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03/15/10--07:34: George Orwell: Bookshop Memories (chan 2105780)

When I worked in a second-hand bookshop — so easily pictured, if you don't work in one, as a kind of paradise where charming old gentlemen browse eternally among calf-bound folios — the thing that chiefly struck me was the rarity of really bookish people. Our shop had an exceptionally interesting stock, yet I doubt whether ten per cent of our customers knew a good book from a bad one. First edition snobs were much commoner than lovers of literature, but oriental students haggling over cheap textbooks were commoner still, and vague-minded women looking for birthday presents for their nephews were commonest of all.

Many of the people who came to us were of the kind who would be a nuisance anywhere but have special opportunities in a bookshop. For example, the dear old lady who ‘wants a book for an invalid' (a very common demand, that), and the other dear old lady who read such a nice book in 1897 and wonders whether you can find her a copy. Unfortunately she doesn't remember the title or the author's name or what the book was about, but she does remember that it had a red cover. But apart from these there are two well-known types of pest by whom every second-hand bookshop is haunted. One is the decayed person smelling of old breadcrusts who comes every day, sometimes several times a day, and tries to sell you worthless books. The other is the person who orders large quantities of books for which he has not the smallest intention of paying. In our shop we sold nothing on credit, but we would put books aside, or order them if necessary, for people who arranged to fetch them away later. Scarcely half the people who ordered books from us ever came back. It used to puzzle me at first. What made them do it? They would come in and demand some rare and expensive book, would make us promise over and over again to keep it for them, and then would vanish never to return. But many of them, of course, were unmistakable paranoiacs. They used to talk in a grandiose manner about themselves and tell the most ingenious stories to explain how they had happened to come out of doors without any money — stories which, in many cases, I am sure they themselves believed. In a town like London there are always plenty of not quite certifiable lunatics walking the streets, and they tend to gravitate towards bookshops, because a bookshop is one of the few places where you can hang about for a long time without spending any money. In the end one gets to know these people almost at a glance. For all their big talk there is something moth-eaten and aimless about them. Very often, when we were dealing with an obvious paranoiac, we would put aside the books he asked for and then put them back on the shelves the moment he had gone. None of them, I noticed, ever attempted to take books away without paying for them; merely to order them was enough — it gave them, I suppose, the illusion that they were spending real money.

Like most second-hand bookshops we had various sidelines. We sold second-hand typewriters, for instance, and also stamps — used stamps, I mean. Stamp-collectors are a strange, silent, fish-like breed, of all ages, but only of the male sex; women, apparently, fail to see the peculiar charm of gumming bits of coloured paper into albums. We also sold sixpenny horoscopes compiled by somebody who claimed to have foretold the Japanese earthquake. They were in sealed envelopes and I never opened one of them myself, but the people who bought them often came back and told us how ‘true’ their horoscopes had been. (Doubtless any horoscope seems ‘true’ if it tells you that you are highly attractive to the opposite sex and your worst fault is generosity.) We did a good deal of business in children's books, chiefly ‘remainders’. Modern books for children are rather horrible things, especially when you see them in the mass. Personally I would sooner give a child a copy of Petrenius Arbiter than Peter Pan, but even Barrie seems manly and wholesome compared with some of his later imitators. At Christmas time we spent a feverish ten days struggling with Christmas cards and calendars, which are tiresome things to sell but good business while the season lasts. It used to interest me to see the brutal cynicism with which Christian sentiment is exploited. The touts from the Christmas card firms used to come round with their catalogues as early as June. A phrase from one of their invoices sticks in my memory. It was: ‘2 doz. Infant Jesus with rabbits’.

But our principal sideline was a lending library — the usual ‘twopenny no-deposit’ library of five or six hundred volumes, all fiction. How the book thieves must love those libraries! It is the easiest crime in the world to borrow a book at one shop for twopence, remove the label and sell it at another shop for a shilling. Nevertheless booksellers generally find that it pays them better to have a certain number of books stolen (we used to lose about a dozen a month) than to frighten customers away by demanding a deposit.

Our shop stood exactly on the frontier between Hampstead and Camden Town, and we were frequented by all types from baronets to bus-conductors. Probably our library subscribers were a fair cross-section of London's reading public. It is therefore worth noting that of all the authors in our library the one who ‘went out’ the best was — Priestley? Hemingway? Walpole? Wodehouse? No, Ethel M. Dell, with Warwick Deeping a good second and Jeffrey Farnol, I should say, third. Dell's novels, of course, are read solely by women, but by women of all kinds and ages and not, as one might expect, merely by wistful spinsters and the fat wives of tobacconists. It is not true that men don't read novels, but it is true that there are whole branches of fiction that they avoid. Roughly speaking, what one might call the average novel — the ordinary, good-bad, Galsworthy-and-water stuff which is the norm of the English novel — seems to exist only for women. Men read either the novels it is possible to respect, or detective stories. But their consumption of detective stories is terrific. One of our subscribers to my knowledge read four or five detective stories every week for over a year, besides others which he got from another library. What chiefly surprised me was that he never read the same book twice. Apparently the whole of that frightful torrent of trash (the pages read every year would, I calculated, cover nearly three quarters of an acre) was stored for ever in his memory. He took no notice of titles or author's names, but he could tell by merely glancing into a book whether be had ‘had it already’.

In a lending library you see people's real tastes, not their pretended ones, and one thing that strikes you is how completely the ‘classical’ English novelists have dropped out of favour. It is simply useless to put Dickens, Thackeray, Jane Austen, Trollope, etc. into the ordinary lending library; nobody takes them out. At the mere sight of a nineteenth-century novel people say, ‘Oh, but that's old!’ and shy away immediately. Yet it is always fairly easy to sell Dickens, just as it is always easy to sell Shakespeare. Dickens is one of those authors whom people are ‘always meaning to’ read, and, like the Bible, he is widely known at second hand. People know by hearsay that Bill Sikes was a burglar and that Mr Micawber had a bald head, just as they know by hearsay that Moses was found in a basket of bulrushes and saw the ‘back parts’ of the Lord. Another thing that is very noticeable is the growing unpopularity of American books. And another — the publishers get into a stew about this every two or three years — is the unpopularity of short stories. The kind of person who asks the librarian to choose a book for him nearly always starts by saying ‘I don't want short stories’, or ‘I do not desire little stories’, as a German customer of ours used to put it. If you ask them why, they sometimes explain that it is too much fag to get used to a new set of characters with every story; they like to ‘get into’ a novel which demands no further thought after the first chapter. I believe, though, that the writers are more to blame here than the readers. Most modern short stories, English and American, are utterly lifeless and worthless, far more so than most novels. The short stories which are stories are popular enough, vide D. H. Lawrence, whose short stories are as popular as his novels.

Would I like to be a bookseller de métier? On the whole — in spite of my employer's kindness to me, and some happy days I spent in the shop — no.

Given a good pitch and the right amount of capital, any educated person ought to be able to make a small secure living out of a bookshop. Unless one goes in for ‘rare’ books it is not a difficult trade to learn, and you start at a great advantage if you know anything about the insides of books. (Most booksellers don't. You can get their measure by having a look at the trade papers where they advertise their wants. If you don't see an ad. for Boswell's Decline and Fall you are pretty sure to see one for The Mill on the Floss by T. S. Eliot.) Also it is a humane trade which is not capable of being vulgarized beyond a certain point. The combines can never squeeze the small independent bookseller out of existence as they have squeezed the grocer and the milkman. But the hours of work are very long — I was only a part-time employee, but my employer put in a seventy-hour week, apart from constant expeditions out of hours to buy books — and it is an unhealthy life. As a rule a bookshop is horribly cold in winter, because if it is too warm the windows get misted over, and a bookseller lives on his windows. And books give off more and nastier dust than any other class of objects yet invented, and the top of a book is the place where every bluebottle prefers to die.

But the real reason why I should not like to be in the book trade for life is that while I was in it I lost my love of books. A bookseller has to tell lies about books, and that gives him a distaste for them; still worse is the fact that he is constantly dusting them and hauling them to and fro. There was a time when I really did love books — loved the sight and smell and feel of them, I mean, at least if they were fifty or more years old. Nothing pleased me quite so much as to buy a job lot of them for a shilling at a country auction. There is a peculiar flavour about the battered unexpected books you pick up in that kind of collection: minor eighteenth-century poets, out-of-date gazeteers, odd volumes of forgotten novels, bound numbers of ladies’ magazines of the sixties. For casual reading — in your bath, for instance, or late at night when you are too tired to go to bed, or in the odd quarter of an hour before lunch — there is nothing to touch a back number of the Girl's Own Paper. But as soon as I went to work in the bookshop I stopped buying books. Seen in the mass, five or ten thousand at a time, books were boring and even slightly sickening. Nowadays I do buy one occasionally, but only if it is a book that I want to read and can't borrow, and I never buy junk. The sweet smell of decaying paper appeals to me no longer. It is too closely associated in my mind with paranoiac customers and dead bluebottles.

1936

THE END

via orwell.ru

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03/19/10--17:45: David Almond in running for prestigious children's book prize 'double' | Books | guardian.co.uk (chan 2105780)



'Pleased I'm in the mix' ... David Almond

Next week could be a big one for David Almond. The Carnegie medal-winning British author is in the running for two of the most important international prizes in children's literature: the prestigious Hans Christian Andersen medal and the Astrid Lindgren memorial award, the richest children's book prize in the world.

"If I win I'll be so happy I'll be dancing around my kitchen," said Almond, who won the Carnegie and the Whitbread for his first children's novel, Skellig, the story of two children who meet a strange being, part owl, part angel. "Once you get to this point, though, it's a lottery – you've got to be hopeful, and I'm pleased I'm in the mix."

Almond will hear on 23 March whether he's won the Hans Christian Andersen prize, awarded biennially since 1956 to an author "whose complete works have made lasting contributions to children's literature". An impressive line-up of past winners includes Eleanor Farjeon, Tove Jansson and Astrid Lindgren, and Almond found out yesterday that he had been shortlisted for this year's prize, alongside fellow authors Ahmad Reza Ahmadi from Iran, Bartolomeu Campos de Queiros from Brazil, Lennart Hellsing from Sweden and Louis Jensen from Denmark. (A parallel prize is awarded to an illustrator, with this year's five-strong shortlist comprising Jutta Bauer from Germany, Carll Cneut from Belgium, Etienne Delessert from Switzerland, Svjetlan Junakovic from Croatia and Roger Mello from Brazil.) The 10 international members of the jury praised Almond's "deeply philosophical novels that appeal to children and adults alike, and encourage readers by his use of magic realism".

"I know I got very close two years ago when they said I was in the final bunch of people. It's fantastic to be shortlisted and it's really wonderful how this prize honours writers and illustrators from around the world," said Almond, who is currently a third of the way into a new novel aimed at adults as well as children, The True Tale of the Monster Billy Dean. Told in the "fractured language" of a "secret child", the son of a priest and a hairdresser, the book is out next year; this year the author is publishing a prequel to his acclaimed Skellig, telling Mina's story before she has met Michael or Skellig. Almond admitted he had yet to read his competitors for the Hans Christian Andersen prize. "But that's the great thing about the award – it brings to light authors from all around the world," he said. "I'm going to have to dig out their work and read it."

The Astrid Lindgren award, presented a day later, on 24 March, at Lindgren's birth place in Vimmerby, Sweden, is worth SEK5m (£460,000). It is given to a body of work "in the spirit of Astrid Lindgren, with a focus on a profound respect for democratic values and human rights". Almond is part of a strong British showing on this year's longlist, also including illustrator Quentin Blake, former children's laureate Michael Morpurgo, author and illustrator Shirley Hughes and former Hans Christian Andersen award winner Aidan Chambers.

"The good thing about the Astrid Lindgren is that it's not just writers and illustrators – all kinds of organisations which promote writing and reading and literature are in the running," said Almond. Aidan Chambers is also longlisted for the work he does with his wife Nancy Chambers to promote reading, and last year's award was won by the Palestinian Tamer Institute for Community Education, which promotes reading in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Previous winners include Philip Pullman and Where the Wild Things Are author Maurice Sendak.

via guardian.co.uk

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03/19/10--17:55: Ten rules for writing fiction | Books | guardian.co.uk (chan 2105780)



Illustration: Andrzej Krauze

Elmore Leonard: Using adverbs is a mortal sin

1 Never open a book with weather. If it's only to create atmosphere, and not a charac­ter's reaction to the weather, you don't want to go on too long. The reader is apt to leaf ahead look­ing for people. There are exceptions. If you happen to be Barry Lopez, who has more ways than an Eskimo to describe ice and snow in his book Arctic Dreams, you can do all the weather reporting you want.

2 Avoid prologues: they can be ­annoying, especially a prologue ­following an introduction that comes after a foreword. But these are ordinarily found in non-fiction. A prologue in a novel is backstory, and you can drop it in anywhere you want. There is a prologue in John Steinbeck's Sweet Thursday, but it's OK because a character in the book makes the point of what my rules are all about. He says: "I like a lot of talk in a book and I don't like to have nobody tell me what the guy that's talking looks like. I want to figure out what he looks like from the way he talks."

3 Never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialogue. The line of dialogue belongs to the character; the verb is the writer sticking his nose in. But "said" is far less intrusive than "grumbled", "gasped", "cautioned", "lied". I once noticed Mary McCarthy ending a line of dialogue with "she asseverated" and had to stop reading and go to the dictionary.

