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Sarwat Chadda is the author of the YA novels
Devil's Kiss and
The Dark Goddess, featuring kick-ass heroine Billi SanGreal.
tall tales & short stories would like to welcome Sarwat back to the blog to talk about his latest book, and new bad-ass hero, Ash Mistry.
ASH MISTRY AND THE SAVAGE FORTRESS
Ash Mistry hates India. Which is a problem since his uncle has brought him and his annoying younger sister Lucky there to take up a dream job with the mysterious Lord Savage. But Ash immediately suspects something is very wrong with the eccentric millionaire. Soon, Ash finds himself in a desperate battle to stop Savage's masterplan - the opening of the Iron Gates that have kept Ravana, the demon king, at bay for four millennia...
Varanasi: holy city of the Ganges.
In this land of ancient temples, incense and snake charmers...
Where the monsters and heroes of the past come to life...
One slightly geeky boy from our time...
IS GOING TO KICK THE DEMON HORDES BACK TO HELL.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Colouring in Heroes
Remember the last time a black guy saved the world?I do. 1996, Will Smith in Independence Day. Cinema has a lot of ‘ethnic’ (hate the word but it sounds better than ‘non-white’) heroes. Will is regularly doing the good guy gigs, we’ve Wesley on vamp-slaying duties and Jackie Chan and so on. Have you seen any of their movies? I have. And that’s without being Chinese, of African descent or anything like that.
But when you write a kids’ book with an Asian hero, you’ll have a bookseller come up to you and say ‘
I can’t see anyone in my area buying you book because we’ve not got any Indians living around us.’
By that logic you need to be a hobbit to buy Lord of the Rings.
‘
Ash Mistry and the Savage Fortress’ began as a conversation with my agent way back in the day. I knew my next project was going to be
2012 is the year of the London Olympics so, in anticipation, I'm reviewing three books all with an Olympic theme but all of them very different.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"I can make things happen - good things - I know it!"
Seren is so full of brilliant ideas - it's just that she always seems to put her foot in it!
First there was the dance routine where she fell off the stage.
And now her plan to get her sister Sasha noticed by gorgeous Luke Beckford looks like it could backfire! Seren reckons she's just hopelessly accident-prone!
But there's one person who believes in Seren. Her mate Keith is making a film for a national competition and he wants Seren to be in it. Could Seren turn out to be a star after all?
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Brave New Girl ~ a tall tales & short stories review
I loved this little book! It's full of warmth and humour and endearing characters. Although I've decided to feature it primarily as a book with an Olympic theme, I think it would also fit brilliantly into my
Diversity Matters series, because this book features characters from all backgrounds and ethnic groups, and it portrays the truly multi-cultural London I know. I also love the fact that Seren's mum is a bus driver, and she's a single mum working hard to do the best she can for her big, chaotic family.
I think this is a book with genuine heart. It feels so normal and everyday, so grounded, yet also with a magical touch. The Olympics becomes the backdrop for individual dreams to be realised; Seren's brother singing in the opening ceremony; Seren's friend Keith making a film for a competition where the winning entry is played in the Olympic stadium. It might be because I worked in the film industry so it's close to my heart but I really enjoyed the film-making aspect of the book and the ideas behind Keith's re-telling of Shakespeare's The Tempest. I thought Keith was a fab character! I couldn't help but think how great it would be if all kids had the chance to do something like Keith's project and I really wanted to go out and start filming something myself.
For all the humour and warmth this is a book of light and shade, and some of the darker touches include how fickle and difficult some childhood friendships can be; broken families and single parents; bullies and the awkwardness of first love and simply just growing up. But Catherine Johnson handles these issues with a subtle touch and they merely add another realistic dimension to what is a great, heart-warming story.
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2012 is the year of the London Olympics so, in anticipation, I shall be reviewing three books all with an Olympic theme but all of them very different.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Samuel's parents and sister die in a bloody massacre.
