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  • 02/24/11--18:20: An Oscar for Shaun Tan? (chan 2105780)

    • An Oscar for Shaun Tan?


    By Chelsey Philpot --> February 24, 2011

    ShaunTan_creditInari_Kiuru20(Original Import)
    Shaun Tan
    Photo by Inari Kiuru

    Shaun Tan may have to make room on his shelves for an Oscar. The award-winning author and illustrator best known for his wordless graphic novel, The Arrival (Scholastic/Arthur A. Levine Bks., 2007), has been nominated in the Best Short Film (Animated) category for The Lost Thing, where he makes his directorial debut along with co-director, Andrew Ruhemann.

    Based on Tan's 2005 picture book of the same name, The Lost Thing (Simply Read) tells the story of a curious boy who discovers an odd-looking creature on the beach—and learns about cruelty and indifference while trying to help it find its place.

    We caught up with Tan at home in Australia before he headed to Los Angeles to attend the 83rd Academy Awards ceremony on February 27.

    What was your reaction when you found out you were nominated for an Oscar?

    Obvious excitement, as well as mixed feelings of surprise, relief—as it had been shortlisted for months—and an affirmation of all the sweat and toil invested by our small team over many years. We've been fortunate to win several major awards with this film, yet an Oscar nomination is one that's broadly recognized by a mainstream audience, outside of animation, and so it's a big breakthrough. It also means that support for any future projects may be a little easier to harness

    It was nearly a ten year-long process to adapt the book into a 15-minute film. What inspired you to switch mediums?

    The idea of adapting this as a film came after the book won a prestigious award at the Bologna Children's Book Fair. It came to the attention of a British animation studio with an Australian producer, Sophie Bryne. She contacted me with a proposal to acquire rights, and also to involve me as a creative director. I was slightly dubious at first, but after discussing the project with Sophie and examining some of her previous projects—including animated clips for the band Gorillaz—I was convinced that The Lost Thing could work very well as an animated film. This discussion began in 2001; the film was completed in 2010—to give you some idea of the time frame involved.

    What were some of the biggest challenges for you and what were some of the rewards?

    Aside from hundreds of technical and design headaches, it was the sheer duration of the working period. Up until 2006, I also made several aborted attempts to storyboard the film at different lengths, all of which was quite exhausting when no actual end was in sight. The constant question being would this work on screen at all?

    On the positive side, Sophie assembled a great team, so there was a kind of creative intimacy in working with only one animator (Leo Baker) and one digital artist (Tom Bryant) instead of a big group. We would often joke about the "art department" or "animation department" or "tech support"—actually referring to multi-tasking individuals. There was a laundromat downstairs, and we thought of any mice living there as our additional production crew—so always joking about our small scale. But I think limited resources were, in the end, conducive to working carefully and intelligently, and achieving results comparable to the work of big studios.

    Of course, the most rewarding part is actually seeing it all come together and screened in front of an audience. As a writer and illustrator, it's rare for me to be present when someone reads my work for the first time, and to see their reaction. So that has been a novel experience for me (and a bit nerve-wracking too!).

    Thelostthing200.1(Original Import)

    Where did the idea for the book come from?

    The Lost Thing began life, modestly enough, as a picture book initially scrawled on a kitchen table in 1998. At the time I was an unemployed illustrator and, having previously worked with other writers, I wanted to create a story of my own—and make it as outlandish as possible. But I also wanted to draw upon some personal experiences, including memories of my first cat (a stray from a local school), growing up in the remote city of Perth in Western Australia, and the problem of earning a living as an artist in a fairly pragmatic, materialistic society. The result was this story of a lost, tentacled creature, adopted by an introverted boy (who resembles myself as a teenager).

    You call the story a "modern fable." What would you like audiences to take away from it?

    Some sense that, in spite of it being a fable, there is no particular moral message, but rather a set of questions. That's how I see the film, a set of open-ended conjectures that are presented in the form of a nameless creature, a peculiar city, and an ambiguous narrator. Perhaps the central question concerns our ability—especially as we become adults—to remain playful, curious, and open-minded; and to care about things which cannot be easily categorized, which don't have apparent value, which are "lost." I hope that audiences continue to think about that problem, long after enjoying the film. In particular, that they grasp the "Lost Thing" as more of a metaphor than just a funny creature, one that relates directly to everyday life.

    Where do you plan to put your Oscar if you win?

    Ha—interesting question. I would probably give it to Sophie for her office, given that as the producer, she's the real unsung hero of the production, and the person largely responsible for getting the film made in the first place. Maybe we'd just share it among the crew, so we each have it on our mantelpieces for certain months of the year, particularly if hard-to-impress relatives are visiting.

    Any plans to make more films?

    There is some discussion of adapting The Arrival as a feature film, again with Sophie and another LA-based producer; in fact, visiting LA for the Oscars actually presents a handy opportunity to arrange a few meetings about that. Your readers are likely to be more familiar with The Arrival rather than The Lost Thing, as this graphic novel about immigrant experience was my first work published in the U.S., and has since attracted a lot of interest from film producers due to the fact that it's very cinematic in structure. I would also like to continue working on short films where possible, because I've always loved this form, and most of my stories tend to be little fables about modern life, as in a recent anthology Tales from Outer Suburbia.