4 Never use an adverb to modify the verb "said" . . . he admonished gravely. To use an adverb this way (or almost any way) is a mortal sin. The writer is now exposing himself in earnest, using a word that distracts and can interrupt the rhythm of the exchange. I have a character in one of my books tell how she used to write historical romances "full of rape and adverbs".

5 Keep your exclamation points ­under control. You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose. If you have the knack of playing with exclaimers the way Tom Wolfe does, you can throw them in by the handful.

6 Never use the words "suddenly" or "all hell broke loose". This rule doesn't require an explanation. I have noticed that writers who use "suddenly" tend to exercise less control in the application of exclamation points.

7 Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly. Once you start spelling words in dialogue phonetically and loading the page with apos­trophes, you won't be able to stop. Notice the way Annie Proulx captures the flavour of Wyoming voices in her book of short stories Close Range.

8 Avoid detailed descriptions of characters, which Steinbeck covered. In Ernest Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants", what do the "Ameri­can and the girl with him" look like? "She had taken off her hat and put it on the table." That's the only reference to a physical description in the story.

9 Don't go into great detail describing places and things, unless you're ­Margaret Atwood and can paint scenes with language. You don't want descriptions that bring the action, the flow of the story, to a standstill.

10 Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip. Think of what you skip reading a novel: thick paragraphs of prose you can see have too many words in them.

My most important rule is one that sums up the 10: if it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.

Elmore Leonard's 10 Rules of Writing is published next month by Weidenfeld & Nicolson.

Diana Athill

1 Read it aloud to yourself because that's the only way to be sure the rhythms of the sentences are OK (prose rhythms are too complex and subtle to be thought out – they can be got right only by ear).

2 Cut (perhaps that should be CUT): only by having no ­inessential words can every essential word be made to count.

3 You don't always have to go so far as to murder your darlings – those turns of phrase or images of which you felt extra proud when they appeared on the page – but go back and look at them with a very beady eye. Almost always it turns out that they'd be better dead. (Not every little twinge of satisfaction is suspect – it's the ones which amount to a sort of smug glee you must watch out for.)

Margaret Atwood

1 Take a pencil to write with on aeroplanes. Pens leak. But if the pencil breaks, you can't sharpen it on the plane, because you can't take knives with you. Therefore: take two pencils.

2 If both pencils break, you can do a rough sharpening job with a nail file of the metal or glass type.

3 Take something to write on. Paper is good. In a pinch, pieces of wood or your arm will do.

4 If you're using a computer, always safeguard new text with a ­memory stick.

5 Do back exercises. Pain is distracting.

6 Hold the reader's attention. (This is likely to work better if you can hold your own.) But you don't know who the reader is, so it's like shooting fish with a slingshot in the dark. What ­fascinates A will bore the pants off B.

7 You most likely need a thesaurus, a rudimentary grammar book, and a grip on reality. This latter means: there's no free lunch. Writing is work. It's also gambling. You don't get a pension plan. Other people can help you a bit, but ­essentially you're on your own. ­Nobody is making you do this: you chose it, so don't whine.

8 You can never read your own book with the innocent anticipation that comes with that first delicious page of a new book, because you wrote the thing. You've been backstage. You've seen how the rabbits were smuggled into the hat. Therefore ask a reading friend or two to look at it before you give it to anyone in the publishing business. This friend should not be someone with whom you have a ­romantic relationship, unless you want to break up.

9 Don't sit down in the middle of the woods. If you're lost in the plot or blocked, retrace your steps to where you went wrong. Then take the other road. And/or change the person. Change the tense. Change the opening page.

10 Prayer might work. Or reading ­something else. Or a constant visual­isation of the holy grail that is the finished, published version of your resplendent book.

Roddy Doyle

1 Do not place a photograph of your ­favourite author on your desk, especially if the author is one of the famous ones who committed suicide.

2 Do be kind to yourself. Fill pages as quickly as possible; double space, or write on every second line. Regard every new page as a small triumph ­–

3 Until you get to Page 50. Then calm down, and start worrying about the quality. Do feel anxiety – it's the job.

4 Do give the work a name as quickly as possible. Own it, and see it. Dickens knew Bleak House was going to be called Bleak House before he started writing it. The rest must have been easy.

5 Do restrict your browsing to a few websites a day. Don't go near the online bookies – unless it's research.

6 Do keep a thesaurus, but in the shed at the back of the garden or behind the fridge, somewhere that demands travel or effort. Chances are the words that come into your head will do fine, eg "horse", "ran", "said".

7 Do, occasionally, give in to temptation. Wash the kitchen floor, hang out the washing. It's research.

8 Do change your mind. Good ideas are often murdered by better ones. I was working on a novel about a band called the Partitions. Then I decided to call them the Commitments.

9 Do not search amazon.co.uk for the book you haven't written yet.

10 Do spend a few minutes a day working on the cover biog – "He divides his time between Kabul and Tierra del Fuego." But then get back to work.

Helen Dunmore

1 Finish the day's writing when you still want to continue.

2 Listen to what you have written. A dud rhythm in a passage of dialogue may show that you don't yet understand the characters well enough to write in their voices.

3 Read Keats's letters.

4 Reread, rewrite, reread, rewrite. If it still doesn't work, throw it away. It's a nice feeling, and you don't want to be cluttered with the corpses of poems and stories which have everything in them except the life they need.

5 Learn poems by heart.

6 Join professional organisations which advance the collective rights of authors.

7 A problem with a piece of writing often clarifies itself if you go for a long walk.

8 If you fear that taking care of your children and household will damage your writing, think of JG Ballard.

9 Don't worry about posterity – as Larkin (no sentimentalist) observed "What will survive of us is love".

Geoff Dyer

1 Never worry about the commercial possibilities of a project. That stuff is for agents and editors to fret over – or not. Conversation with my American publisher. Me: "I'm writing a book so boring, of such limited commercial appeal, that if you publish it, it will probably cost you your job." Publisher: "That's exactly what makes me want to stay in my job."

2 Don't write in public places. In the early 1990s I went to live in Paris. The usual writerly reasons: back then, if you were caught writing in a pub in England, you could get your head kicked in, whereas in Paris, dans les cafés . . . Since then I've developed an aversion to writing in public. I now think it should be done only in private, like any other lavatorial activity.

3 Don't be one of those writers who sentence themselves to a lifetime of sucking up to Nabokov.

4 If you use a computer, constantly refine and expand your autocorrect settings. The only reason I stay loyal to my piece-of-shit computer is that I have invested so much ingenuity into building one of the great auto­correct files in literary history. Perfectly formed and spelt words emerge from a few brief keystrokes: "Niet" becomes "Nietzsche", "phoy" becomes  ­"photography" and so on. ­Genius!

5 Keep a diary. The biggest regret of my writing life is that I have never kept a journal or a diary.

6 Have regrets. They are fuel. On the page they flare into desire.

7 Have more than one idea on the go at any one time. If it's a choice between writing a book and doing nothing I will always choose the latter. It's only if I have an idea for two books that I choose one rather than the other. I ­always have to feel that I'm bunking off from something.

8 Beware of clichés. Not just the ­clichés that Martin Amis is at war with. There are clichés of response as well as expression. There are clichés of observation and of thought – even of conception. Many novels, even quite a few adequately written ones, are ­clichés of form which conform to clichés of expectation.

9 Do it every day. Make a habit of putting your observations into words and gradually this will become instinct. This is the most important rule of all and, naturally, I don't follow it.

10 Never ride a bike with the brakes on. If something is proving too difficult, give up and do something else. Try to live without resort to per­severance. But writing is all about ­perseverance. You've got to stick at it. In my 30s I used to go to the gym even though I hated it. The purpose of ­going to the gym was to postpone the day when I would stop going. That's what writing is to me: a way of ­postponing the day when I won't do it any more, the day when I will sink into a depression so profound it will be indistinguishable from perfect bliss.

Anne Enright

1 The first 12 years are the worst.

2 The way to write a book is to actually write a book. A pen is useful, typing is also good. Keep putting words on the page.

3 Only bad writers think that their work is really good.

4 Description is hard. Remember that all description is an opinion about the world. Find a place to stand.

5 Write whatever way you like. Fiction is made of words on a page; reality is made of something else. It doesn't matter how "real" your story is, or how "made up": what matters is its necessity.

6 Try to be accurate about stuff.

7 Imagine that you are dying. If you had a terminal disease would you ­finish this book? Why not? The thing that annoys this 10-weeks-to-live self is the thing that is wrong with the book. So change it. Stop arguing with yourself. Change it. See? Easy. And no one had to die.

8 You can also do all that with whiskey.

9 Have fun.

10 Remember, if you sit at your desk for 15 or 20 years, every day, not ­counting weekends, it changes you. It just does. It may not improve your temper, but it fixes something else. It makes you more free.

Richard Ford

1 Marry somebody you love and who thinks you being a writer's a good idea.

2 Don't have children.

3 Don't read your reviews.

4 Don't write reviews. (Your judgment's always tainted.)

5 Don't have arguments with your wife in the morning, or late at night.

6 Don't drink and write at the same time.

7 Don't write letters to the editor. (No one cares.)

8 Don't wish ill on your colleagues.

9 Try to think of others' good luck as encouragement to yourself.

10 Don't take any shit if you can ­possibly help it.

Jonathan Franzen

1 The reader is a friend, not an adversary, not a spectator.

2 Fiction that isn't an author's personal adventure into the frightening or the unknown isn't worth writing for anything but money.

3 Never use the word "then" as a ­conjunction – we have "and" for this purpose. Substituting "then" is the lazy or tone-deaf writer's non-solution to the problem of too many "ands" on the page.

4 Write in the third person unless a ­really distinctive first-person voice ­offers itself irresistibly.

5 When information becomes free and universally accessible, voluminous research for a novel is devalued along with it.

6 The most purely autobiographical ­fiction requires pure invention. Nobody ever wrote a more auto­biographical story than "The Meta­morphosis".

7 You see more sitting still than chasing after.

8 It's doubtful that anyone with an internet connection at his workplace is writing good fiction.

9 Interesting verbs are seldom very interesting.

10 You have to love before you can be relentless.

Esther Freud

1 Cut out the metaphors and similes. In my first book I promised myself I wouldn't use any and I slipped up ­during a sunset in chapter 11. I still blush when I come across it.

2 A story needs rhythm. Read it aloud to yourself. If it doesn't spin a bit of magic, it's missing something.

3 Editing is everything. Cut until you can cut no more. What is left often springs into life.

4 Find your best time of the day for writing and write. Don't let anything else interfere. Afterwards it won't matter to you that the kitchen is a mess.

5 Don't wait for inspiration. Discipline is the key.

6 Trust your reader. Not everything needs to be explained. If you really know something, and breathe life into it, they'll know it too.

7 Never forget, even your own rules are there to be broken.

Neil Gaiman

1 Write.

2 Put one word after another. Find the right word, put it down.

3 Finish what you're writing. Whatever you have to do to finish it, finish it.

4 Put it aside. Read it pretending you've never read it before. Show it to friends whose opinion you respect and who like the kind of thing that this is.

5 Remember: when people tell you something's wrong or doesn't work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.

6 Fix it. Remember that, sooner or later, before it ever reaches perfection, you will have to let it go and move on and start to write the next thing. Perfection is like chasing the horizon. Keep moving.

7 Laugh at your own jokes.

8 The main rule of writing is that if you do it with enough assurance and confidence, you're allowed to do whatever you like. (That may be a rule for life as well as for writing. But it's definitely true for writing.) So write your story as it needs to be written. Write it ­honestly, and tell it as best you can. I'm not sure that there are any other rules. Not ones that matter.

David Hare

1 Write only when you have something to say.

2 Never take advice from anyone with no investment in the outcome.

3 Style is the art of getting yourself out of the way, not putting yourself in it.

4 If nobody will put your play on, put it on yourself.

5 Jokes are like hands and feet for a painter. They may not be what you want to end up doing but you have to master them in the meanwhile.

6 Theatre primarily belongs to the young.

7 No one has ever achieved consistency as a screenwriter.

8 Never go to a TV personality festival masquerading as a literary festival.

9 Never complain of being misunderstood. You can choose to be understood, or you can choose not to.

10 The two most depressing words in the English language are "literary fiction".

PD James

1 Increase your word power. Words are the raw material of our craft. The greater your vocabulary the more ­effective your writing. We who write in English are fortunate to have the richest and most versatile language in the world. Respect it.

2 Read widely and with discrimination. Bad writing is contagious.

3 Don't just plan to write – write. It is only by writing, not dreaming about it, that we develop our own style.

4 Write what you need to write, not what is currently popular or what you think will sell.

5 Open your mind to new experiences, particularly to the study of other ­people. Nothing that happens to a writer – however happy, however tragic – is ever wasted.

AL Kennedy

1 Have humility. Older/more ­experienced/more convincing writers may offer rules and varieties of advice. ­Consider what they say. However, don't automatically give them charge of your brain, or anything else – they might be bitter, twisted, burned-out, manipulative, or just not very like you.

2 Have more humility. Remember you don't know the limits of your own abilities. Successful or not, if you keep pushing beyond yourself, you will enrich your own life – and maybe even please a few strangers.

3 Defend others. You can, of course, steal stories and attributes from family and friends, fill in filecards after lovemaking and so forth. It might be better to celebrate those you love – and love itself – by writing in such a way that everyone keeps their privacy and dignity intact.