His brothers retaliate by joining the anti-Apartheid movement, with guns and terrorism as their weapons. But Sam decides to fight prejudice in his own way- as a runner.
Against all odds - from a poor township childhood to the Bantu homelands, from work in a gold-mine to competing for gold - he focuses his mind, body and heart on the long, hard race to freedom...
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Blood Runner ~ a tall tales & short stories review
James Riordan states at the beginning of the book that Blood Runner is a work of fiction but it is inspired by the athlete
Josiah Thugwane who became the first black South African to win an Olympic gold medal in Atlanta, in 1996 - and herein lies the strength and the heart of this short but inspiring book.
Although in places the execution feels a little dry, the story of Samuel and the loss and pain he endured and his ambition to provide for his own family epitomises the struggle and horrors faced by many black South Africans during Apartheid. Against all the odds, Samuel (and Josiah Thugwane), achieves his dream of not only providing for his family, but running for his country, being the first Black South African athlete to win Olympic gold, and meeting Nelson Mandela.
Included at the end of the book is a 'Note on Apartheid' which gives more background information on Apartheid South Africa and which also helps ground the novel in an historical context.
Blood Runner is a book about sacrifice, dedication and belief. It is an inspiring story of one boy growing up and not giving in, a boy who has a dream and a burning ambition to be the best - and against all the odds, he succeeds.
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What is a family?
Once, it was said to be a father, mother, boy, girl, cat and dog living in a house with a garden. But as times have changed, families have changed too. Now there are almost as many kinds of families as colours of the rainbow - from a mum and dad or single parent to two mums or two dads, from a mixed-race family to children with different mums and dads, from families with a disabled member to those with a mum or dad in prison.
Mary Hoffman takes a look through children's eyes at the wide varieties of family life: from homes, food, ways of celebrating, schools and holidays to getting around, jobs and housework, from extended families, languages and hobbies to pets and family trees - and she concludes that, for most people, their own family is the best one of all! With Ros Asquith's delightful pictures, this book takes a fresh, optimistic look at families of today.
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The Great Big Book of Families ~ a tall tales & short stories review
I'm including The Great Big Book of Families as part of my
Diversity Matters series because that's what this book exemplifies, explores, but most of all, celebrates - diversity. It shows us that families can be as diverse as the world we see around us. That we are all unique and special, down to the foods we eat, the hobbies we like, the games we play and the clothes we wear.
Ros Asquith's cheery, playful illustrations and Mary Hoffman's accessible text, show and describe families in just about any kind of combination you can think of, and there are separate two page spreads covering topics from jobs, pets, school, holidays, and homes.
And for added fun for younger readers (and me) there's a game to play throughout the pages, find the cat in the pictures and discover his name.
This is the perfect book for discussing diversity, families, people, disability, and challenging preconceptions. The Great Big Book of Families is a book about appreciating and celebrating diversity in its purest and most delightful form.
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Fifteen-year-old Laurence Roach just wants a normal life, but it's not easy when your mum is a depressed alcoholic, and your six-year-old brother thinks he's a dog.
When Mum fails to come home one night, Laurence tells nobody, terrified he and his brother will be taken into care if anyone finds out.
Instead, he attempts to keep up the pretence that Mum is still around: dressing up in her clothes to trick the neighbours and spinning an increasingly complicated tangle of lies.
After two weeks on their own, running out of food and money, and with suspicious adults closing in, Laurence finally discovers what happened to his mother. And that's when the trouble really starts ...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
15 Days Without a Head ~ a tall tales & short stories review
I first featured Dave Cousins on this blog in 2010 when he talked about being
a discovered SCBWI Undiscovered Voice. (If you don't know much about Undiscovered Voices, tall tales & short stories was part of this year's blog tour so you can find out more in
a recent post on the 2012 winners.)
I remember reading the 2010 Undiscovered Voices anthology extract of 15 Days Without a Head and telling others how it had stayed with me. I'm lucky enough to have the opportunity of reading lots of children's and YA books but it's quite rare for a piece of writing to stay with me long after I've read it, but Dave Cousins' extract was memorable and when OUP sent me a copy to review over a year later, the opening pages were still fresh in my mind. So it was with much anticipation I read the book.