    Shaun Tan's The Lost Thing will be published in the collection Lost & Found: Three by Shaun Tan by Arthur A. Levine Books, an imprint of Scholastic, in March.

    This article originally appeared in the newsletter Extra Helping. Go here to subscribe.

    via schoollibraryjournal.com

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  • 02/28/11--17:36: Shaun Tan's Oscar by accident | Herald Sun (chan 2105780)

    • Shaun Tan and Andrew Ruhemann

    Directors Shaun Tan (right) and Andrew Ruhemann win the Oscar for best animated film for 'The Lost Thing'. Picture: AP/Matt Sayles Source: AP

    MORE than a decade ago Shaun Tan was an unemployed illustrator not sure where his life was headed.

    In the end, life has worked out nicely for the 37-year-old born in Fremantle, Western Australia, but now a resident of Melbourne.

    Tan, you could say, is an accidental Oscar winner.

    "I started off as an illustrator with no formal training other than high school," Tan said, stunned as he stood backstage at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood with his gold statuette for short animated film The Lost Thing, won with British co-director Andrew Ruhemann.

    The 15-minute computer generated and hand-painted movie was only supposed to be a picture book.

    "I originally wrote this story in 1998," Tan said.

    "I was an unemployed illustrator. I wrote it on the kitchen table of my share house, worked on it for a year, developed it as a picture book, which was then published in Melbourne around 2000. "

    Start of sidebar. Skip to end of sidebar.

    The story is set in Melbourne and is about a boy who, while collecting bottle caps near a beach, discovers a strange creature that seems to be a combination of an industrial boiler, a crab and an octopus.~ AAP

    via heraldsun.com.au

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  • 03/22/11--16:51: Best new illustrators award - audio slideshow | Children's books | guardian.co.uk (chan 2105780)

    • via guardian.co.uk

    Best new illustrators award - audio slideshow

    Judge and children's laureate Anthony Browne looks through some of the winners of this year's Booktrust best new illustrators award and talks about what makes a great picturebook

    Read the full list of 10 winners on the Booktrust website

    Permalink | Leave a comment  »


  • 03/29/11--16:31: Shaun Tan wins Astrid Lindgren prize | Children's books | guardian.co.uk (chan 2105780)

    • Shaun Tan wins Astrid Lindgren prize

    World's richest children's literature award goes to Australian author-illustrator, described as a 'masterly visual storyteller'

    Shaun Tan Shaun Tan was awarded the Astrid Lindgren prize for being 'a masterly visual storyteller'. Photograph: Martin Argles for the Guardian

    The Australian author-illustrator Shaun Tan is the winner of this year's Astrid Lindgren prize – the richest children's literature prize in the world, with a purse of 5m kroner (£490,000).

    Tan is the second Australian to be awarded the prize in its nine-year history, following Sonya Hartnett's win in 2008.

    In a Nobel-style live webcast from Sweden, Larry Lempert, the chair of the jury, described Tan as "a masterly visual storyteller" whose minutely detailed pictorial narratives touched everyone, regardless of age. "His pictorial worlds constitute a separate universe where nothing is self-evident and anything is possible," the citation says.

    The phone call informing Tan of his win was broadcast live on the internet and to an audience at the Bologna children's book fair. Tan's response was characteristically guarded: "OK, OK, thanks very much. That's amazing. I'm going to have to take a little time to get used to it."

    Tan has illustrated more than 20 books including The Rabbits, The Red Tree, The Arrival, Eric and, most recently, Tales from Outer Suburbia, which was hailed in the Guardian as possibly "the most beautiful book you'll see all year". At this year's Academy Awards, he won the Oscar for best animated short film for The Lost Thing, based on his book of the same title.

    The Astrid Lindgren prize was set up in 2002 by the Swedish government to honour writers, illustrators and story-tellers working in the spirit of Lindgren, whose best-known creation is Pippi Longstocking. Maurice Sendak and Philip Pullman are among the previous winners of the prize, which focuses on work with "a profound respect for democratic values and human rights".

    Tan, the son of an architect who grew up in Perth, is not afraid to put dark subjects into his books. Depression, environmental destruction and the loneliness of the immigrant are among the issues he has tackled in what he describes as "illustrated modern fables".

    In a Guardian interview, he said: "All fiction is false; what makes it convincing is that it runs alongside the truth. Drawing a good picture is like telling a really good lie – the key is in the incidental detail."

    via guardian.co.uk

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  • 06/26/11--16:44: The CILIP Carnegie & Kate Greenaway Children's Book Awards - 2011 Awards (chan 2105780)

    • The winners for the 2011 Awards have been announced!

    Click here to see the latest press releases about the 2011 award winners or use the menu bar on the left for more information about the awards.