4 Defend your work. Organisations, institutions and individuals will often think they know best about your work – especially if they are paying you. When you genuinely believe their decisions would damage your work – walk away. Run away. The money doesn't matter that much.

5 Defend yourself. Find out what keeps you happy, motivated and creative.

6 Write. No amount of self-inflicted misery, altered states, black pullovers or being publicly obnoxious will ever add up to your being a writer. Writers write. On you go.

7 Read. As much as you can. As deeply and widely and nourishingly and ­irritatingly as you can. And the good things will make you remember them, so you won't need to take notes.

8 Be without fear. This is impossible, but let the small fears drive your rewriting and set aside the large ones ­until they behave – then use them, maybe even write them. Too much fear and all you'll get is silence.

9 Remember you love writing. It wouldn't be worth it if you didn't. If the love fades, do what you need to and get it back.

10 Remember writing doesn't love you. It doesn't care. Nevertheless, it can behave with remarkable generosity. Speak well of it, encourage others, pass it on.

Read the second part of the article here

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03/22/10--23:33: The Railway Children: Forever Young | Film | The Guardian (chan 2105780)



Heartbreaking ... The Railway Children. Photograph: Allstar/EMI/Sportsphoto Ltd./Allstar

The Railway Children will always be remembered for that scene at Oakworth station, the one where Roberta's father emerges through the steam of a departing train. "Daddy, my Daddy!" Plenty of people will admit to weeping when the young Jenny Agutter is reunited with her father. But watching it now, 40 years after it was first released, I find myself welling up long before then: at the birdsong, the music, the Yorkshire countryside, the lost Edwardian world.

Why does it make me cry? "Because you're an old sentimentalist," says Bernard Cribbins, who played Perks, the station porter, and is now an astonishingly frisky 81. "Which would apply to most of the audience who watch The Railway Children." Does Agutter cry? "No, she's hard as nails," says Cribbins. "You have to be an extraordinary person if you don't have a bit of a gulp."

Since it was first published (in serial form) in 1905, Edith Nesbit's tale of a family forced into penury after the mysterious arrest of their father has never been out of print, and has spawned three television series, two films and several plays. The definitive version, the 1970 film directed by Lionel Jeffries, has now been digitally restored; the memories are still fresh for Agutter, Cribbins and Sally Thomsett, who played Roberta's younger sister, Phyllis.

"People still go to me, 'Railway Child!'" says Agutter. She was cycling in London recently and a bus driver swore at her. "These two guys coming towards me said, 'What's his problem? Didn't he realise you're a Railway Child?'" She thinks about the way Jeffries put the "Daddy, my Daddy" scene together. "The sound goes, so that your reality is suspended. He uses this beautiful music and when the mist is going you just hear this 'ping', this tiny sound, and there's this character coming out of the mist. And you see her running towards him and then you see her feet go off the ground. All those images are just heartbreaking."

The three "children" had an unusual bond on set because they were guarding a secret: while 17-year-old Agutter was close to Roberta's age, Thomsett, playing 11-year-old Phyllis, was already 20. The producers ordered her not to reveal her age to anyone. "It was in my contract: I wasn't allowed to do anything that anybody over 16 could do," says Thomsett. "I couldn't have a cigarette, I couldn't go out with my boyfriend and I couldn't drive my car. I had a fabulous new red Lotus that I just loved. I was sworn to secrecy."

One night, a frustrated Thomsett fled with Agutter to a nightclub in Leeds where a bikini-clad woman danced inside a cage. "We sat down, ordered a drink and a couple of boys came over to ask us to dance," says Thomsett. "The next thing I knew, Lionel Jeffries and our producer were standing there. We were caught red-handed."

Agutter, who had already filmed Walkabout, thinks that working at such a young age probably arrested her development. "You are put among people who are no longer your peers, so you are not trying things out at the same time – the experimental nature of adolescence goes by-the-by. I hadn't really been through any great emotional changes. When I went to America in my 20s there was a delayed adolescence, which Hollywood supports in an awful lot of people."

She eventually returned to Britain, married and became a mother. In 2000, she played Roberta's mother in the TV adaptation of The Railway Children. Which production does she prefer? "Er, you can't ask me that. One is attached to my childhood and one is attached to my being a mother. That's why it worked for me. I would come across people [who] were quite cross. They felt playing the mother was a betrayal of having been Roberta."

The day after we meet, there is the sad news that Lionel Jeffries has died. Agutter, in particular, has very fond memories: "I see him vividly with his red scarf around his neck, larger than life, being in command." He was only two years older than Cribbins, but she fears his later years were tough; despite his talents, he did not always get work.

Over the years, Agutter has become something of a Railway Children scholar and hopes to make a movie about Nesbit's unconventional life: a radical socialist, she lived in a chaotic ménage a trois with a serially unfaithful husband and an unhappy son, who later committed suicide. "She's this wonderful children's writer, but actually she was a mess."

We cry when we watch The Railway Children, Agutter says, because we are mourning our own lost innocence. "You cry because of your sense of yearning. That is what is in her book and that is what Lionel so cleverly gives people. People cry at their own sense of loss, that they don't have that magic they had when they were little. You suddenly become that child again, believing in something that you feel you've lost."

The Railway Children is screened at the National Media Museum, Bradford, on 28 March as part of the Bradford film festival (nationalmediamuseum.org.uk), and is at selected cinemas from 2 April.

via guardian.co.uk

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03/23/10--19:45: David Almond wins Hans Christian Andersen medal | Books | guardian.co.uk (chan 2105780)



David Almond, who won the Hans Christian Andersen medal for his 'unique voice' Photograph: Garry Weaser

An international jury of children's literature experts this afternoon decided to award the world's most prestigious prize in children's literature to British author David Almond.

Almond, who won the Carnegie medal and the Whitbread children's prize with his first children's book Skellig, the story of a boy who discovers an angel in a derelict garage, was selected as winner from authors around the world, seeing off finalists from Iran, Brazil, Sweden and Denmark to win the medal. Given biennially since 1956 by the International Board on Books for Young People for an author's complete works, the award comes with no money but much honour: past winners include much-loved British children's writer Eleanor Farjeon, Pippi Longstocking creator Astrid Lindgren and Moomins author Tove Jansson.

"Good god, that's absolutely brilliant," said the Newcastle-born Almond, reached this afternoon at home before he had officially been informed about his win. "It's amazing. I didn't think I'd win but you never know — I'd never heard anything from the prize organisers though, so I thought it was all sorted, and that the winner would be out there in Bologna [at the children's book fair, where the news was announced this afternoon]."

Describing Almond as "a creator of magical realism for children", the jury praised his "unique voice" and said that he "captures his young readers' imagination and motivates them to read, think and be critical". "His use of language is sophisticated and reaches across the ages," the 10 international members said in a statement.

Almond, author of books including Kit's Wilderness, about a boy who moves to an insular mining village where his grandfather is starting to succumb to Alzheimer's, said it was "just fantastic to win something like this, which includes everyone in the world". "I'm kind of pretty stunned," said the author, who only turned to children's books in 1998 with Skellig, having previously published two short story collections for adults. "We'll probably go out for a meal tonight to celebrate — have a big time out in Hexham."

Jutta Bauer from Germany was also announced as winner of a parallel medal for illustrators this afternoon. The jury highlighted her "philosophical approach, originality, creativity as well as her ability to communicate with young readers", and described her as "a powerful narrator who blends real life with legend through her pictures". Both winners will be presented with their medals on 11 September in Santiago de Compostela, Spain.

Almond is also in the running for the Astrid Lindgren memorial award, the richest children's book prize in the world, the winner of which will be announced tomorrow.

via guardian.co.uk

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03/24/10--17:55: BBC News - Children's author Crowther wins Astrid Lindgren award (chan 2105780)

Crowther writes mainly in French

Belgian illustrator and author Kitty Crowther has won the 2010 Astrid Lindgren Memorial award, which honours the best in children's writing.

The award, named after the Swedish creator of Pippi Longstocking, brings with it prize money of 5m kroner (£461,724).

Crowther has written and contributed to more than 35 children's books and writes mostly in French.

The jury described her as "the master of the line".

Crowther's main works are picture books, including L'enfant racine (The Root Child) and La visite de petite mort (The Visit of Little Death).

Simple tools

Jury chair Larry Lempert said: "She's a traditional storyteller. It's her way of telling that takes people between imagination and reality."

Mr Lempert described Crowther as, first and foremost, an illustrator and then an author, praising her use of simple materials and tools to illustrate books.

"In Kitty Crowther we found an artist and storyteller strong in her humanity and sympathy... she follows the weak, she shows ways of life," he said.

Crowther said the award was "a fantastic recognition from Swedish culture". She will receive her prize at a ceremony in Stockholm on 1 June.

The award was set up by the Swedish government following the death of Lindgren in 2002. Her enduring Pippi Longstocking character has been published for generations around the world.

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03/28/10--22:11: The Associated Press: Australian author Patricia Wrightson dies at 88 (chan 2105780)

Australian author Patricia Wrightson dies at 88

By ROD McGUIRK (AP) – 3 days ago

CANBERRA, Australia — Patricia Wrightson, the internationally acclaimed Australian children's author who attracted praise — and then criticism — for entwining Aboriginal mythology into her writing, has died at age 88.

In 1986, Wrightson was awarded the biennial Hans Christian Andersen Medal — the highest accolade for a writer of children's fiction — given by the Swiss-based International Board on Books for Young People for an author's body of work.

She died of natural causes on March 15 in northern New South Wales state several days after being hospitalized, her son Peter Wrightson said Thursday.

The two spent the last 32 years of her life living on a wooded property in nearby Bonalbo, a village 500 miles (800 kilometers) north of Sydney.

Federal Arts Minister Peter Garrett described Wrightson as a talented and prolific writer who would continue to inspire new generations of readers.

Maurice Saxby, author of "History of Australian Children's Literature," described Wrightson and Ivan Southall, who died in 2008, as the pioneers of modern Australian children's literature. "Her contribution was immense," he said.

Saxby and publisher Mark Macleod said Wrightson's use of Aboriginal mythology and folklore in her fantasy stories became more prone in recent decades to be branded exploitation and misappropriation of Aboriginal culture.

"She was trying to create a kind of pan Australia — a whole new Australian mythology which was part non-indigenous and part indigenous," said Macleod, who edited three of her books in the 1990s.

Peter Wrightson said his mother was always careful to avoid legends that were regarded by Aborigines as sacred or secret.

"Things have changed now, but at the time, a lot of Aboriginal leaders were saying keep doing it because she treated Aboriginal culture with respect," he said.

The four-time winner of Australia's top award for children's literature was born on a farm near the New South Wales town of Lismore in 1921. She moved to Sydney to work in a munitions factory during World War II.

She married in Sydney, but the marriage lasted only a few years and she moved to Bonalbo with her two children, Peter and Jenny, to live with her parents, her son said.

She wrote the first of her 27 books, "The Crooked Snake," by watching her children's reaction to pages read by her father as soon as they were typed.

That book was named the Children's Book Council of Australia's Book of the Year in 1956.

She first found large audiences in the United States and Britain with her 1968 book "A Racecourse for Andy," which was published in Australia under the title "I Own the Racecourse!"

Her books have been published in 16 languages.

(This version CORRECTS Corrects that Wrightson died last week, not this week; ADDS comments, background.)

Copyright © 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

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03/28/10--23:17: Pullman defends 'Scoundrel Christ' - News, Books - The Independent (chan 2105780)

Pullman defends 'Scoundrel Christ'

By Mike Collett-White and Kunal Dutta


Monday, 29 March 2010

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His books have depicted God as a senile figure and painted the Catholic Church as a corrupt bureaucracy. And yesterday the author Philip Pullman, who once said he was "trying to undermine the basis of Christian belief", acknowledged that his latest book is also likely to offend believers.

Speaking at the Oxford Literary Festival ahead of the publication next week of The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, Pullman, 63, said: "Nobody is forcing anyone to pick the book up or to read it or, if after having read it, to like it. If you don't like it, you can always write to me, or to the publisher, or you can write your own book. No one is stopping you."

The book, which has been released to coincide with Easter, is based on the Gospels and sees Mary gives birth to twins. Jesus is passionate and charismatic, while Christ is his self-conscious, troubled polar opposite who secretly records and embellishes his brother's teachings.

Pullman said has received angry letters from the Christian community accusing him of blasphemy. He was accompanied by security guards to the Oxford event. But some from within the Church were prepared to turn the other cheek.

The Rev Alex Bradley, of the Unitarian Christian Association, said: "Different people see Jesus in different ways. Everyone to some extent has an image of Him, and writers and artists should be free to form their own interpretation.

"Religious freedom remains indivisible, and freedom of expression remains a core value of democratic civilisation."




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So what if it's blasphemy?



post1984 wrote:


Monday, 29 March 2010 at 02:15 am (UTC)

See this from both sides. People must have freedom of thought. If you force us to only think the prescribed thoughts about a subject you kill not only humanity but religion itself because religion must have a rock-solid base. Even though it is mostly FAITH.
Let the author cast his thoughts for us to consider.
Don't shoot the messenger - of any observation. If you do it will eventually come back and bite you later. You will lose in the end.
This particular author is no more mischievous than pundits from within the organised religions.
Ask yourself: what is religion? If it cannot withstand the searing searchlight of even one author, then what is it?