Dave Cousins effortlessly creates a realistic world in which his main character, Laurence, lives. I believed, and that's important, and I also believed I was listening to a fifteen-year-old boy. I've read many books that purport to be told from the perspective of a young or teen character but very few convince, and that's crucial to becoming totally involved in the story. And, although this book tackles some very difficult subjects, this is a book full of humour and Laurence's little brother, Jay, is a brilliant, annoying and endearing character - he always made me smile and, in one scene in particular, (I won't say what happens because I don't like spoilers) but I was filled with utter dread and fearing the worst as events unfolded.
15 Days Without a Head deals with some, sadly, all too common issues. Laurence struggles to cope with a depressed single mum who finds it hard to cope. He tries to be a big brother and a dad to Jay, and their relationship is touching but honest. An older brother, especially a teenager, won't always want his baby brother around and most siblings fight and annoy each other and Dave Cousins brings all these feelings to convincing and touching life.
As Laurence and Jay's lives get harder, as pressure mounts and suspicion from other people increases, the inventive plot-line of a radio phone-in competition that runs throughout the story acts as a motivator for Laurence to keep going, to not gi
Zulaikha hopes.
She hopes for peace, now that the Taliban have been driven out of Afghanistan. She hopes for a better relationship with her hard stepmother. And she hopes one day even to go to school.
Then she meets Meena, who offers to teach her the poetry she once taught her mother. And the Americans come to the village, promising not just new opportunities, but surgery to mend Zulaikha's face. But can Zulaikha dare to hope they will come true?
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Words in the Dust ~ a tall tales & short stories review
I must admit I started reading Words in the Dust with some trepidation, mainly because I knew it was written by a former male US soldier who had served in Afghanistan and I wondered how he would approach the story; not just how well he would succeed in telling the story from a young girl's perspective but just how much of his attitude to Afghanistan and its people would be coloured by Western values and beliefs.
I turned the pages warily, but the more I read the more my doubts and concerns were allayed. At it's heart this is a tender and empathetic story of one young girl's struggle to be accepted for who she is and not what she looks like. A theme that can resonate with anyone no matter what their ethnicity, background or beliefs.
I think author, Trent Reedy's, attention to detail and research shine through and I did get a tangible sense of Zulaikha's family, community and customs. I was also relieved to see that the Americans weren't depicted as some kind of all-conquering saviours. They make mistakes; they aren't perfect, they are as flawed and human as everyone else. Because one thing I think is important is that this book helps people understand that in Afghanistan there are just normal people trying to lead normal lives. It can be hard sometimes to see past the news headlines but I think Trent Reedy succeeds in showing that a distinction can and must be made between the Taliban and everyday Afghan citizens.
Several important issues are raised concerning domestic abuse and the lack of education for women, but issues such as these are tackled with sensitivity. The author doesn't make a judgement and that decision feels like it's being left up to the reader to condone or condemn. There is little black and white in this story but many shades of grey, some of the good guys, both Afghani and American, do bad things; and some cultural realities may not sit well when seen through Western eyes but to learn about them is to understand them, whether you agree or disagree.
For his debut novel, I think Trent Reedy should be commended for being brave enough to tackle such a sensitive subject. Although I think some scenes, although not graphic, may be disturbing for younger readers, I think this is an intelligent, thought-provoking book that offers an intriguing insight into the day-to-day lives of an ordinary Afghan family and one young girl trying to find her place in the world.
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0 Comments on Book Review: Words in the Dust by Trent Reedy as of 1/1/1900
Zannah Kearns is a debut author whose YA novel,
No Use Crying, has been described as ‘an emotional rollercoaster, the perfect coming of age novel.’
NO USE CRYING
Secrets, secrets, secrets, she thought. It's just another word for lying.
