo Horniman, and your comments about Patricia Wrightson and working at The School Magazine.)
So a quick round-up this finally cool autumn night (is it just me or has this been the longest summer ever?) of note-worthy happenings in the world of children's and youth lit.
You'll recall, of course, that Patricia Wrightson died a few weeks ago, and some of you know I was pretty cranky that the Sydney Morning Herald didn't make more than the briefest of mentions of her death in the arts pages. They did, however, publish a wonderful obituary by our beloved Maurice Saxby. (Unfortunately, the beautiful photo that ran with the obit in the paper didn't make it across to the online version.) There was also this impressive obit on The Times online.
Continuing with the awards theme of recent weeks, the Kate Greenaway and Carnegie Medal shortlists were announced earlier this week. The thrilling news is that Freya Blackwood is shortlisted for the Greenaway for Harry and Hopper, written by Margaret Wild (our best writer of picture books bar none).
Also, I might be wrong here, but I have a strong feeling that Neil Gaiman may be the first person to have a book—The Graveyard Book—shortlisted in both the Carnegie and the Greenaway.
OK, apparently not the first time but the first time in 30 years. Impressive, however you cut it. It's a wonderful book (but you all know that by now), and remember that the superb illustrations by Chris Riddell (one of my all-time favourite illustrators) are responsible for the Greenaway Award shortlisting.