    The winner of the CILIP Carnegie Medal 2011

    Monsters of Men by Patrick Ness

    Monsters of Men
    by Patrick Ness
    published by Walker Books

    Get video and audio from the ceremony, view the Carnegie shortlist or read more on the winners

    FArTHER
    illustrated by Grahame Baker-Smith
    published by Templar

    Get video and audio from the ceremony, view the Greenaway shortlist or read more on the winners

     

     

    via carnegiegreenaway.org.uk

    Permalink | Leave a comment  »


  • 07/01/11--19:32: A celebration of the writing and art of Mervyn Peake | Books | The Guardian (chan 2105780)

    • A celebration of the writing and art of Mervyn Peake

    Mervyn Peake, creator of Gormenghast, is now recognised as a brilliant novelist and artist. Michael Moorcock, China Miéville, Hilary Spurling and AL Kennedy celebrate his achievements

    illustration of Swelter by Merbyn Peake
    Swelter, the murderous cook ... illustration by Mervyn Peake from the The Illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy published by Vintage Classics

    A Century of Peake by Michael Moorcock

    Through the late 1950s to 1968, when he died, Mervyn Peake's friends and relations watched helplessly as he declined steadily into a mysterious form of dementia which would later be diagnosed as Parkinsonism. Our frustration was terrible. His instinctive intelligence, his kindness, even his wit flickered in his eyes, but were all trapped, inexpressible. Here was an extraordinary man – a fine poet, draughtsman, painter, playwright and novelist being destroyed from within while his genius was rejected by the literary and art world of the day. When sympathetic critics tried to write about Peake, editors would reject them. The story was that Peake had lost his mind – the strain of writing such grotesque books. That story was a damaging nonsense, helping to marginalise him further.

    1. The Illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy
    2. by Mervyn Peake
    4. Buy it from the Guardian bookshop
    1. Tell us what you think: Star-rate and review this book

    The last book he finished of a planned sequence, Titus Alone, contained structural weaknesses we had all assumed were Mervyn's as his control over his work weakened. One afternoon, however, the composer of the musical setting for Peake's narrative poem "The Rhyme of the Flying Bomb", Langdon Jones, was leafing through the manuscript books of the novel with Maeve Gilmore, Mervyn's wife, admiring all the drawings of scenes and characters Mervyn had made as he wrote, when he realised that much of what was missing from the published book was actually in the manuscript. Checking further, he found that the book had been very badly edited by a third party, with whole characters and scenes cut.

    Jones began methodically restoring the book to its present, much-improved state. It took him over a year. When we suggested that the original publisher republish the novel, perhaps with the new text, they refused. I proposed to Maeve that we begin the process of getting back the rights. Meanwhile Mervyn became increasingly unwell.

    Then an editor friend, also a Peake fan, Oliver Caldecott, phoned one morning to tell me, with considerable elation, that he had a new job. "I'm now the guy who's going to pick the Penguins. Of course, our first action must be to sort out the Titus Groan books and get them back into print."

    I told Oliver how Mervyn used to illustrate his manuscripts, and Oliver proposed illustrating the novels with some of the drawings and using the Jones-prepared texts. Anthony Burgess, another Peake fan, contributed an introduction to Titus Groan, which he believed to be a classic, and Caldecott brought the three volumes out as Penguin Modern Classics. It was the perfect way to publish the books, boldly and unapologetically, in the best possible editions. From being a marginalised "gothic" writer, Peake gradually assumed the position he holds today. The terrible irony for those who loved him was that he could no longer grasp what was happening to him. When we took his new book jackets to show him, they meant nothing. He was institutionalised for the last few years of his life, dying at last in the arms of his nurse.

    To ground her grief and to bring some sort of resolution to Mervyn's story, Maeve wrote the next book he had planned, Titus Awakes. She had no special plans to publish it and set it aside to concentrate on the beautiful, sometimes disturbing paintings in which she symbolised their life together. Then, with the help of her friend Hilary Bailey, Maeve wrote her memoir of Mervyn, A World Away. Monitor did a rather sensational TV programme on him. There were exhibitions and biographies, the best of which is Peter Winnington's Vast Alchemies. Too late for him to appreciate it, Peake entered the English canon.

    The rest is more or less history. Over the following years Peake's work was reprinted, and books and exhibitions of his drawings and paintings appeared all over the world. Slowly the media stopped telling his story as a doomed one. In fact he and his family had enjoyed a happy life, much of it on the island of Sark, where Peake every Sunday drew the lively pictures for his little sons that were published this year as The Sunday Books with a text by me. Here, too, he set his gentle allegory Mr Pye, his only non-Titus novel, which was televised with Derek Jacobi in the title role. Maeve died of cancer in 1983. Meanwhile Titus Awakes, in which she symbolically took herself, Titus, Mervyn and their children back to Sark, was mislaid, only to be rediscovered last year. It has been published in time for Mervyn's centenary. As part of the same celebration, Vintage has decided to publish an even more elaborately illustrated version of Mervyn's Titus sequence as The Illustrated Gormenghast.

    Mervyn's home life was about as ordinary and chaotic as the usual bohemian family's. He was handsome, romantic, something of a dandy, whom women frequently found irresistible. He was loved by his family and his friends, but he was neither a saint nor the satanic presence the 70s press liked to present, citing Bill Brandt's atmospheric portraits. As a boy I was amazed that so much rich talent could come from this pleasant, witty man, but I didn't doubt his authentic genius. Maeve, a beautiful woman, was frequently his subject and is the model for the Countess of Groan with her white cats. He and Maeve were in love till the end. This year, a hundred years after his birth, conferences and exhibitions will recognise an artist as talented in his own way as Blake, and those of us privileged to have known him will remember his kindness, his humour, his practical jokes, his ebullient sense of fun and his generosity both as an artist, a husband and a friend.