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04/02/10--04:09: Hans Christian Andersen: Google Doodle Celebrates Legendary Children's Author (chan 2105780)



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04/03/10--18:43: A Wrinkle in Time, well worth two Newbery medals | Books | guardian.co.uk (chan 2105780)



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A Wrinkle in Time, well worth two Newbery medals

The inspiration Madeleine L'Engle's book provided for this year's winner, added to her own, makes a fitting tribute to a true children's classic

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Madeleine L'Engle in 1946

Writing yesterday about Rebecca Stead's Newbery medal win for When You Reach Me I was catapulted back to my 11-year-old self and my total adoration for Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time. Stead's heroine is engrossed in L'Engle's book, itself a Newbery winner published almost 50 years earlier, and according to reviews A Wrinkle in Time plays a large part in Stead's novel (I haven't read the Stead yet but it sounds fun and is on my ever-expanding list).

1. A Wrinkle in Time (Puffin Modern Classics)
2. by Madeleine L'Engle
3. 208pp,
4. Puffin Classics,
5. £6.99
6. 

1. Buy A Wrinkle in Time (Puffin Modern Classics) at the Guardian bookshop

Strangely, I'd reread A Wrinkle in Time only a couple of weeks ago, after spotting it in a secondhand bookshop complete with one of its follow-ups, A Wind in the Door, which I'd never read before. Having written previously about children's books that don't live up to an adult reread, I was slightly nervous about tackling such a favourite, but it was just as wonderful 19 years on and I can't believe I'd forgotten about it for so long.

Starting, Bulwer Lytton-esque, with "it was a dark and stormy night", L'Engle pitches us immediately into the world of Meg Murry, a bright, geeky, independent misfit who desperately misses her absent father, adores her "dumb" baby brother Charles Wallace and "hate[s] being an oddball". Meg is deliciously grumpy as a heroine, and Charles Wallace sweetly precocious and bossy – he's not actually stupid, he just didn't speak until he could do so in full sentences, and he's also psychic.

The stormy night whisks a strange old tramp, Mrs Whatsit, into the midnight kitchen where Meg, Charles and their mother are sipping cocoa, leaving them with the enigmatic statement that "there is such a thing as a tesseract". Their mother goes white: it turns out their father is missing because he's travelled through a wrinkle in time – a tesseract – to fight the evil dark Thing which is taking over the universe. "The fifth dimension's a tesseract. You add that to the other four dimensions and you can travel through space without having to go the long way around. In other words, to put it into Euclid, or old-fashioned plane geometry, a straight line is not the shortest distance between two points," says Charles Wallace (told you he was precocious).

The children are quickly spirited away from the adults (essential to remove grown-ups from children's fiction as quickly as possible) by Mrs Who, Which and Whatsit, who actually turn out to be stars who gave up the fight against the dark Thing. After leaping around the universe a bit they end up at Camazotz, a terrifying planet where everything is regulated and regimented and the same, all controlled by IT, a disembodied brain which has Mr Murry in its power and quickly takes over Charles Wallace. The scene where he's in IT's control, his eyes twirling, a "revolting twitch" in his forehead, brought tears to my eyes just as it did as a child. "Charles. Charles, I love you. My baby brother who always takes care of me. Come back to me, Charles Wallace, come away from IT, come back, come home," thinks Meg, disorganised, unruly, rude and called on to save the day. "Charles Wallace, you are my darling and my dear and the light of my life and the treasure of my heart. I love you. I love you. I love you."

I hadn't realised A Wrinkle in Time was one of the most frequently banned/challenged books in the US (apparently a parent thinks it "undermines religious beliefs [by promoting] witchcraft, crystal balls, and demons", according to this report).

The Guardian's children's books editor Julia Eccleshare, in her obituary of L'Engle, tells us that L'Engle – an Episcopalian - was also attacked "for being too religious by the most secular of critics while ... being one of the authors most banned from Christian schools and libraries that regarded her brand of religion as deeply suspect".

Well, it's their loss – A Wrinkle in Time is, I think, one of the truly great children's books, and fully deserving both of its eight-million-and-counting sales, and its role in Stead's own win. The scope of the book feels so much larger than the 200-odd (fairly large-type) pages it encompasses:. "I remember a friend saying to me, 'There are really two kinds of girls. Those who read Madeleine L'Engle when they were small, and those who didn't,'" writes Cynthia Zarin in her New Yorker profile of L'Engle. I'm happy to say I'm one of them.



Posted by Alison Flood Tuesday 19 January 2010 15.07 GMT guardian.co.uk

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A Wrinkle in Time, well worth two Newbery medals

This article was published on guardian.co.uk at 15.07 GMT on Tuesday 19 January 2010. It was last modified at 15.07 GMT on Tuesday 19 January 2010.

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ImogenRW

19 Jan 2010, 3:31PM



Contributor

Hot dog! I look forward to reading When You Reach Me. LOVE the Newbery!

It's very annoying that I read A Wrinkle In Time too late, and was torn between love of Charles Wallace, the tesseracts and ball-bouncing in perfect unison (which I thought was a fantastic visual metaphor for totalitarianism) and the religious bits, which made me feel slightly queasy. A bit like reading Narnia as an adult when you already know that all the naughty animals are going to Hell in Aslan's shadow, whereas as a child you're swept away by imaginative writing and don't have a throat-clearing commentator on your shoulder .

Alas. I am the second type of girl!

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spore

19 Jan 2010, 5:24PM

Frankly I always thought A Wrinkle in Time was hideously overrated. Good YA books explore their themes thoughtfully instead of offering crappy soundbites ('Free will good! Conformity bad! Baaa! Baaa!'). And as for the settings, well - crossing dimensions and galaxies to find an 'alien' world where everyone speaks English and things look suspiciously like 60's suburban America takes the Anglocentric cake.

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spauff

19 Jan 2010, 5:59PM

Madeleine L'Engle is one of my favorite YA authors -- I read A Wind in the Door to pieces when I was 12. I also like A Ring of Endless Light and Camilla. I like how she writes about science, fantasy and religion in her books. I think sometimes characters with strong faith in God/a higher power can be portrayed as less than intelligent, but all of her characters are both spiritual and bright.
I'm going to have to check out When You Reach Me!

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AlisonFlood

20 Jan 2010, 11:02AM



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Really spore? I'm surprised...I didn't find the free will/conformity battle to be a crappy soundbite at all, although I see what you mean about crossing galaxies to a world where everyone speaks English etc. What are your recommendations for good YA books, in that case?

spauff, yes, I'm going to order When You Reach Me this week, and I really hadn't realised how much else L'Engle wrote, I'm going to have to catch up on it all.

Imogen - sad that you are the second type!

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outofideas

25 Jan 2010, 2:28PM

Really spore? I'm surprised...I didn't find the free will/conformity battle to be a crappy soundbite at all, although I see what you mean about crossing galaxies to a world where everyone speaks English etc. What are your recommendations for good YA books, in that case?

I can't speak for spore, but I do completely share his/her opinions, and my answer to that question is The Once and Future King. I didn't hate A Wrinkle in Time, but The Once and Future King, for me, was a defining book. It tackled the big things without giving any easy answers, but saying that was okay. Not that I've reread it recently, I'll be honest).

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via guardian.co.uk

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04/04/10--21:50: The Book Bench: Peeps, Mortality, and Lewis Carroll : The New Yorker (chan 2105780)

Easter is a holiday inspired by strange and disturbing events: an execution, a trio of wailing women, an empty grave, a ghost who proves himself by inviting disbelievers to finger the holes in his hands. It’s a tidy tale about overcoming death that has death spilled like ink across every page. If we weren’t adept at disguising the horror—that is, if we didn’t swathe it in pastel taffeta, place a bonnet on its head, and feed it chocolate—I don’t see how we’d manage. Americans like to be frightened, but not in ways we can’t control. Which might explain why, on the spectrum of our national holidays, Easter stands at the opposite end from Halloween: the latter is kitsch we try to turn to terror; the former is terror we try to turn to kitsch. Anyone who has washed down a bout of pondering his own mortality with a Peep will know that we’ve been mostly successful in this endeavor.



I don’t mean to sound critical of our divided psyche; my judgment is of the crassness of our attempts to keep separate “the grave and gay,” as Lewis Carroll put it. Carroll himself was ever-mindful of how thin the veil between the two was (and wasn’t shy about lifting it entirely). While we attempt to distract children from the death at the center of Easter by handing them life in the form of painted eggs and jelly beans, Carroll took a braver course: he handed children their own deaths in prose, and made it sound as alluring as life. His “Easter Greeting to Every Child Who Loves ‘Alice’ ” is a prime example, I think, of heroism in literature.

DEAR CHILD,

Please to fancy, if you can, that you are reading a real letter, from a real friend whom you have seen, and whose voice you can seem to yourself to hear wishing you, as I do now with all my heart, a happy Easter.

Do you know that delicious dreamy feeling when one first wakes on a summer morning, with the twitter of birds in the air, and the fresh breeze coming in at the open window—when, lying lazily with eyes half shut, one sees as in a dream green boughs waving, or waters rippling in a golden light? It is a pleasure very near to sadness, bringing tears to one’s eyes like a beautiful picture or poem. And is not that a Mother’s gentle hand that undraws your curtains, and a Mother’s sweet voice that summons you to rise? To rise and forget, in the bright sunlight, the ugly dreams that frightened you so when all was dark—to rise and enjoy another happy day, first kneeling to thank that unseen Friend, who sends you the beautiful sun?

Are these strange words from a writer of such tales as “Alice”? And is this a strange letter to find in a book of nonsense? It may be so. Some perhaps may blame me for thus mixing together things grave and gay; others may smile and think it odd that any one should speak of solemn things at all, except in church and on a Sunday: but I think—nay, I am sure—that some children will read this gently and lovingly, and in the spirit in which I have written it.

For I do not believe God means us thus to divide life into two halves—to wear a grave face on Sunday, and to think it out-of-place to even so much as mention Him on a week-day. Do you think He cares to see only kneeling figures, and to hear only tones of prayer—and that He does not also love to see the lambs leaping in the sunlight, and to hear the merry voices of the children, as they roll among the hay? Surely their innocent laughter is as sweet in His ears as the grandest anthem that ever rolled up from the “dim religious light” of some solemn cathedral?

And if I have written anything to add to those stores of innocent and healthy amusement that are laid up in books for the children I love so well, it is surely something I may hope to look back upon without shame and sorrow (as how much of life must then be recalled!) when my turn comes to walk through the valley of shadows.

This Easter sun will rise on you, dear child, feeling your “life in every limb,” and eager to rush out into the fresh morning air—and many an Easter-day will come and go, before it finds you feeble and gray-headed, creeping wearily out to bask once more in the sunlight—but it is good, even now, to think sometimes of that great morning when the “Sun of Righteousness shall arise with healing in his wings.”

Surely your gladness need not be the less for the thought that you will one day see a brighter dawn than this—when lovelier sights will meet your eyes than any waving trees or rippling waters—when angel-hands shall undraw your curtains, and sweeter tones than ever loving Mother breathed shall wake you to a new and glorious day—and when all the sadness, and the sin, that darkened life on this little earth, shall be forgotten like the dreams of a night that is past!

Your affectionate friend,

LEWIS CARROLL.

EASTER, 1876.

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04/15/10--20:35: Stephenie Meyer joins ranks of 'most challenged' authors | Books | guardian.co.uk (chan 2105780)



Challenged ... Stephenie Meyer. Photograph: Corbis / David Howells

Queen of teen vampire romance Stephenie Meyer has topped every bestseller chart going but she has now made it onto a less coveted chart, after her Twilight books joined the ranks of those most frequently requested to be banned from US libraries.

Meyer's novels, about the romance between a human teenage girl and a vampire, came fifth on the American Library Association's list of books which people tried hardest to ban in the last year. This is the first time the Mormon author's novels have appeared in the line-up – JK Rowling and Philip Pullman are both veterans of the list – with complaints about both their level of sexual explicitness and their "religious viewpoint".

"It is the books which are read frequently which are frequently challenged – with all the hype around Twilight and the movies and the celebrities I was actually surprised Meyer's books weren't higher," said Angela Maycock at the ALA's office for intellectual freedom. Vampire books in general accumulated a host of complaints last year, Maycock said, with "the idea of vampires and other supernatural entities in opposition to certain religious viewpoints". JK Rowling doesn't make it into this year's list but her Harry Potter books were the most challenged of the last decade, the ALA said today, with complaints over their "satanism" and "anti-family themes".

The most challenged books of 2009 were Lauren Myracle's young adult series of books TTYL, written entirely in the style of instant messaging. A host of objections were made to Myracle's books – over their language, coverage of drugs and sexual explicitness. "These books deal realistically with young adult lives – the ickyness, the weirdness of adolescence and the difficult situations lots of teens face," said Maycock. "Twilight of course deals with adolescence too, but is very much about the supernatural. It's interesting that both realism and fantasy are causing high levels of concern."

Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell's And Tango Makes Three, a children's book about two male penguins bringing up an orphaned chick which has topped the list for the last three years, slipped into second place, while Philip Pullman fell out of the list altogether.