The discovery of a grandfather Niki thought had died years ago means a sudden move to London and the start of a whole new life.
Niki has to learn quickly to fit in and survive in the school halls and on the tough streets. And at the same time she must get to know her grandad and come to terms with the fact that her mum has been hiding the truth.
But when Niki suddenly discovers her mum's biggest lie of all, could it change their relationship -- and Niki's own sense of identity -- for good?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Zannah Kearns ~ 'my life experience has been one of enjoying diversity, and I have come to realise how much I like to see that reflected in stories - not only the ones I write, but the ones I read, too.'In British terms, I would not fit into any ‘diverse’ sort of category. I was born and raised in this country, am blonde-haired, blue-eyed and milk-skinned. I have the sort of accent that could have me presenting the news for the BBC.
So, how is it I ended up writing a novel largely populated by Afro-Caribbeans, along with a few Indians, and even a walk-on part for a girl from Eritrea?
I was living in London at the time, and quite simply I was inspired by the world around me. Through helping out at local youth groups, I met larger-than-life teenagers with amazing vibrancy and a whole new way of speaking.
I was struck by the fact that, even though they were second generation British and had never left the country, they considered themselves to be more Jamaican than British. I met Indians, Eritreans, mixed-race kids, Eastern Europeans - pretty much anyone from anywhere.
I didn’t really think about what I was doing when I began to write No Use Crying, I simply fell in love with the people I met, of all ages and all backgrounds, and the story of a mixed-race girl finding out about her roots started growing in my head.
Maybe that was how I was able to legitimately write my way into these different cultures - Nikita starts as one looking in, trying to navigate her way and find her sense of self. She has been raised by her white mother, never having a permanent home, and only as the story progresses, does she begin to discover who she really is.
I didn’t realise I’d done anything unusual in writing a story that didn’t have a white protagonist; that was populated with only two main white characters with everyone else being from a variety of ethnic backgrounds. I didn’t have an agenda - I am hardly Benjamin Ze
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| Miriam Halahmy |
Since the 1980s I have worked with asylum seekers, from the Vietnamese boat people to the present day newcomers from Africa and the Middle East.
I am rooted in an asylum seeking past, with grandparents who fled the Polish pogroms at the end of the nineteenth century to my husband and his family who were forced into exile with almost the entire Jewish community of Iraq in 1950.
My life has been a mixture of languages; English, Yiddish, Arabic, Hebrew and a mixture of food; chopped herring, chick peas, falafel and chips. I am therefore at home with languages, cultures, attitudes, religions, food and artefacts which are not Standard English. I love it all and it has enriched my life and my writing.
My poetry and novels have been strongly influenced by this background. The novel I published this year, HIDDEN ( Meadowside Books) focuses on the plight of Iraqi refugees influenced by my husband’s story.
Two teenagers find an illegal immigrant washed up on a beach and hide him to save him from being deported.
The book has had a profound effect on my teenage readers. “I didn’t know we had immigrants in England,” wrote one thirteen year old from a small village.
It was therefore a natural transition for me to offer my skills as a writing facilitator and mentor with the many different groups of asylum seekers in London today. I have worked for Exiled Writers Ink!, The Medical Foundation for the Victims of Torture and English PEN.
Asylum seekers are often keen to record their memories and their experiences and the title of this post is taken from a poem by Stephanie, called, ‘My Soil.” Stephanie wrote this poem during a time of great home sickness and in despair after waiting seven years for the right to stay in England. She was a lawyer and journalist in Cameroon but was jailed and beaten after criticising the government. She has finally achieved refugee status and has enrolled on a Social Work course to support herself and her five year old son. But it has been a long, hard road. The worst thing was knowing no-one from Cameroon for almost a year after she arrived.
Many asylum seekers talk about the loneliness they have to endur
* Hi Joanne and welcome to tall tales & short stories.
Would you like to tell us a bit about yourself?
Hi Tracy. Thanks for inviting me.