    Peake's illustrations by Hilary Spurling

    The first I remember of Mervyn Peake's drawings was on the dustjacket of his illustrated Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, remaindered for a few shillings in Blackwell's bookshop in Oxford when I was a student in the early 1960s. It amazed me. The only Alice I knew in those days was John Tenniel's original Victorian miss with her grown-up face and strap shoes, tightly encased in voluminous layers of starched apron, striped skirt, stiff petticoats and long stockings. Peake re-saw her, more than a decade before Lolita, as a bored pre-teen nymphet, all tousled hair and bare limbs. His March Hare wears an OTT Ascot hat, his Walrus and Carpenter are a couple of specious street derelicts or druggies, his White Queen is a thumb-sized frump, no bigger than a chess-piece, crouched in the hearth on a perfectly ordinary, life-sized coal shovel. All are miracles of fantastic invention, linear control and exactitude.

    When I reached London and got my first proper job, as arts editor of the Spectator, I rang the number under Mervyn Peake in the phone book to ask if he would review the big autumn show of Aubrey Beardsley about to open at the Victoria & Albert Museum. His wife answered the phone, and encouraged me to explain in detail what I wanted and why. We talked for 20 minutes or more before she told me that he couldn't do it, as he'd been hospitalised for years with severe Parkinson's. His hands shook, and he didn't always know who she was.

    My blood ran cold with horror, and at the same time I burned with shame. Only someone as young and ignorant as me – I was 24 years old at the time – could have made such a blunder. It was only long afterwards, when we had become friends, that I realised what my call must have meant to Mrs Peake. Her husband was forgotten in those days. His books were going out of print, and his drawings were never shown. No one rang up to speak to him, let alone to offer him work insisting, as I did, that the younger generation was clamouring to hear from him.

    Later she asked me to select and introduce what became the first published book of his drawings. It came out in 1974, by which time Peake was already a cult figure. His three Gormenghast novels and his illustrated books were being reissued, small exhibitions of his drawings would be followed by bigger ones, and eventually by a lavish serial Gormenghast on BBC TV in 2000.

    All shared the same combination of imaginative force and phenomenally accurate observation as well as the sudden shifts of scale or perspective that give so much of his work its exhilarating undertow of dislocation and danger. No one, so far as I know, has yet matched his illustrations to classics such as Alice, Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Stevenson's Treasure Island, and now his own Illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy in Vintage's handsome centenary edition.

    He made fine portrait drawings of his contemporaries – Mark Gertler, WH Auden, Edith Evans, Laurence Olivier, and of course his own wife, Maeve. Her luxuriant hair, pale skin and beautiful bone structure inspired Peake's images of the stormy adolescent Fuschia in the Gormenghast novels. There is something of Maeve's strength and endurance in Fuschia's mother, the monumental Countess of Groan, whose indifference and indolence make her a force of nature as formidable in her own way as the mountain of Gormenghast itself.

    For all the graphic intensity of that mountain and its labyrinthine, Kafkaesque castle, Peake rarely if ever drew landscape. His strength was people and the anthropomorphic animals who populate so many of his illustrations, drawn with exquisite delicacy and extreme precision, often seen from strange angles, through peepholes, up funnels, down vertiginous drops, sometimes strangely magnified, telescoped or upended. The new show at the British Library is full of images that crackle with electric tension, such as the tiny drawing of Alice's queen with hairpins like crossed swords in a nest of quivering corkscrew curls, or the meek bespectacled horse with his mane streaming backwards at alarming velocity as if in a tearing wind.

    The vitality of these grotesque inventions derives from Peake's ability to look directly and intently at everyday reality. "The advance from virtual blindness to the state of perception – half rumination, half scrutiny – is all that matters," he wrote. He walked the streets of London with his pencil like a head-hunter with a spear (he said he spotted his Mad Hatter in a telephone box on Charing Cross station). He was haunted by things he had seen in the war, especially in the ruined cities of a defeated Germany and on a fearful trip to Belsen in 1945. The nightmare images that raced through his brain in visions, dreams and times of disintegration or breakdown deepened and darkened his work.

    But Peake's secret and deepest resource was China. As the child of missionaries, he spent his first 10 years surrounded by gaudy street processions, brilliant silk banners, the myriad shapes and colours of paper kites and lanterns. All were imprinted on his nascent imagination. Born in 1911, the year the Manchu empire was finally toppled, he grew up in a world still impregnated with imperial customs, rituals and stories at a time when, like Gormenghast, all Chinese towns were fortified with frail earthen huts clamped like limpets to their massive walls.

    I recognised the gulfs, chasms and peaks of Gormenghast itself in China four years ago when I climbed Mount Lu, rising sheer nearly 5,000ft from the Yangtze plain. Peake was born on top of this magic mountain. Its precipitous scrambles and dizzy plunges shaped both the inner and outer reality of the worlds his pen and pencil created in line or words with such apparently effortless authority.