Instead, the late JD Salinger's iconic novel of teenage rebellion The Catcher in the Rye, which has provoked a storm of complaints – from being "anti-white" and "obscene" to being "centred around negative activity" and "a filthy, filthy book" – ever since it was published more than 50 years ago, returned to the list of most challenged books after a four-year absence. "It's really a very cherished favourite for many readers so seeing it there can be shocking. People might ask 'are we still having problems with Catcher in the Rye?' The truth is, yes we are. It's a classic because of many of the things which make it potentially objectionable, including the language used and the fact that Holden Caulfield is really a classic non-conformist. That can be scary," said Maycock.

Another classic title, Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, was the fourth most challenged book in 2009, for "racism" and "offensive language". "Similar to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Lee uses the language of a certain time but the use is to put forward a very strongly anti-racist message, so it is really a shame that one particular word makes a book objectionable when the message of the book is exactly the opposite," said Maycock.

Last year, the ALA received 460 reports about efforts to remove books from the shelves of schools or libraries for being inappropriate, down from 513 challenges last year. But the association estimates that its statistics only represent 20-25% of the complaints that actually occur. The ALA said it was aware of 81 instances in which materials were actually removed from schools and libraries last year, including copies of Brave New World, The Kite Runner, Black Hawk Down and To Kill a Mockingbird.

"Even though not every book will be right for every reader, the ability to read, speak, think and express ourselves freely are core American values," said Barbara Jones, director of the ALA's office for intellectual freedom. "Protecting one of our most fundamental rights - the freedom to read - means respecting each other's differences and the right of all people to choose for themselves what they and their families read."

The top 10 titles most challenged titles of 2009 were:

1. TTYL; TTFN; L8R, G8R (series) by Lauren Myracle

Reasons: Nudity, Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language, Unsuited to Age Group, Drugs

2. And Tango Makes Three by Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson

Reasons: Homosexuality

3. The Perks of Being A Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

Reasons: Homosexuality, Sexually Explicit, Anti-Family, Offensive Language, Religious Viewpoint, Unsuited to Age Group, Drugs, Suicide

4. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Reasons: Racism, Offensive Language, Unsuited to Age Group

5. Twilight (series) by Stephenie Meyer

Reasons: Sexually Explicit, Religious Viewpoint, Unsuited to Age Group

6. The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger

Reasons: Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language, Unsuited to Age Group

7. My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult

Reasons: Sexism, Homosexuality, Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language, Religious Viewpoint, Unsuited to Age Group, Drugs, Suicide, Violence

8. The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big, Round Things, by Carolyn Mackler

Reasons: Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language, Unsuited to Age Group

9. The Color Purple by Alice Walker

Reasons: Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language, Unsuited to Age Group

10. The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier

Reasons: Nudity, Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language, Unsuited to Age Group

via guardian.co.uk

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04/15/10--20:39: Footballers pick books for boys | Education | guardian.co.uk (chan 2105780)



Spurs goalkeeper Carlo Cudicini goes for Cirque du Freak by Darren Shan, not just because 'the writer is a massive Spurs fan'

Teachers will nod glumly at today's news that boys don't want to read the books they're offered at school.

In a new survey, a third of boys agreed with the statement "I can't find anything to read that interests me", according to the National Literacy Trust which questioned 17,089 pupils aged eight to 16.

The problem with boys and schooling begins even earlier than that. A recent DCSF study of five-year-olds showed that while 42.8% of all boys had attained a good level of progress, 60.9% of all girls had done so – a gap of 18.1 percentage points. And the gender achievement gap is widening, particularly in socially disadvantaged communities.

The National Literacy Trust report also found that a fifth (19.4%) of young people who read below the expected level for their age believe that "reading is more for girls than boys".

By the time they're eight, and the girls are whizzing their way to Hogwarts via the giant bricks Harry Potter resides in, many boys have reached a decision: books are for girls, I'm going to play football.

And that is where the Premier League Reading Stars scheme comes in. Each of the 20 Premier League football clubs picks a player to select their favourite books. The clubs adopt a library, which gets free copies of all the titles. Then libraries hold sessions to give local families the chance to meet their football heroes and chat about the books.

Let's see what some of the footballers came up with:

Paul Robinson, Bolton Wanderers, went for It's Not About the Bike by Lance Armstrong:

"It was really inspirational and encouraging and I enjoyed reading every word. I find reading a great way to relax, whether I am reading alone or to my children, and I found that I couldn't put it down once I had started it. The book is written very honestly and encourages you to always fulfil your potential which is a great message to anyone."

Wade Elliott, Burnley, chose Anthony Horowitz's The Falcon's Malteser

"I enjoyed it because it was a crime mystery type story that had plenty of hooks and made me think about what was going on and what might happen next. Reading can open your mind to other people's points of view and ways of doing things. It's also a good form of escapism; it can be relaxing to switch off from your day by reading about different situations and ways of life to your own."

Chelsea's Paulo Ferreira's choice might come as more of a surprise – Paulo Coehlo's The Alchemist.

"I've always enjoyed reading and especially now I have children. We try to read together as family as much as we can – it's good to help your kids develop their language. It's great that a book written in Portuguese has been so successful and is now one of the most translated and bestselling books in history. It's a great story very simply told about a young man on a voyage of discovery. The message of the book is that despite fear and obstacles you should always follow your dreams and that experience is the greatest treasure of all."

In last years GCSEs, the proportion of girls getting an A or A* for all subjects was 24.4%, compared with 18.7% of boys. English results for boys were particularly disappointing. But there was a marked improved in maths, with boys outperforming girls for the first time in a decade. Could a boost in reading be exactly what boys need to start reversing a 20-year trend in other subjects? What books would you recommend they start with?

• The National Literacy Trust is an independent charity that transforms lives through promoting literacy.

via guardian.co.uk

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04/15/10--23:48: 'Sweet Valley High,' the Great Retweening and Why Boys Won't Read - The Awl (chan 2105780)

 

'Sweet Valley High,' the Great Retweening and Why Boys Won't Read

by Katie Baker posted @5:00 PM

"Has there ever been a better moment for tween girls?" asked Ada Calhoun in the L.A. Times last week, pointing to the cultural ascendancy of Disney and Nickelodeon robots Hannah Montana, Taylor Swift, iCarly and Selena Gomez. Then fans of American Idol watched as an army of twexters voted for dreamy over Didi. ("America is a teenage girl," lamented TV blogger Richard Lawson.) So strong is the spirit of this young generation that even the women of my own just-older cohort have sought its approval, offering up recycled heirlooms from our own childhoods like so many olive branches. Just hitting bookstores is The Summer Before, a Baby-sitters Club prequel that will pave the path for the re-release of several early BSC installments — The Truth About Stacy, anyone? — later this spring.

The BSC announcement triggered a deluge of inquiries to Scholastic, particularly from "people who had a next generational stake — teachers, librarians, parents" — who grew up adoring the series themselves. It might take these committed "ambassadors" to drum up real attention, given the enormous amount of content currently tailored just for young girls.

* * *

But what of their brothers? In the glittering galaxy of "aspirational" characters, it is difficult to find any live-action males who are more than a sidekick. (Who knew Sam from Clarissa Explains It All would one day be the norm?) "The world is becoming more coed, and tween TV is reflecting that," Calhoun writes.

Tween test scores are reflecting something worse. In a Sunday op-ed in the New York Times, "The Boys Have Fallen Behind," Nick Kristof presented a slew of grim statistics to back up the headline, including a Center on Education Policy report finding that boys lag in reading in every US state. This is not out of nowhere: Christina Hoff Summers, for one, was writing back in 2000 that "it's a bad time to be a boy in America," having questioned the conventional wisdom that boys were favored in classrooms many years before that. Drawing on Richard Whitmire's new book Why Boys Fail, Kristof argues that while the world has grown increasingly verbal, the boys have not.

"Some people think that boys are hard-wired so that they learn more slowly," Kristof wrote, "perhaps because they evolved to fight off wolves more than to raise their hands in classrooms." (Ah yes! And presumably the girls have been naturally selected to submit to authority.) But, anyway, Kristof floats a solution:

Some educators say that one remedy may be to encourage lowbrow, adventure, or even gross-out books that disproportionately appeal to boys (I confess that I was a huge fan of the Hardy Boys, and then used them to entice my own kids into becoming avid readers as well.)

Indeed, the more books make parents flinch, the more they seem to suck boys in. A web site, guysread.com, offers useful lists of books to coax boys into reading, and they are helpfully sorted into categories like "ghosts," "boxers, wrestlers, ultimate fighters," and "at least one explosion."

This is an age-old issue: should kids be allowed to read whatever they want, so long as they're reading? Or adults, while we're at it: N.B. that great back-of-the-bus scene in A League of Their Own:

Mae Mordabito: Sound it out…

Shirley Baker: Kimm…

Mae: Kimono.

Shirley: Kimono, kimono. Off. And. Gr – Gra – Grabb"d.

Mae: Grabbed.

Shirley: Her. M – mi – mil – mil – milky, milky. White, white. Milky white.

Evelyn: Mae. What are you giving her to read?

Mae: Oh, what the difference does it make? She's reading, okay? That's the important thing. Now go away, go, shoo, shoo. Go ahead, Shirley, you're doing good.

Shirley: Thanks, Mae. Milky white bre- breasts.
[Gives Mae a surprised look]

Mae: It gets really good after that. Look. The delivery boy walks in…



It was no World War II-era kimono porn, but Sweet Valley books were still the sort of literature that could be pulled from one's hands at any moment by a disapproving mother or guardian. One such would-be vigilante was West Virginian librarian Mary Huntwork, who in 1990 took to the pages of The School Library Journal in despair: her 11-year old "good reader" daughter had "fallen prey" to those "skimpy-looking paperbacks with the rosy-cheeked blonds on the cover," the ultimate betrayal.

Nick Kristof may feel a low-simmering shame for his love of the Hardy Boys, but those books were Balzac in comparison to Sweet Valley. Huntwork laid out all of the reasons to cluck: "poor character development; weak writing; use of stereotypes; emphasis on superficial and materialistic values (clothes, makeup, cars, popularity, physical appearance); sexism (female characters find value only in relation to boyfriends); and finally, failure to reflect real life (predominance of white, middle-class characters, facile solutions to dilemmas)."

But some words on the dedication page of a genre fiction anthology caught her eye. Never apologize for your reading tastes, it said, and Huntwork softened: "Part of building trust, of course, is acceptance," she wrote, "not only of the adolescents themselves, but of their reading choices." Several studies outlining the positive, habit-forming benefits of reading even the schlockiest fare ultimately calmed the worried librarian. "After several months of research on teenage romance fiction, I too no longer view Sweet Valley High as a threat," she wrote. "Still, doubts remain. I found no study that assessed the reading habits of teen romance readers two, five, or ten years after they have outgrown the books."

It's unclear whether, twenty years later, we readers have outgrown the books at all. Much of the series was reissued in 2008 (with some updates, of course: Elizabeth now has a blog) and Diablo Cody has a film in the works based on the original 152-book series. (A friend coined a quite diablocodian phrase for all this commerce of nostalgia: "retweening.") And in February, Publisher's Weekly announced that St. Martin's Press had picked up Sweet Valley Confidential, a novel that will follow Elizabeth and Jessica Wakefield through their now-adult years, "providing a flashback to their youth for 20- and 30-something women everywhere."

Rebecca Mead's New Yorker story late last year about tween publishing powerhouse Alloy (itself a descendant of Sweet Valley High "book packager" Cloverdale Press) ran for seven thousand words, roughly 95% of which are about girls. Mead details, with sparkling detail, brainstorm sessions ranging from "a 'Marley & Me' for teen girls" to a "young, female Jason Bourne" to every mathematically possible Gossip Girl permutation and derivative. Boys get no more than a few token mentions: once in conjunction with a "zombies for tweens" book; once while dissing a box-office flop called Sex Drive that starred Seth Green and was based on a book for boys called All The Way; and here, in the article's Historical Pullback:

The business of packaging books for kids was invented…by Edward Stratemeyer…who got his start writing boys' stories for the magazine Golden Days…before launching his own adventure series, "The Rover Boys," in 1899. Stratemeyer's innovation was to produce books that were intended to entertain rather than to instruct, as was more typical of children's literature at the time. The series, which was published under the pseudonym Arthur M. Winfield, begins when three Rover brothers, Tom, Dick, and Sam, are sent off to a military academy for misbehaving at home.

The misbehavior theme struck me: "Hardy Boys were my favorite," a friend said when I asked what he read as a boy, besides Goosebumps. "They actually got into trouble and stuff."

So boys, who once read about getting into trouble, now get into trouble for not having read. Kristof points out that verbal skills are often taught "in sedate ways that bore boys," causing them to "get frustrated, act out, and learn to dislike school." This is not dissimilar to another demographic that shies away from books: adults learning English as a second language. Many ESL students "assume that reading must always be hard work, that it must entail word by word decoding of difficult texts," Kyung-Sook Cho and Stephen D. Krashen wrote in their study, "Acquisition of vocabulary from the Sweet Valley Kids series."

The subjects, four women aged between 21-35 and in possession of varying levels of English proficiency, were given the second-grade-level Sweet Valley Kids series (chosen for being "both interesting and comprehensible") and encouraged to underline unfamiliar words or ask questions as they moved through the text. After a couple of months:

All four women became enthusiastic readers… After the first volume, all four women were clearly hooked on the Sweet Valley Kids series… [Mi-ae] reported reading them in nearly every free moment and expressed the desire to read the entire 33-volume series. In her own words (translated from Korean): "I never get bored reading the Sweet Valley series. This series of English books is the most interesting and understandable I have ever read. The Sweet Valley series are the only English books I keep reading."