About myself: a few random things … I live in northern NSW on about 5 acres, in a house my partner and I built ourselves a bit over 20 years ago. I've worked as an editor, and a teacher (of children's literature to trainee teachers, and adult literacy, mainly). I have 2 sons (33 and 26), and I don't work at anything else but writing now. I grow vegetables, bake bread, keep hens (almost said 'chooks', a particularly Australian term, I think).
I like people with a mad sense of humour. I'm quite irreverent myself. And badly dressed (though I try to dress respectfully when I go to book 'do's'). I'm left wing (very), and politically minded. I hate injustice, cruelty to animals, Australia's treatment of asylum seekers ... Just a regular person, I suppose.
* What inspired you to write About A Girl?
I was in Brisbane to see a band called The Last Town Chorus, and the support act was a local Brisbane girl - both of my sons play music and one is a professional musician (with a day job still) and I'm interested in people who make music. I saw 'the support act' running down the street before the gig with a boy in tow (just as Anna sees Flynn) and fell in love with the idea of her in the way novelists do.
And then in my previous novel, '
My Candlelight Novel', the girl in that falls in love with another girl at the end, but that wasn't what the novel was really about. I wanted to write a love story that didn't work out, and it just sort of came together.
Often I'm inspired more by the shape of a novel and a way of writing than more pedagogical issues, and in this case I wanted to write a short and honest novel about relationships - thinking of Murakami's '
Norwegian Wood' and the work of Banana Yoshimoto - also the early novels of Margaret Drabble, the ones she wrote in her 20s, such as '
The Millstone' - I like her intelligent girl narrators.
And then a part of me wanted to write something out of the ordinary - why should we assume that people are heterosexual? As well as being part of the Women's Liberation movement in the early 70s, many of my friends were in Gay Lib. I lived with 2 gay men, uni students like myself, and we had the gay liberation phone at our house, as they had no regular headquarters. But as George Orwell said in his essay '
Why I write', all writing is political, even that which doesn't think it is, so yes, my subject matter has a political purpose, even though it really grows out of who I am.
ABOUT A GIRL
'I remember when we lay together for the first time and I closed my eyes and felt the crackle of her dark hair between my fingers. She was all warmth and sparking light.
When I was with her, my skin sighed that the centre of the world was
* Hi Trent and welcome to tall tales & short stories.
Would you like to tell us a bit about yourself?
Thanks, Tracy. It’s a pleasure to speak to you.
I spent most of my life in Iowa. I always loved telling stories, and in elementary school I used to entertain my classmates at the lunch table with long adventure stories. By an early age, I knew I wanted to be a writer. In pursuit of that goal I majored in English at the University of Iowa, enlisting in the Iowa Army National Guard to pay for my classes.
In 2004 my combat engineer was activated and sent to the war in Afghanistan. When I returned home, I taught high school English for four years. Now I spend most of my time writing at my home in the state of Washington.
WORDS IN THE DUST
Zulaikha hopes.
She hopes for peace, now that the Taliban have been driven out of Afghanistan. She hopes for a better relationship with her hard stepmother. And she hopes one day even to go to school.
Then she meets Meena, who offers to teach her the poetry she once taught her mother. And the Americans come to the village, promising not just new opportunities, but surgery to mend Zulaikha's face. But can Zulaikha dare to hope they will come true?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
* What inspired you to write Words in the Dust?
My unit’s overall mission in Afghanistan was to provide security for the reconstruction effort. On one patrol to a small village, my fellow soldiers and I encountered a young girl named Zulaikha who had suffered from birth from a defect known as cleft lip. She was born with a split in her upper lip and with horribly crooked teeth. We knew we had to help this girl so we pooled our money together to pay for her transportation to our main airbase where one of our army doctors had volunteered to conduct her reconstructive surgery.
When she returned to us, I was amazed at how she had transformed. Only a small scar hinted there had ever been anything different about her. For me, she became a symbol of the struggle that all Afghans face in trying to build a new, better, more peaceful Afghanistan. The last time I saw Zulaikha, she was riding off our base in the back of a truck. She could not hear me or understand my words, but I promised I would tell her story. That promise is what led to me writing
Words in the Dust.