    Gormenghast by China Miéville

    With its first word the work declares itself, establishes its setting and has us abruptly there, in the castle and the stone. There is no slow entry, no rabbit-hole down which to fall, no backless wardrobe, no door in the wall. To open the first book is not to enter but to be already in Mervyn Peake's astonishing creation. So taken for granted, indeed, is this impossible place, that we commence with qualification. "Gormenghast," Peake starts, "that is, the main massing of the original stone," as if, in response to that opening name, we had interrupted him with a request for clarification. We did not say "What is Gormenghast?" but "Gormenghast? Which bit?"

    It is a sly and brilliant move. Asserting the specificity of a part, he better takes as given the whole – of which, of course, we are in awe. This faux matter-of-fact method makes Gormenghast, its Hall of Bright Carvings, its Tower of Flints, its roofscapes, ivy-shaggy walls, its muddy environs and hellish kitchens, so much more present and real than if it had been breathlessly explained. From this start, Peake acts as if the totality of his invented place could not be in dispute. The dislocation and fascination we feel, the intoxication, is testimony to the success of his simple certainty. Our wonder is not disbelief but belief, culture-shock at this vast, strange place. We submit to this reality that the book asserts even as it purports not to.

    Many more than three books were planned: this was an accidental trilogy. Each of its parts, and each of those unborn others, has and would have had its own quiddity. Gormenghast is not only the title of the midpoint text, but the shared foundation of the three books – even the last, strange, scandalously neglected volume. The events it describes all occur in exile from the castle, but Gormenghast, absent presence, could hardly be more there than it is in those pages.

    It is a cliché to insist that this or that work "evades classification". Caution is indicated. But the sheer strangeness of Gormenghast is very real. The work is irreducible to the sum of any of the influences we can find in it. Given its brilliance and the devotion in which it has always been held, one might be surprised at how relatively restrained its overt influence has been. Of course it has always had partisans and those grateful for its shadow, but it seems rather astonishing that it has not been a taproot text, a genre-starter, spawning generations of post- and sub-Gormenghast fantasies.

    The particular flavour of its oddness helps to explain this somewhat subterranean history. What faces us is not a radical and violent estrangement so much as a sustained sense of almost-familiarity, of not-quite-familiarity, a strong but wrong recognition. Reading the Gormenghast trilogy can be like the moment the friend we greet turns and is not our friend at all, but an only vaguely similar stranger.

    Some of the themes, for example, are hardly unprecedented: the tension between tradition and change, between the antique rules of Gormenghast and the insurrectionary force of Steerpike, at whose hand so much is shattered. Even here, however, while the problematic may be relatively clear, the sides, the moral axis, are anything but. When Steerpike tugs limbs from a beetle while saying "Equality is the great thing, equality is everything," the conjunction of sadism and radicalism could read as fairly heavy-handed reactionary slander, and his ongoing sociopathic Machiavellianism might seem to underline this view. But is this really the argument? Given the remorseless ludicrousness of the rituals to which those inhabiting Gormenghast and Groan are subjected and by which they are trapped, the practices' pointlessness and powerlessness to improve anything for anybody, the panicky subservience of those in their thrall, the idea that the books are celebrating fidelity to "tradition" or "history" is utterly hollow. There is something at least as bracing as it is horrifying in the transformations Steerpike wreaks. We both take and untake sides.

    It is in the names, above all, perhaps, that Peake's strategy of simultaneous familiarising and defamiliarising reaches its zenith; Rottcodd, Muzzlehatch, Sourdust, Crabcalf, Gormenghast itself. Such strange and unlikely composites clearly echo Trollope and Dickens. But where for them the nomenclaturic agenda worked, often moralistically, to semaphore aspects of the named, for Peake no such readings are feasible. This is hardly because he tones down the absurdism. On the contrary, what is merely camp in Dickens becomes splendid grotesquerie in Peake. But such names are so overburdened with semiotic freight, stagger under such a profusion of meanings, that they end up as opaque as if they had none. "Prunesquallor" is a glorious and giddying synthesis, and one that sprays images – but their portent remains unclear. The doctor's character does not help us. He is vivid, comedic, decent, but neither particularly squalid nor overtly fructine. Our minds are perpetual hermeneutic engines, and they do not stop attempting to decode, but their gears cannot get traction.

    Not all the names are invented or crossbred, and where they are not, it is their context that makes them strange. Flay, Lord Groan's taciturn manservant, and his nemesis, the murderous cook Swelter, are both named with a verb, proper-nouned. In each case the symbolic suitability is arguable, but is neither self-evident, nor, in fact, argued. Swelter has a first name: Abiatha. Its Hebrew meaning, bountiful father, is a discomforting joke, to which Swelter himself draws attention. "I am the father of excellence and plenty," he says, and makes the name a chant. Abiatha, he sings, hypnotically. Nomen est omen, but an omen of what, who can quite say?

    Paradoxes like this one, of surplus yet shy meanings, abound. Gormenghast feels both claustrophobic and vast. The language is lush and dusty, organic and desiccated.