The four women, on average, cruised through at a clip of over 100,000 words per month during the study, a pace faster than that of the average US middle-class child. (Cho and Krashen cite a 1998 study estimating that this child reads somewhere in the ballpark of one million words a year, while Kristof quotes a lower number of 800,000 based on Whitmire's recent work and warns that by fifth grade a child at the bottom of his class may only be reading 60,000 words a year.)



"I read the Sweet Valley series with interest and without the headache that I got when reading Time magazine in Korea," said Jin-hee, another subject in the study. "Most interestingly, I enjoyed reading the psychological descriptions of each character."



That last part is key. Much that I have read about Sweet Valley lists as a positive the tendency of girl readers to assess and relate to one or more of the series' archetypes. In the case of Sweet Valley, it's a binary: "the series' trademark characters –- sweet, studious Elizabeth and flirty, scheming Jessica — were dramatically different aspirational fantasy figures who appealed to readers' dreams of being both the good girl and the bad girl," wrote Amy Pattee in The Horn Book Magazine when Sweet Valley was first retweened in 2008.

The cult of personalities extends to even more scattered casts. Ask a woman my age which Baby-sitter was her favorite, and you're likely to get a strong answer –- "I want to be Stacey when I grow up," wrote one commenter on a Flavorwire post that asked Where The Baby-sitters Are Now. Her feelings aren't surprising: publishers and the marketers following behind them have for years encouraged this sort of choosiness, turning characters into mini-brands. Nearly a decade before girls my age were having wild and crazy sex and declaring themselves a Samantha, they were watching Wild 'n' Crazy Kids and declaring themselves… a Samantha.

Boys have fewer printed-page characters with whom to relate, and many turn instead to sports or video games. A 1996 Brandweek article about how to lure girls into playing computer games mentions males only once: "blood-thirsty game-players making Doom, Duke Nukem and Quake into alt-entertainment phenomena." Little has changed in fourteen years. Still, instead of pinpointing what it is that attracts boys to gaming and adapting their output accordingly, media execs are just co-opting its lingo: Calhoun writes that a year ago Disney launched a "boy-centric" channel called Disney XD that lamely borrows the video game concept of "leveling up" to emphasize teamwork and effort. Can't you hear all the Halo players slamming down their controllers in disgust?

* * *

While marketers used video games to grab boys' attention, girls my age were wooed by our love of schlocky fiction: the Brandweek piece mentions a "Baby-Sitter's Club Friendship Kit" CD-ROM with which girls could "create storylines using their favorite BSC characters."

"The great thing about these products is, they put the girl in control," said one media executive, using a language of empowerment that crops up all the time. (As Huntwork concluded in her essay: "Each time a girl selects a Sweet Valley High book, she is telling us something. Publishers know this and have listened closely.") But there lurks a downside to all this kowtowing: one writer quoted by Calhoun argues that icons like iCarly "show boys only the way girls want to see them." Disney executives, according to Calhoun, insist that "the issue isn't that boys aren't being served enough boy characters, but that boys have changed and now have no problem relating to strong female leads."

Calhoun's piece is littered with these sorts of semi-Darwinian references. It's troubling that while girls are encouraged to exist on their terms, boys are expected to improve, to level up, as it were. "We've found that boys, especially in recent years, have become more emotionally intelligent," said Nickelodeon's Marjorie Cohn, adding that "in the same way we celebrate Hillary Clinton, we should celebrate boys being able to talk about relationships." Disney's Gary Marsh, meanwhile, calls tween boys "complex beings who are evolving." Now's as good a time as any to shed all those pesky wolf-fighting genes, I suppose.

To hear writer Jen Singer describe it, though, little boys' taste hasn't suddenly changed. Writing on the Times' Motherlode blog, she describes her own small transgression, her let-them-eat-dirt:

“Who would send this in?” asked another mom who was helping set up the elementary-school book swap. She held up [my] copy of “Oh, Yuck! The Encyclopedia of Everything Nasty,” and grimaced at the cover, which featured a photo of a kid picking his nose. “The boys are going to all herd around this one.”

I can remember boys herding like that, snickering furtively and elbowing ribs. The book was the dictionary, and the passage in question was the definition of "mount." Boys were then boys, as they ever will be, and it turns out we really ought to have been praising them: not only were they reading, they were kind of discussing relationships too.

Katie Baker had a Kirsten, and then was a Dawn (but was really a Kristy) before settling into life as a Miranda.

via theawl.com

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04/20/10--17:34: From Daphne Lee in Malaysia (chan 2105780)

If you received an email from me that offers free iPads, please ignore it.

I believe my email was hacked into as I did not send the email.

Sorry for any inconvenience caused and thank you to those of you who gave me the benefit of doubt and asked if it was a virus etc.

All the best
Daphne Lee

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04/22/10--19:11: Lara Jones obituary | Books | The Guardian (chan 2105780)



Lara Jones was best known for the Poppy Cat series

My daughter the children's author and illustrator Lara Jones, who has died of malignant melanoma, aged 34, was best known for her Poppy Cat series of books. She produced other characters (Lola and Binky, and Davy the Dinosaur) and illustrated books by other authors (I Want a Mini Tiger by Joyce Dunbar being her final work), but Poppy Cat was her most successful endeavour, selling millions of copies worldwide. It is currently in production for television, to be screened on the Nick Jr channel in the autumn.

Lara was born in Ashby-de-la-Zouch, Leicestershire, the eldest child of two authors (myself and my wife Mal Lewis Jones), but spent her childhood in Shropshire, with her younger brother, Levin, her sister, Jessie, and many family pets. Lara was a committed vegetarian from the age of five, preferring not to endorse any sort of cruelty to living things. She attended local schools, but much preferred the freedom and creativity of her home life.

From a very early age, she was an independent, sensitive and visual thinker, eventually going on to study fine art at Canterbury College of Art and then at Cheltenham College, where her large, vivid paintings bore testament to a childhood lovingly observed, and where she also won a travel bursary to Mexico. It was here, too, that she met a fellow artist, Shaun Clarke, and lived with him in Cheltenham and then London.

Working for the Royal Academy and then for the Inkshed artists' agency, Lara illustrated two toddlers' books for Scholastic before winning a contract with Macmillan/Campbell Books for Poppy Cat. She remained modest, preferring to lead a simple life in the countryside. After she and Shaun were married in 2003, they returned to Shropshire and bought a Georgian farmhouse, where their two daughters, India and Etienne, were born.

Lara won awards for several of her books, including the Book Trust's baby book of the year award for Poppy Cat's Farm in 2005. Goodnight Poppy Cat (2003) was included in Junior magazine's top 100 books of all time.

Throughout her life, she maintained the kind of innocence and generosity of spirit that many aspire to. Her legacy is of gentleness, love and the bright enthusiasm which can be found radiating from the pages of her books. She is survived by Shaun, India and Etienne, Levin and Jessie, her mother and myself.

via guardian.co.uk

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04/28/10--23:53: Gallery: Carnegie medal 2010 shortlist | Books | guardian.co.uk (chan 2105780)



via guardian.co.uk

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04/29/10--00:08: The CILIP Carnegie & Kate Greenaway Children's Book Awards - Press Desk (chan 2105780)






THE CILIP CARNEGIE MEDAL
Nominations for 2010

Please note we are still checking the eligibility of these titles. For more information about how these nominations were selected see the section on awards process.

Also see the Kate Greenaway nominations




Agard, John The Young Inferno
Publisher: Frances Lincoln ISBN: 9781845077693

Allen-Gray, Alison Lifegame
Publisher: OUP ISBN: 9780192728432

Almond, David Jackdaw Summer
Publisher: Hodder ISBN: 9780340881989

Anderson, Laurie Halse Chains
Publisher: Bloomsbury ISBN: 9780747598077

Anderson, R J Knife
Publisher: Orchard ISBN: 9781408303122

Ashley, Bernard Solitaire
Publisher: Usborne ISBN: 9780746081372

Bowler, Tim Bloodchild
Publisher: OUP ISBN: 9780192719805

Brennan, Sarah Rees The Demon�s Lexicon
Publisher: Simon & Schuster ISBN: 9781847382894

Brooks, Kevin Killing God
Publisher: Puffin ISBN: 9780141319124

Burgess, Melvin Nicholas Dane
Publisher: Andersen Press ISBN: 9781842701812

Caldecott, Elen How Kirsty Jenkins stole the elephant
Publisher: Bloomsbury ISBN: 9780747599197

Cassidy, Anne The Dead House
Publisher: Hodder ISBN: 9780340932285

Chancellor, Henry The Remarkable Adventures of Tom Scatterhorn: The Museum�s Secret
Publisher: OUP ISBN: 9780192720832

Christopher, Lucy Stolen Publisher: Chicken House ISBN: 9781906427139

Creech, Sharon Hate That Cat
Publisher: Bloomsbury ISBN: 9780747595298

Crossley-Holland, Kevin Waterslain Angels
Publisher: Orion ISBN: 9781842556917

Dogar, Sharon Falling
Publisher: Chicken House ISBN: 9781905294695

Donaldson, Julia Running on the cracks
Publisher: Egmont ISBN: 9781405222334

Dowd, Siobhan Solace of the Road
Publisher: David Fickling ISBN: 9780385609715

Dowswell, Paul Auslander
Publisher: Bloomsbury ISBN: 9780747589099

Finn, Daniel Two Good Thieves
Publisher: Macmillan ISBN: 9780230737761

Fisk, Pauline Flying for Frankie
Publisher: Faber ISBN: 9780571236190

Forman, Gayle If I Stay
Publisher: Doubleday ISBN: 9780385616201

Gaiman, Neil The Graveyard Book
Publisher: Bloomsbury ISBN: 9780747569015

Golding, Julia Wolf Cry
Publisher: OUP ISBN: 9780192727619

Grant, Helen The Vanishing of Katharina Linden
Publisher: Puffin ISBN: 9780141325736

Hardinge, Frances Gullstruck Island
Publisher: Macmillan ISBN: 9781405055383

Hearn, Julie Rowan the Strange
Publisher: OUP ISBN: 9780192792150

Higgins, F E The Eyeball Collector
Publisher: Macmillan ISBN: 9780230532281

Hoffman, Mary Troubadour
Publisher: Bloomsbury ISBN: 9780747592518

Kennen, Ally Bedlam
Publisher: Marion Lloyd Books ISBN: 9781407103853

LaFleur, Suzanne Love, Aubrey
Publisher: Puffin ISBN: 9780141326870

Laird, Elizabeth The Witching Hour
Publisher: Macmillan ISBN: 9780230736795

Manning, Mick & Granstrom, Brita Tail-End Charlie
Publisher: Frances Lincoln ISBN: 9781845076511

Muchamore, Robert Brigands M.C.
Publisher: Hodder ISBN: 9780340989036

Ness, Patrick The Ask and the Answer
Publisher: Walker ISBN: 9781406310269

Newbery, Linda The Sandfather
Publisher: Orion ISBN: 9781842555484

Patterson, James Max
Publisher: Doubleday ISBN: 9780385614528

Peet, Mal Exposure
Publisher: Walker ISBN: 9781406306491

Perera, Anna Guantanamo Boy
Publisher: Puffin ISBN: 9780141326078

Philip, Gillian Crossing the Line
Publisher: Bloomsbury ISBN: 9780747599937

Pratchett, Terry Nation
Publisher: Doubleday ISBN: 9780385613705

Rai, Bali City of Ghosts
Publisher: Doubleday ISBN: 9780385611695

Reeve, Philip Fever Crumb
Publisher: Scholastic ISBN: 9781407102429

Riordan, James The Sniper
Publisher: Frances Lincoln ISBN: 9781845078850

Riordan, Rick Percy Jackson and the Last Olympian
Publisher: Puffin ISBN: 9780141382944

Sedgwick, Marcus The Kiss of Death
Publisher: Orion ISBN: 9781842551851

Sedgwick, Marcus Revolver
Publisher: Orion ISBN: 9781842551868

Strangolov, Lazlo Feather and Bone
Publisher: Walker ISBN: 9781406316605

Stroud, Jonathan Heroes of the Valley
Publisher: Doubleday ISBN: 9780385614016

Valentine, Jenny The Ant Colony
Publisher: HarperCollins ISBN: 9780007283590

Ward, Rachel Numbers
Publisher: Chicken House ISBN: 9781905294930

Whitley, David The Midnight Charter
Publisher: Puffin ISBN: 9780141323718

Wilson, Leslie Saving Rafael
Publisher: Andersen ISBN: 9781842709184

via carnegiegreenaway.org.uk

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05/11/10--04:12: Puffin marks 70 years by celebrating best ever books | Books | guardian.co.uk (chan 2105780)



Plenty of puff left ... three of Puffin's 70 best ever books

Huckleberry Finn rubs shoulders with Artemis Fowl, Charlie and Lola with Fungus the Bogeyman, and Dick King Smith's Sheep-Pig with Gerald Durrell's Family and Other Animals. A reading list drawn up to celebrate 70 years of the children's publisher Puffin throws up some odd pairings, but highlights the rich heritage of the list that was founded in 1940 as a series of non-fiction picture books for children.