* Some might say that a male, American, ex-soldier can’t possibly write a truthful story told from a young Afghan girl’s perspective. What made you believe you could and should write such a story?
I am well aware of the debate surrounding “insider/outsider” narratives. I would submit that if writers are limited to writing only about people who are exactly like themselves, fiction would be replaced by autobiography. Nevertheless, despite my conviction that a wr
James Dawson is a full-time writer of YA fiction and lives in London. It’s a good time to be a LGBT teenager. No, really. Although, and believe me, I KNOW, that there will be young people reading this who aren’t having a great time right now, there has never been so much open discussion of young people and sexuality. Visibility of this issue has never been higher.
As I’m writing this in late September 2011, Lady Gaga herself has just tweeted that she wants to meet President Obama to discuss the alarming suicide rate among young Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Queer Curious people. On the same forum, the hashtag
#YesGayYA has united authors and readers alike in support of diversity in teen fiction. YouTube is awash with celebrities and mere mortals proclaiming ‘
It Gets Better’.
And it does.
But the recent suicide of fourteen year-old Jamey Rodemeyer in the United States has again highlighted that
much more needs to be done to end homophobic bullying. A key way in which, I believe, we can do this is to normalise sexual diversity. Everyone has a responsibility to make LGBTQC relationships so run-of-the-mill that no-one has ammunition against young people.
Until recently I was a primary school teacher in Brighton, one of the most sexually diverse cities in the UK. While working as a Personal Social Health and Citizenship Coordinator (PSHCE) I was lucky enough to be involved in what we called
The Family Diversity Project, along with colleagues from the Brighton & Hove Healthy Schools Team. The goal of this project was to remove the ‘otherness’ from same-sex families.
‘Family’ is something that everyone can relate to, but for so long has been portrayed as one mum, one dad, two kids. In Brighton, we strongly felt that families come in an infinite variety of flavours – straight, gay, bi, single-parent, donor sperm, adoption, fostered and on and on…
With Year One pupils (aged five to six years), we celebrated each child’s family (whatever shape it took) and planned lessons around a series of superb picture books:
And Tango Makes Three by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell;
The Family Book by Todd Parr and
The Sissy Duckling by Harvey Fierstein.
The goal is obvious - to reach children before same-sex relationships become ‘other’. Very young children are fully able to grasp the idea of two men or two women falling in love without batting an eyelid. These simple, beautiful texts say it better than any number of popstars on YouTube. They’re not shocking or tokenistic, they’re just great stories.
The power of story-telling is key. Good schools immerse children in stories from a young age, and this is a good way of presenting the world in which they live. Through fairytales we can deliver morals and values, and as they get older we can introduce more complex emotions, dilemmas and conflicts. Good examples are Malorie Blackman’s
Noughts and Crosses saga or David Almond’s
Skellig or Mark Haddon’s
Curious Incident of The Dog in the Night – each of which seek to expand and challenge young adult readers’ perspecti
* Hi Colin and welcome to tall tales & short stories.
Would you like to tell us a bit about yourself?
I work full time as a Teaching Assistant in a primary school. I laugh at my own jokes when no one else does, I like throwing things in the air and catching them, currently trying to learn to ride a unicycle despite being in my forties. I love cartoons, old horror movies, and anything with Simon Pegg in.
CLASH
Alex: school psycho and under-ground cage-fighting champion.
Kyle: talented artist, smart school-boy and funny man.
When Alex witnesses a brutal murder at the club he can't go back to The Cage, but without fighting, he starts to lose control. He soon sets his sights on Kyle, a boy he thinks can help.
But Kyle has his own problems and he's convinced Alex is one of them.
Boys can play dangerous games when they're scared and this one will haunt everyone involved.
What will it take for each boy to confront the truth?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Colin Mulhern on Clash and writing for teens.