    At the start of the middle volume, Peake introduces us to a boy we've so far known only as a baby. These opening pages are, uniquely for the series, in the present tense; no matter, then, what other ages Titus passes through, he is also, always, seven – a child needing succour. We open with three three-word clauses. "Titus is seven." And? "His confines, Gormenghast." Gormenghast, again and always. Here "confines", noun and verb, underscores the oppression of all that stone. And how does Titus live? How has he been raised? "Suckled on shadows."

    It is an astounding phrase. A vivid Gormenghastian paradox, an impossible dialectic of nurture and imprisonment, of sustenance out of emptiness, out of darkness. Here Peake the writer meets Peake the artist. These two aspects of the man's work were always intimately related, and it is an inextricable aspect of the trilogy that these are illustrated books. For many of his admirers, it is in Peake's pen-and-ink work that his most remarkable talents show: in his vivid and loose working sketches; his sparse outline drawings, which render in blank space as much as in the lines themselves; in the lightly washed Gormenghast of shade-contrast, elegant brushwork and space; and above all in his astonishing cross-hatching. Scribbles and overlaid lines become vectors of shade and solidity. Through only two values – black and white, lines of the former overlapping on the latter – Peake's figures and landscapes emerge in three dimensions. It is through this monochrome alchemy of crosshatching that all the vivid varieties of presence, all the humanely rendered, exaggerated but never parodic features of his Gormenghastians, and of the city inhabitants with whom Titus walks in self-exile, are made. Plenitude out of nothing, substance out of shade.

    "And darkness," Peake says a few lines on from his reintroduction of Titus, "winds between the characters." It does, and it winds into each of them, and winds them together, too. One might say the same about the work of any black-nib-wielding illustrator. But the point is not only that Peake drew his own imaginings so brilliantly, it is that there is something specific about that brilliance. It is the manner in which, in his art, he captures intricacy and austerity. It is this that makes the claim of an elective affinity between his words and his images more than a tendentious fancy.

    There was nothing like the Gormenghast trilogy before it came along. And despite the gratifyingly growing number of readers for whom it is indispensable, and the spread of descendant texts, such cuttings are all at a remove. Cousins, nieces, nephews, yes; but the Gormenghast trilogy has no book-children. It and only it does what it does.

    Each time the arid succulence of the prose brings us up short, each time our eyes widen at the illustrations, at Gormenghast itself emergent out of scribble and scrawl, it is we who are suckled on shadows.

    Peake and Sark by AL Kennedy

    For many, Mervyn Peake's Mr Pye offers a suitably eccentric introduction to the tiny and determinedly unusual island of Sark. The tale is an amoral fable in which our hero arrives on Sark – without a return ferry ticket – to undertake a one-man crusade of dubious value on behalf of the Great Pal. As he works and walks across the island, he begins to grow either burdensome wings or shameful horns, depending on his behaviour. We are shown a world within which good does patent harm, evil is strangely innocent and where, for Mr Pye, simply being human requires an impossible balancing act. The dark humour, eccentricity, hallucinatory elegance and intensity of the piece seem typical of Peake.

    The island, too, could be a Peake fabrication: a strikingly beautiful, secretive and harsh landscape, layered with strange place names – Derrible Bay and Dixcart Valley – and its people bound by archaic entitlements, laws and customs. But Peake knew Sark well, and his portrait, though playful, is plainly taken from life. He catches the curious politics of a service-based economy, the strange mix of genteel incomers and true Sarkese, holidaymakers and fishermen, bohemians and farmers, all variously beguiled or amused by the Great Pal.

    Peake first arrived on Sark in 1935 and found his place in its small artistic community. The island had attracted painters since the 18th century. Two handfuls of green plateau edged by dramatic cliffs, headlands, stacks and cave formations, Sark is a gift to landscape specialists. Victor Hugo called it a "poem of stones". Its light is dramatic, wildly changeable, its coves, dells, cliff paths and beaches seem to promise a wild kind of solitude that seems absurd when any observer could cross and recross the island in a day's strolling and is rarely more that 20 minutes away from a tea room.

    But Sark's more enduring influence was on Peake the writer, not the artist. Mr Pye explores Sark as itself, but the island also lives in the baroque convolutions of the Gormenghast trilogy: the ingrained traditions, the climbs and depths, the hereditary positions, the extraordinary landscape, the florid eccentricities and contrasts, the intrusions of violence, the claustrophobia. Once described by Rabelais as "thieves, bandits, pirates, robbers, ruffians and murderers", the people of Sark grew parsnips and wrecked ships. Perhaps unsurprisingly, unlike their neighbours on Jersey and Guernsey, they failed to find a strong enough interest in knitting to invent a garment. Penned together in a space that measures only three miles from Bec du Nez to Petit Etac and only a mile and a half from Gouliot headland to Point Cagnons, the Sarkese have grown grimly humorous, self-reliant and inscrutable. Feuds, gossip and enthusiasms can last for generations, as do a sense of communal responsibility and the will to survive. Family names such as Guille, Remphry and Hamon have been on Sark for almost 500 years. The island that carried the feudal system into the 21st century is now reinterpreting democracy according to its own customs. Sark intends to stay Sarkese and to define what that means according to its own lights.