The first fiction book published by Puffin, Worzel Gummidge, in 1941 doesn't make the cut 70 years later, but there is a good sprinkling of other classics among the 70 featured titles, which are organised in categories ranging from Best Swashbucklers and Derring-do and Best Blood and Guts to Best Weird and Wonderful and Best Weepies. Watership Down heads up the latter category while both Dracula and The Hound of the Baskervilles feature in the blood and guts section. Alice in Wonderland and Anne Frank's Diary of a Young Girl are also on the list. Roald Dahl is honoured with a section of his own – Best Phizzwhizzers – containing The BFG, Matilda, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Fantastic Mr Fox.

"It's great that it flags up classic titles and reminds people that they are out there. It will also probably have a positive effect on sales for the books on the list – things like these lists always do if the publicity is wide enough," said Georgina Hanratty, manager of the Tales On Moon Lane children's bookshop in south London, which is holding a Puffin party in June where staff and customers will dress up as their favourite characters.

"In terms of us as booksellers, there are unlikely to be any huge surprises but it's a lovely thing to be able to celebrate the classics again and give the backlist some space at the front of the shop rather than just focusing on the new big-hitters."

Newer writers on the list include the Percy Jackson author, Rick Riordan, Young Bond creator Charlie Higson, Lauren Child, the queen of the picture book, and even former Sun editor David Yelland with his recently published novel about a father struggling with alcoholism. There is also a nod to the Edward and Bella phenomenon with a category for Best Alternatives to Twilight.

"The Puffin list continues to look remarkably strong. So many of the books it promoted in the seven decades have just gone on and on. They provide a long, robust spine to children's books. And the recent acquisition of authors such as Eoin Colfer, Meg Rosoff and Charlie Higson just adds a fresh new layer. Of course, there are now lots of wonderful authors on other lists too. After all, Puffin no longer has the monopoly it once enjoyed but it is still a byword for interesting, high quality books. Nowadays, that is especially true for its edgy books for ten readers."

The showcase of Puffin books is part of a year of birthday celebrations organised by the publisher. Bookshops and libraries have been given packs to host Puffin parties and a series of £3.99 "Pocket Money Puffins" have already proved very popular, creating a buzz with fans of the authors, according to Hanratty.

"The categories were picked to show that there's a Puffin for everyone and to suit all tastes from those who love action and adventure to tales of family and friendship and even a vampire or two," said Francesca Dow, managing director of Puffin Books.

The Puffin top 70 in full:


The Best Mischief and Mayhem

The Twits by Roald Dahl
Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney
The Hundred-Mile-An-Hour Dog by Jeremy Strong
The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole by Sue Townsend


The Best Weepies

Watership Down by Richard Adams
The Truth about Leo by David Yelland
Two Weeks with the Queen by Morris Gleitzman
Charlotte's Web by E.B. White


The Best to Cuddle-Up With

The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle
The Bog Baby by Jeanne Willis & Gwen Millward
Peepo! by Janet and Allan Ahlberg
Hairy Maclary from Donaldson's Dairy by Lynley Dodd


The Best Blood and Guts

The Enemy by Charlie Higson
Dracula by Bram Stoker
Being by Kevin Brooks
The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

The Best Swashbucklers and Derring-Do

Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
Captain Flinn and the Pirate Dinosaurs by Giles Andreae & Russell Ayto
Young Samurai: The Way of the Warrior by Chris Bradford
Robin Hood by Roger Lancelyn Green

The Best Heroes

Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer
Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan
Young Bond: SilverFin by Charlie Higson
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain


The Best Characters

Charlie and Lola: Excuse Me But That is My Book by Lauren Child
Meg and Mog by Helen Nicoll & Jan Pienkowski
Angelina Ballerina by Katharine Holabird & Helen Craig
Fungus the Bogeyman by Raymond Briggs

The Best Sugar and Spice

Milly-Molly-Mandy Stories by Joyce Lankester Brisley
The Worst Witch by Jill Murphy
The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams
The Princess and the Pea by Lauren Child & Polly Borland

The Best Animals

Spy Dog by Andrew Cope
The Sheep-Pig by Dick King-Smith
My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell
Lionboy by Zizou Corder

The Best Friends and Family

Dizzy by Cathy Cassidy
The Borrowers by Mary Norton
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
The Family From One End Street by Eve Garnett
Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfeild


The Best Phizzwhizzers

The BFG by Roald Dahl
Matilda by Roald Dahl
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl
Fantastic Mr Fox by Roald Dahl

The Best War and Conflict

The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
Once by Morris Gleitzman
Goodnight Mr Tom by Michelle Magorian
Carrie's War by Nina Bawden


The Best BEST BEST BEST!

Stig of the Dump by Clive King
Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery
Finn Family Moomintroll by Tove Jansson
How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff
Junk by Melvin Burgess


The Best Fantasy and Adventure

TimeRiders by Alex Scarrow
Dot Robot by Jason Bradbury
Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne
A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula Le Guin


The Best Weird and Wonderful

Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
Five Children and It by E Nesbitt
The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie


The Best Rhymes and Verse

Please Mrs Butler by Allan Ahlberg
Michael Rosen's A-Z The best children's poetry from Agard to Zephaniah
Talking Turkeys by Benjamin Zephaniah
Bad Bad Cats by Roger McGough


The Best Alternatives to Twilight

Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl
Vampire Academy by Richelle Mead
The Luxe by Anna Godbersen
Along for the Ride by Sarah Dessen

via guardian.co.uk

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05/14/10--19:37: Cermaine Greer on the literary worth of old wives' tales | Books | The Guardian (chan 2105780)



Detail from Snow White Playing with her Father's Trophies (1995) by Paula Rego. Photograph: Courtesy of Marlborough Fine Art, London.

In the 1980s, when I had my little house in the Montanare di Cortona, friends with small children often came to stay. If the nippers hadn't had a rest, the glimmering evenings and long suppers on the terrace were apt to collapse in screaming cacophony. We had no TV and the radio was in Italian, so I had no way of keeping the children still and quiet during the siesta other than to tell them a story. Therefore, after lunch, when the day was at its hottest, I would pile them on to my big bed and, propping myself up with pillows in the middle, I would tell them the story of the most beautiful frog in the world, as, one by one, they fell asleep.

The littlest ones fell asleep first and so missed a good deal of the story. Everybody missed some, because it was hard to tell which of the heap of children was still awake, and I had to keep on with my tale until I was sure everyone was fast asleep. That meant that each time, before I could get going on the next episode, we had to have a synopsis. I would pretend not to remember where we had got to, and bumble and mumble, until the children, desperate to prompt my memory, had retold the story themselves, and the little ones had asked their questions. In this way I learned what they had understood and what misunderstood. What was more, the children's concerns worked their way into the story. Did the beautiful frog enjoy eating live creatures? Did they suffer? Why did the bee have to die after it had stung the stork? Why did the bee beg the frog to eat her before the ants arrived? Why does the spider have such revolting table-manners? Can a frog cry?

What I was doing was as old as the human race, and women have always done it. Even the most refined aristocrat of antiquity would have been told nursery stories by his first attendants, who were illiterate slaves and peasants. When it came to building a fanciful narrative of his own, he would recycle the same elements, changing them fundamentally in the process. The idiom of the original tale had to be standardised, and the events reinterpreted, to make the kind of sense that educated people would recognise, even to the point of ironic subversion of the fantastical elements in the story. Illiterate women went on providing the staple of the repertoire at the same time as educated people were turning their own variants of the tales into literature. As long as neither the women nor the children they told their tales to could read, the two kinds of tale-telling could flourish side by side.

The first collector of popular tales for print is known to us now as Gianfrancesco Straparola, who was connected with the Venetian publisher Comin de Trino. As "Stra-parola" means something like "crazy talk", we may be sure that this was not the real name of the author of the Piacevoli Notti (1550–1556). Following the convention established by Boccaccio's Decamerone (1353), the Straparola tales are set in a framing narrative, a 13-day party at the palace of the Bishop of Lodi on the island of Murano during carnevale; the narrators are 13 ladies. Two of the tales are recounted in dialect, one in Bergamasco and another in Paduan. The Straparola stories are pretty good examples of the kinds of stories old peasant women tell. The fashionable lady who tells the five stories on the second night pretends that the second of her tales is set in Bohemia, but it soon becomes clear that we are dealing with a story about the people living on the shores of the lagoon.

A poor spinner has two daughters, Cassandra and Adamantina. When she dies she has nothing to leave her daughters but a box of tow. Cassandra spins a pound of it into thread and sends Adamantina to market to sell the thread and buy bread with the proceeds. Adamantina meets an old woman who has in her lap a doll, of a kind manufactured in Marghera and Mestre and known as a poavala. Adamantina falls in love with the poavala and persuades its owner to take the thread in exchange for it. When she arrives home with the doll and no bread, Cassandra is so disappointed that she flies into a rage and beats Adamantina so soundly that she can barely move. Adamantina does not retaliate. At bedtime she brings the doll close to the fire, takes off its clothes, lays it on a woollen cloth, and, putting a little olive oil in the palm of her hand, gently massages its belly and lower back. Then she wraps it in the softest cloths she can find and lays it in bed beside her. She has not finished her first sleep when the doll begins to cry, "Mamma, mamma, caca!" (The missing "c" in "cacca" betrays Venetian dialect.) Adamantina gently asks the doll to wait until she has spread her apron under its bottom. The doll bears down and fills the apron with gold coins. This she does night after night, and the orphan girls have all their modest needs supplied.

A jealous neighbour steals the doll and tries the same trick, but this time the doll produces a stinking mess of faeces. Infuriated, the neighbour throws the doll out of the window and on to a heap of rubbish in the street. Peasants collecting the refuse to spread on the fields as manure throw the doll on to their cart and carry it off to the mainland. The king, riding by on his way to the hunt, feels a call of nature, gets down from his horse and voids his bowels. His servant can find nothing better to offer his majesty to wipe his behind on than the rag doll. No sooner has the king thrust the doll between his buttocks than it bites him hard and will not let go. Try as they might, the courtiers cannot detach the doll, which not only sinks its teeth deeper and deeper into the royal rear, but uses its hands to twist and wring the king's sonagli (his hanging bells) until he sees stars. To cut the old wives' story short, Adamantina hears of the king's plight, comes to fetch her beloved doll, ends the king's agony and marries the king, and they live happily ever after.

This is not one of the Straparola stories that his aristocratic successors chose to imitate. It stems directly from rural living conditions, in which the management of human waste is essential, complex and demanding. Where there are no toilets, no nappies and no piped water, babies' attendants simply hold them clear of tables or chairs or other people as they excrete. When they can toddle, little girls are dressed in skirts with no knickers and little boys in split trousers, as they gradually learn how to tell what they need to do and where to squat to do it, but there are many accidents along the way. A story like this keys into the manifold anxieties connected with toilet training and with the management of a small baby, which often fell to an older child, when its mother was needed elsewhere. Rubbing a baby's stomach with warm olive oil is a good way to ease gripes and stimulate a bowel movement. As the context of Straparola's retelling is the entertainment of literate people, his version of the tale is self-consciously rustic, while straightforward ribaldry has become suggestion. The framing narrative follows it with a riddle involving sonagli, to which there is an obvious, obscene answer. When the lady who offers it is scolded, she turns the tables by providing an equally valid non-obscene answer. Such ironic jeux d'esprit are utterly foreign to the old wives' tale.

When the tales collected by Giambattista Basile during his travels in Naples, Crete and Venice were published by his sister, with the title Lo cunto de li cunti overo lo trattenimiento de peccerille ("the story of stories or the entertainment of little people") in 1634, two years after his death, they were found in Neapolitan dialect. The collection was later known as the Pentamerone. Basile provided his successors with the basic plots of the stories of Cinderella, Rapunzel, Sleeping Beauty and Hansel and Gretel. As he knew that his readers would all be people of his own class, he elaborated his style with purple passages of description, but in a story such as "La Mortella (The Myrtle)", we can still discern traits typical of its humble beginning as an old wives' tale.

The story begins with a woman wishing for a child, any kind of child, even if it is only a sprig of myrtle. She does give birth – to a sprig of myrtle. She and her husband put the sprig in a pot, set it in the window and love it more than a daughter. The prince riding by sees it and coaxes them to sell it to him. He tends to the plant's every need with his own hands. One night, a woman comes unseen to his bed; in the morning she is gone. She comes again the next and every night thereafter. After seven nights the prince ties her hair to his arm so that she cannot escape, and she has no choice but to confess that by day she is his myrtle bush. She and the prince pledge their love. One day, the prince tells her that he has to go on a boar hunt, and asks her to turn herself back into a myrtle bush for the duration. She tells him to hang a bell on her and ring it when he wants her back in human form. While he is gone seven wicked sisters break into his apartment, see the myrtle and ring the bell. When the bush turns into a beautiful young woman, they tear her to pieces, all except the youngest of them, who does not join in. The prince's chamberlain puts the pieces of her body back into the pot; they sprout and, when the prince returns, his beloved reappears and he gets permission from his father to marry her. At the wedding, he asks the congregation what punishment they think appropriate for anyone who would tear his wife to pieces. The seven sisters suggest live burial, and so are walled up in an underground dungeon, all except the youngest, whom the prince marries to his loyal chamberlain.

Basile elaborates his story in a very adult way: here is his description of the prince's discovery of a woman in his bed:

Instead of the prickles of a hedgehog in his hand, he found a sweet thing finer and softer than barbary wool, more supple and tender than a marten's tail, more delicate than thistledown . . .