First of all, I haven’t got a clue what teenagers like to read, and I think, for writers, it’s a lost cause trying to work it out. I spent several years trying to write for teens, trying to gauge what would work. I missed the mark every time. That’s probably because the market moves so quickly. If you look at what is popular now and try to write something similar, then by time an editor sees it, she’ll know it’s going out of fashion. The only thing you can do is write the book you really, really, want to write. That’s how
Clash came about – total frustration at getting nowhere for a long time. I decided to write something I wanted to read. I didn’t even plan to send it out because I never thought it would get picked up. Weird, eh?
On the subject of issues and moral boundaries, I try not to consider them unless they come into play as the story progresses. If you set out to write an “issue” book, say on a medical or mental condition, you risk it sounding like an “issue” book. There are issues in
Clash, but I never set out with those things in mind from the start; I started with Kyle and Gareth getting chased by the local psycho. It grew from there. The local psycho became Alex, began to develop, and before I knew it I was writing about him just as much as Kyle. Their individual problems developed with them.
I didn’t worry about taboo subjects, otherwise a lot of
Clash would never have been written. There were a few scenes that were calmed down when it came to editing, but I never really considered holding back at th
* Hi Wendy and welcome to tall tales & short stories.
Would you like to tell us a bit about yourself?
Hi Tracy and thanks for asking me to join you.
I’m 36 years old and live in a wobbly old house in Wiltshire with my husband, 4 young children and an enormous cat called Socrates (who many suspect is a goat). Hills are my natural habitat; I was brought up in Mid Wales and have a farm in the Berber mountains.
Now, having read many of the wonderful interviews on your blog, I feel the need to make a confession: I
haven’t always wanted to be a writer. I
didn’t used to carry notebooks about my person. And I’ve
never kept a diary *blush*. However, I absolutely
always wanted to be a reader (and a comedienne and a footballer and a cartoonist). So I became an English lecturer; one that gave funny lectures, doodled in the margins and knew the off-side rule.
That all changed when I was 33. I’d always loved drawing and (rather curiously) had illustrated a series of Welsh language books for Dyslexic children whilst doing my Phd, but when I came across the
Frances Lincoln Diverse Voices Competition in 2009, something clicked. I just had to enter.
There was only one problem: I hadn’t written a book. So with 2 weeks to the deadline, I squeezed behind my desk (heavily pregnant with 4th child) and typed my first ever middle-grade novel. I’d like to tell you that I won. But I didn’t. In fact, I
didn’t even get shortlisted. However, I got some wonderful feedback from the judges. And they were right, about everything! It was like being a student again. So I made the suggested changes and sent the manuscript back to
Frances Lincoln.
To my astonishment, they thought it was ‘
lots of fun’ and offered me a 2 book deal. The first book is coming out in February 2012:
Cinnamon Grove:
A Hen in the Wardrobe
Strange things are happening at night in Cinnamon Grove! Someone in pyjamas has been chasing frogs in the pantry, climbing trees like a leopard, and even looking for a hen in Ramzi’s wardrobe. . . Who could it be? Surely not Ramzi’s dad?
Yes. Poor Dad’s sleepwalking again! Why? Because he’s homesick and the only solution is for the whole family to visit Dad’s Berber village in Algeria. But can the Spider in the woods, the Wise Man of the mountains or the Tuareg in the desert find a ‘cure’?
And what about Ramzi’s secret plan. . . ?
A funny, heart-warming family story set in Britain and Algeria, with fascinating glimpses of traditional Berber cul
In the first post of a new series, DIVERSITY MATTERS,
tall tales & short stories talks to author, Phil Earle.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
* Hi Phil and welcome to tall tales & short stories.
Would you like to tell us a bit about yourself?
I’m a thirty-six year-old dad of three, who spends the rest of his time (which isn’t much, believe me) reading and writing YA fiction. I work for a children’s publisher too, which means most of my waking hours are spent thinking or talking about kids books. I’m a very lucky bloke.