    The island remembers, quietly, the fun it had in 1986 when the television adaptation of Mr Pye was filmed there. The islanders played islanders with both enthusiasm and discretion, made no comment about the film's odd idea of what a Sarkese accent might be, gave their visitors what was needed and then went back to being themselves.

    The Worlds of Mervyn Peake is at the British Library, London, from 5 July to 18 September 2011. www.bl.uk

    via guardian.co.uk

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  • 07/01/11--20:02: R.I.P: Margaret Lim, 23rd June 1947 – 8th May 2011 (chan 2105780)

    • 23 June 1947 - 8 May 2011

    On May 8, 2011, Margaret Lim has passed away peacefully in the arms of her loving husband and children. She had lost the fight against cancer and ended her journey on earth, leaving behind lovely memories in our hearts.

    Margaret’s work of passion will live on at this blog and, soon, some of her unpublished work will be posted, as well.

    We would like to share the following dedication by Margaret’s sister Aileen:

    “Maggie passed away on Sunday, 8 May 2011, in Germany.  It is a very significant day that is so representative of her life.  God could not have granted her a better gift as it was Mother’s Day, and as a creative writer, she would have appreciated the symbol very much.  She also only left towards the end of the day, a mother to the last.

    Looking back, I realise that she had that special touch of a mother in the way she played her roles in life: as a friend or as a family member – aunt, cousin, niece, sister, wife, and of course mother.  

    She was always generous, considerate and well-intentioned.  She was full of mirth, amidst her seriousness.  She never spoke ill of anyone.  When an appropriate occasion arose, she always spoke proudly of her immediate family – Wolfhart, SuJen, Einhard, Ken.

    I  am certain that where she is now, she is shining among the angels, and is so very happy.  And why not?  In her relatively short life, she has done a lot, achieved a lot, and in no small way as a children’s writer.  In this world of children, she was always in touch with God.  

    Although she and I were supposed to make several small journeys together, and she was supposed to travel to see her relatives and friends, she has gone on a greater Journey, after fulfilling her life’s purpose.  

    If we celebrate the fulfilled life of this wonderful soul, and be happy with her, our hearts will be healed.  And we will remember her in our thoughts as if she has not left us.

    Like her paternal grandmother and father who went before, whom she deeply loved, and to whom she dedicated two of her books, she was full of a Mother’s Love.”

    - Aileen Lim

    via margaretlim.wordpress.com

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  • 07/04/11--09:06: Longhouse Days (chan 2105780)

    • Permalink | Leave a comment  »


  • 07/08/11--18:58: Book Review: The Rescuers | Hornbooks and Inkwells | The Great Bear (chan 2105780)

    • By MEGHAN COX GURDON

    S.D. Schlinder

    An illustration by S.D. Schindler from 'Hornbooks and Inkwells.'

    KIDSCHRON3

    KIDSCHRON3

    Margery Sharp's mouse-centric 1959 adventure, "The Rescuers," has only been out of print for a decade, but it is well worth revisiting. For one thing, it has just been reissued in handsome hardback as part of the New York Review Children's Collection, with drawings by Garth Williams. For another, this new incarnation (149 pages, $14.95) provides an excuse to rescue the story for a generation of children who might otherwise know only the animated 1977 Disney movie of the same name. As with most children's classics, Ms. Sharp's original work is much funnier and more interestingly textured than the high-fructose movie version. The tale opens with a meeting of the Prisoner's Aid Society, which is, naturally, composed of mice: "Everyone knows that mice are the prisoner's friends," Ms. Sharp writes. "What is less well known is how splendidly they are organized." Normally the creatures seek to cheer convicts by keeping them company and sharing their crumbs, but this time the object is something riskier and more exciting: to travel to the remote and dreadful Black Castle and free an imprisoned Norwegian poet. ("If he's a poet, why is he in jail?" one of the mice wonders. "Perhaps he writes free verse," comes the arch reply.) It is not long before three dauntless characters are making their way to the prison: brave, Norwegian-speaking Nils; resourceful English-speaking Bernard; and the refined Miss Bianca, whose principal weapon is her devastating charm. Once in the castle they must outwit a terrible cat, Mamelouk "the Iron-tummed," and get hold of a key to the poet's cell. When the gaunt prisoner meets his polite and well-dressed rescuers, he is more delighted than surprised for, as the author observes: "It is the gift of all poets to find the commonplace astonishing, and the astonishing quite natural."

    There is no shortage of picture books that introduce children to the rhythms of the school day. Often the main character is a mouse or a turtle, and the teacher a dragon or a dinosaur, and most such stories deal with the contemporary experience. Not so with "Hornbooks and Inkwells" (G.P. Putnam's Sons, 32 pages, $16.99), a low-key romp through a school year as 18th-century American children might have experienced it. "One-room schoolhouse, / Ringing bell. / Chimney sparking. / Smoky smell," writes Verla Kay, on opening pages made almost fragrantly autumnal by S.D. Schindler's detailed illustrations. We follow two bickering brothers from their first encounter with the school's bewigged Master (who does not spare the rod) through their struggles with memorization and dripping quill pens. The book was inspired by the author's discovery of a rare volume detailing the practices of a Pennsylvania schoolmaster in the mid-1700s. Among these was his use of a wooden hook as a kind of pass for children who wanted to use the outhouse; if the hook was missing, so was a child. "I do wonder," Ms. Kay writes in an afterword, "if this 'hook on the wall' was somehow involved in our current use of the phrase 'playing hooky.' "