The ur-tale as told by women is innocent of such embellishments. It offers no explanations of events and makes no attempt to moralise. The object is to amaze and appal, to stretch the limits of the child's imagination. The story often turns on preoccupations of women – impregnation, pregnancy, childbirth, childloss, rape and domestic violence – in various coded forms. In "La Mortella", we begin with a woman longing for a child, which turns into a variant of monstrous birth, and then into an inversion of the Cupid and Psyche theme, in which it is the female lover who comes unseen by night. The miscreants who enact the sparagmos of the heroine by tearing her into a hundred pieces are also female. The sheer preposterousness of the idea of a woman's giving birth to a sprig of myrtle is typical of the naive tale. If it is to enjoy the tale, the child must not balk at this initial impossibility. The mystic significance of the myrtle is irrelevant to the tale-teller and the tale, however important it may be for academics.

Even a tale with a male hero, such as Jack and the Beanstalk, is centered in the female world. Jack's most important relationship is with his mother, who resorts to violence to discipline him, without success. His climbing the beanstalk can be seen as an attempt to escape to the superior masculine world, which turns out to be the realm of an ogre, whose wife is Jack's only ally. The world at the top of the beanstalk is a mirror image of the world below, except that it is dominated by a destructive male who is eventually made to crash to the ground when Jack cuts down the beanstalk. The old wives who first told the story cast themselves in the story in two familiar roles, the bad mother (Jack's lone parent) and the good mother (the brutal father figure's gentle wife).

It is easy to see how the expression "old wives' tale" could come to mean a superstitious, irrational and untrue statement, which is to be rejected out of hand. Even the Oxford dictionary defines an old wife's fable, story or tale as "a foolish story, such as is told by garrulous old women". I dare say my story of the most beautiful frog in the world was foolish; the frog in question was far too like a human child, but it isn't foolish to tell a story in which the frog heroine is in constant danger of being eaten and keeps making friends with the very animals that are most likely to eat her. Like most tales of its foolish kind, my story was didactic but it did not moralise. The little frog is exposed to terrible dangers but I made no attempt to make it seem her own fault. Meanwhile, the children squealed and cried and clapped and cheered, and fell asleep. If the child's imagination is to work, the story must not be explained away, nor should the child intuit what the grown-up's reason for telling such a tale might be. Cautionary tales emerge from a very different mindset.

Women teach babies and children to speak, which is the same as teaching them to think. An integral part of this activity is waking up their imagination, to see the numinousness of the real world, giving them, to adapt Wordsworth's phrase, glimpses that would make them less forlorn. Wordsworth gives examples of two fables from antiquity, Proteus rising from the sea, and Triton blowing his wreathed horn. The old wife who lives by the sea is more apt to tell the tale of the silkie, or the miraculous catch of the fish with a ring in its mouth, or the little mermaid. The old woman who lives in the woods will tell a tale of bears and pixies. When I lived in Calabria, the peasant children would put out food for the monachicchi, the spirits of children who had died unbaptised, whose cold baby fingers caressed your face as you walked through the olive groves at night. When they gathered up the empty plates in the morning, maybe the children and their mothers felt a little closer to the ones they had lost – not so foolish after all. We knew that the cold fingers were gossamer and not baby fingers; we believed even as we disbelieved.

Most of women's poetry and story-telling has been swallowed up in the maw of time. Because the authors of old wives' tales tales were not literate, because the tales were variants of traditional themes, because the people who told them were women and the people who heard them were children, they were phenomena of no account. From the earliest times, such narratives have been treated with contempt. Educated people were only too happy to forget them, and to embrace the culture associated with the elite. If the old tales were ever remembered by the masculine elite, they were parodied as rustic and absurd. There are a very few exceptions. One of them is George Peele, a university man, who translated Euripides and could turn his hand to almost any kind of writing.

In 1593 or so Peele wrote an odd play called The Old Wives' Tale, which gives us a rare insight into the tales told by old women. It opens with three little pages who have lost their way in the forest, trying to keep up their spirits as they prepare to see out the long, cold night sheltering in a tree. Then Clunch the smith turns up. Though his cottage has only one sleeping place and he is too poor to afford spare bedding, he offers them shelter and takes them home with him. The smith's old wife, Madge, offers them her home-made meat pudding and cheese but the little boys, aware that their hosts can ill afford to give away any of their slender provisions, refuse the over-generous offer. One of them begs her to give them a story instead.

Methinks, Gammer, a merry winter's tale would drive away the time trimly. Come, I am sure you are not without a score.


An old wives' tale is the same thing as a winter's tale. Winter was the season of long, dark evenings, when most peasant families had to huddle together indoors with no light but what came from the fire. When Shakespeare called his play The Winter's Tale, he was deliberately invoking the imaginative realm of the rambling tales told by firelight, of the jealous husband, the rejected child, the princess brought up as a peasant, and the king's son in disguise. The play is an old wives' tale about an old wife, who endures long separation from her husband and the death of her son, and is reunited with her husband at the end. (Any parallel with the career of Ann Shakespeare may not be entirely coincidental.) Because it is an old wives' tale, the play can roam from Bohemia to Sicily and back again, and encompass 16 years.

In Peele's play the pages begin to clamour for just such a tale.

Look you, Gammer, of the giant and the king's daughter, and I know not what. I have seen the day when I was a little one, you might have drawn me a mile after you with such a discourse.


Her story begins as you would expect:

Once upon a time, there was a king, a lord or a duke that had a fair daughter, the fairest that ever was, as white as snow and as red as blood, and once upon a time his daughter was stolen away, and he sent all his men to seek out his daughter, and he sent so long that he sent all his men out of the land.


One of the pages makes a smart remark, and Madge replies: "Nay, either hear my tale or kiss my tail."

The old wife's rather confused narrative is interrupted by the entrance of characters from her repertoire. What follows is a portmanteau fairy tale, which plaits together familiar themes, the shape-changing sorcerer (Sacrapant), the enchanted man at the crossroads who begs from all the other characters and foresees their fates, which he expresses in rhyming riddles – one who turns into a bear at night, the brothers seeking their stolen sister, the wandering knight, the braggart, the grateful dead, the two sisters, one fair and ill-natured, one "black" and sweet-natured, the head in the well. The play could only have worked because Peele's audience recognised the motifs and appreciated his ingenuity in reconciling themes from so many different types of tale and from so many versions of those types.

The French salonnières who began telling highly wrought contes des fées in the 1670s were unlikely to have read Straparola, Basile, Peele or Shakespeare. The story motifs used by all the collectors of tales could be found in parallel versions all over Europe. The challenge was to spin the basic tale into an artifice that displayed enough verve, charm and elegance to impress a coterie of connoisseurs. Even so, the roots of the salon fairy tale in the old wives' tale are fairly easy to trace. The version of the Cinderella story told by Marie-Catherine, Baronne d'Aulnoy, for example, is uncompromisingly sinister.

A king and a queen have three daughters. When they lose their kingdom and fall into poverty, the queen says that she can make nets so that the king can catch birds and fish for the two of them to eat, but they will have to get rid of their daughters. The youngest, Finette, hears her parents talking and resolves to visit her fairy godmother. Her godmother gives her a ball of magic thread to help her find her way back from anywhere her mother might take her. The next day the mother takes the girls to a meadow. When they lie down to sleep, she sneaks off and leaves them there. Finette leads her sisters home again and their mother pretends that she had meant to return for them all along. The next day she takes them further away, and abandons them again, and again Finette leads them home. The third time the mother succeeds in shaking them off, and they are left to fend for themselves. Finette is a courageous and resourceful girl who succeeds in various exploits, including cutting an ogress's head off while she is dressing her hair, but because she offends her fairy godmother by not rejecting her sisters she loses her support. Her sisters, who are as hostile to her as her mother was, rob her and beat her. When her foot fits the slipper and she marries the prince and her adventurous career is over, we are almost disappointed.

In modern versions of ancient tales, the tension that characterises the relationship of mother and daughter is usually encoded. The father's sexual partner is more likely to be presented as a stepmother than a mother, for example, but it is a ruse that should fool no one. In cruder versions of fairy tales, the monstrous mother is a regular presence. Snow-White-Fire-Red, for example, has an ogress for a mother, who wants to eat her young lover. The witches too are mother figures, even when they are cannibals (especially when they are cannibals). Every mother is a giant witch to her small child sometimes.

The elegant female authors of the rococo fairy tale, Madame D'Aulnoy, Madame de Murat and the Mesdemoiselles L'Héritier de Villandon, Bernard, and de la Force would all have been horrified to be called old wives. They were youngish ladies, whose versions of old themes are encrusted with rococo artifice. The spectre of the old wife was still close enough for Charles Perrault to issue Histoires et Contes du Temps Passé, Avec des Moralités or Contes de ma Mere l'Oye in 1697 under his son's name rather than his own.

Though Perrault presents himself as an antiquarian collector, he is no more content simply to record the story as it was told to him than any of his female counterparts. His versions are meant to inculcate in well brought up young women of the urban middle class a clear understanding of the right way to behave; in his version, the story of Little Red Riding Hood displays the folly of talking to strangers. The tale has endured over centuries in oral form because it teases out fears and desires deeply embedded in children's fantasies. The human world of Red Riding Hood is usually entirely female; the only male is an animal. The many versions contain some or all of the following elements. A girl is sent by her mother to visit her sick grandmother. She meets a wolf on the way and tells him exactly where she is going. The wolf gets there first, eats the grandmother and takes her place in the bed. The wolf tells the little girl to eat the blood and meat he has left for her, that is to share his crime by eating her grandmother, to take off her clothes, throw them in the fire, and to get into bed with him. In some versions she outwits him and escapes, and in others the wolf eats her too, and sometimes the wolf is cut open and she and her grandmother are reborn by Caesarean section, while the wolf's belly is filled with stones and it is thrown in the river. All of these themes have to do with being a wombed creature, inside whom other creatures may dwell. Children who regularly witnessed pregnancy and birth, both animal and human, would obviously have puzzled over the bloodiness, the danger and the mystery of both. The person who sat by the fire and retold the old story had every opportunity to tailor her tale to the emotional context, the better to help the child deal with whatever was toward, but her primary aim was to stimulate the child's sense of wonder and its awareness of vulnerability, both essential to survival in the rural world. The explicit moral drawn by Perrault is sexist, urban and bourgeois. The core story is none of those.

When the Brothers Grimm collected the story from German sources, it had already been influenced by Perrault's literary version, which was the first to specify that the heroine's hood was red. Jeanette Hassenpflug is supposed to have told the tale of Little Red Riding Hood to the elder Grimm, and Marie Hassenpflug to the younger. For the first edition of their collection Kinder- und Hausmärchen (1812), the brothers used both versions, turning the second story into a sequel to the first and calling it Rotkäppchen. They revised the story several times, using supplementary material, some of it told them by Henriette Dorothea Wild, who married Wilhelm Grimm in 1825. By degrees the monstrous fantasy that underlies the core story was exorcised and it became a mere cautionary tale. The old wife did not need to point her moral; if she wished her hearers to judge the events she was describing in her story and come to specific conclusions, she had only to stress different elements in it. If she wanted children to think that the wolf got to her grandmother because Little Red Riding Hood was indiscreet, she had only to tell the story that way. If, on the other hand, she wanted to make them aware of wolves as a constant danger, she told the story in a different way again.

Little Red Riding Hood is an outgrowth of the motif of the woman coupled with a carnivorous beast, which is what we would expect of a culture in which women married young and husbands were more likely than wives to survive. Every child attending a parish church would have witnessed the burial of women who had died in childbirth, some with their newborns in their arms, others with babies not yet born. The fact that nobody discussed such matters with children would have made the events all the more frightening. Evidence of the terror of virgins marrying men who had buried several wives can be found only rarely, and then in devotional literature. The only other place it could be expressed was in encoded form in fantastic fables. Charles Perrault is credited with the invention of the story of Bluebeard, which is clearly indebted to folk tales. If we consider that a nobleman was more likely to have married very young wives than a peasant (who needed a grown woman with her full complement of skills) and that these women endured their first pregnancies at the ages of 14 and 15, we can see at once that marriage to a nobleman was a high-risk business. Rumours ossify into legends. In some versions of the tale, as in the tale of Conomor the Accursed, the Bluebeard figure kills his wives when they become pregnant.

There are thousands of learned discussions of fairy tales but very few that approach them from the old wives' perspective, with the result that the obvious goes unnoticed. The theme of the father who wants to marry his daughter, for example, can be seen both as a coded version of the daughter's desire for the father and of her anxiety about possible abuse by her father. The fatal mother – aka the witch, aka the ogress – is an aspect of motherhood itself. Fear and loathing and mother love inhabit the same body. The nexus is nowhere more obviously or more profoundly expressed than in the paintings of Paula Rego, which return again and again to the visceral reality behind the fantastic narrative. Rego was told stories from the time she was a child, because she was afraid of the dark. As she explained in a recent interview, "Most of the things I do are based on Portuguese folk tales, which are not folksy. They were jotted down at the turn of the century by anthropologists, who would go into the villages and the mountains and take down these stories, which are brutal and magical as well. And it is those stories that I have adored and revered all my life." Her interlocutors can barely grasp what she is saying, because she is an old wife herself, and old wives neither explain nor moralise. "There is nothing more violent or tender than old Portuguese tales. This is what we must preserve. This is the truth in us all," she says. Every long-gone old wife, who sat by the fire, shelling chestnuts for the littl'uns, and spinning her tale through the long, dark winter evening, would know what Rego means.

via guardian.co.uk

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