BEING BILLY
Faces flashed before my eyes.
And for every face there was a time that they had let me down.
Each punch that landed was revenge.
My chance to tell them I hadn't forgotten what they did.
Eight years in a care home makes Billy Finn a professional lifer. And Billy's angry - with the system, the social workers, and the mother that gave him away.
As far as Billy's concerned, he's on his own.
His little brother and sister keep him going, though they can't keep him out of trouble.
But he isn't being difficult on purpose. Billy's just being Billy. He can't be anything else.
Can he?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
* What inspired you to write Being Billy?
Billy had been in my head a long time before I started writing it all down. About eleven years in fact. I’d met a lot of children like him whilst working as a carer in local authority homes, kids who were angry and disillusioned with their lives. They were the sort of young people you’d cross the road to avoid, the ones you’d label as trouble at first sight.
Having been lucky enough to work with them however, and seen beyond their abrasive exteriors, I started to understand why they behaved like they did: because they’d been let down time and time again, witnessed more violence and neglect than many of us face in a lifetime.
I desperately wanted to make sense of how they viewed the world, to understand what future they saw for themselves when the rest of society had already written them off.
I suppose as well, I wanted to celebrate them, to show people what resilience and strength of spirit they had, their ability to make sense of the utter chaos they’d experienced.
* Did you do much research for your story? Do you think when dealing with issues
And it's a great story too:)
It is indeed, Thomas!
It sounds brilliant Sarwat, I am hoping to be at the book launch to hear you say "One slightly geeky boy from our time... IS GOING TO KICK THE DEMON HORDES BACK TO HELL." in a suitably scary voice.
A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula Le Guin has never been out of print and the entire cast of that story is 'non-white'. My most popular book to date has a black hero and a Japanese heroine. And did having an African-American lead stop the recent Karate Kid remake from being a huge hit? No! Kids just want to read cracking good stories - to me, it's exasperating that adults (booksellers, publishers, teachers and parents) get so worried about this stuff and get in the way of children's reading enjoyment. Go Sarwat!
The book is a cracking read and hey-kids didn't have to be Ancient Greeks to enjoy Percy Jackson did they?
I've just been on a school trip with 90 Year 2s to the Indian temple and they loved it! (even though 80/90 were your standard variety White British kids)
This book sounds really exciting, can't wait to read it ... and I think the issues you raise are interesting and important.
Here's a problem: if your protagonist is non-white, however you like to describe them, how do you show that in your writing? The default assumption lacking description is that the protagonist is white, but as soon as you start describing their skin colour you're somehow buying into the stereotype - I'm drowning here. Is the answer that it doesn't matter, so you don't describe them? Whatever I say, it's going to be wrong ...
Describing a character is not stereotype, it's merely their description as much as they are tall, fat, wear glasses, whatever. Stereotype (IMHO) is when you attach attributes purely on colour of skin and, more importantly, alien-ness. I'm coming across this a lot with South Asian (especially Muslim) characters with terrorism and fundamentalism plots. What I'm after is breaking out of that.
Zoe,
Valid point but there's been added concern with my name being non-Anglo (or whatever). An Asian, writing about an Asian set in Asian risks being seen as a niche of a niche of a niche. It's the similar logic of why some female writers with male heroes still use their initials to hide their sex so boy readers won't be put off. It's a vast and complicated world that needn't be like that!
Sarwat
I am dead chuffed to see you writing these stories - and you certainly have a point here.
I have a lot of sympathy with Sue Sedgwick's comment - as a white middle class female Northerner I feel cautious about including an 'ethnic' character in case I get it insultingly wrong.
Here's to a whole rainbow of heroes/heroines.
Well, I'm just looking forward to reading it because I'm sure it'll be a cracking good read!
Whoa! An Indian kick-asser! :) have to check this out! found you through "Read in a Single Setting" site. Good stuff!
p.s. i'm an indian btw in case you were wondering about that 'whoa'!