    Sometimes a picture book is memorable not because it satisfies but because something ambiguous about it leaves us feeling disquieted. It is such a quality that imbues "The Great Bear" (Candlewick, 36 pages, $16.99). Libby Gleeson's story is not a conventional one: Halfway through, her words die away, and we are left with only Armin Greder's haunting charcoal and pastel drawings. "Once there was a bear. A circus bear. A dancing circus bear," we read at the book's beginning, and succeeding pages show us a cluster of medieval entertainers approaching and entering a walled town. In their midst, in a cage on wheels, we see the shadowy bulk of a bear. Soon we see what happens night after night, as it is led out to perform for jeering, gawking crowds. We see the rows of stupid peasant faces, eager for the show to start. "Dance, bear, dance," they call. But this time, the bear does not move. The crowd grows restless: "Sticks poke. Sticks prod. Chains yank. Stones strike, strike, strike," we read, until, suddenly, pushed beyond endurance, the animal lets out a great "ROAR!" The townspeople cower and gape and then flee as the shadow of the bear moves across earth strewn with their shoes and possessions. There is no more text now, just the sight of the bear making its way through the terrified streets toward a flagpole that seems to touch the glowing heavens. Up the bear climbs, up and up into the sky and then—jumps. The final image shows the bear, pale under the dazzling constellations, as if suspended in flight—and we know, and will need to explain to the young child reading with us—that it has joined the stars themselves in the shape of Ursa Major, the Great Bear. The child may well say, "I don't get it," but may not quickly forget it either.

    via online.wsj.com

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  • 07/08/11--19:09: The Child in Tomi Ungerer Remains Undimmed - NYTimes.com (chan 2105780)

    • An Author Embodies His Books’ Childlike Spirit

    Christopher Capozziello for The New York Times

    The illustrator and author Tomi Ungerer is experienceing a career renaissance. Several of his children’s books have been reissued and a documentary about his life will be released this fall. More Photos »

    By PAMELA PAUL
    Published: June 28, 2011
  • Reprints

    • Much like the 6-year-old children who enjoy his books, Tomi Ungerer recently spent the better part of a week celebrating his birthday. And his actual birthday — his 80th — isn’t even until November.

    Multimedia
    Slide Show
    ‘Tomi Ungerer: Chronicler of the Absurd’

    Mr. Ungerer’s career is also enjoying something of an extended celebration. Phaidon Press recently reissued several of his children’s books with plans to publish more in October, and the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art in Amherst, Mass., just opened a retrospective, “Tomi Ungerer: Chronicler of the Absurd.” A documentary about his life will be released this fall. A prolific author of books for both children and adults, including “The Mellops Go Flying,” “Moon Man” and “The Three Robbers,” Mr. Ungerer has also pursued sculpture, architectural design and advertising over the course of his career.

    Born in Strasbourg, France, he moved to New York in 1956, later lived as a pig farmer in Nova Scotia (which he documented in a memoir, “Far Out Isn’t Far Enough,” also recently reissued) and finally settled on the west coast of Ireland. His arrival in New York at 25 brought instant success: In addition to his children’s books, he created advertisements for The New York Times in the ’60s and illustrated for the Op-Ed page, as well as for Esquire, Life and The Village Voice. After the publication of his erotic drawings, in books for grown-ups like “Fornicon” and “Guardian Angels of Hell,” his children’s books went out of print.

    Yet it is primarily as a children’s book author that Mr. Ungerer has been visiting the United States this month, where he was celebrated by the French Consulate and by his fellow illustrators, including Jules Feiffer. Despite a sturdy cane that looks as much like a weapon as like a walking stick and complaints of fatigue, Mr. Ungerer was as animated and droll as ever as he sat in a SoHo hotel bar for an interview. Excerpts are below.

    Q. You’re here courtesy of Phaidon, as a children’s book author, but you mentioned to Jules Feiffer that children’s literature is really a sideline for you.

    A.: In a way, yes. I’ve written some 150 books, for adults and children, both fiction and nonfiction. I do engineering, I design monuments, I design buildings. In Germany I designed a kindergarten in the shape of a cat. The children enter the mouth and go downstairs inside the tail. I’m a bit of bee, but basically I am an author.

    Q. You’ve called your books “the nightmare of the pedagogues.” Why is that?

    A. In my children’s books, you’ll always find an element of fear. I think children are thrilled with fear, and they have to be taught how to get over it. When I was a child, I was scared of the night and the dark, so my brother took me to the cemetery on a moonlit night. And I got over it. Then I would go out at night in a bed sheet and try to scare other people.

    Why am I the pedagogues’ nightmare? They think I traumatize children. They think children should be loved and protected. But if you do only that, they’re not ready for life.

    Q. You have also been called the bad boy of children’s literature.

    A. I’ve been an instigator. I want children to make fun of adults. As I’ve often said, children know where children come from, but not where adults come from.

    Q. Is there an overriding message in your children’s books?

    A. Yes, possibly. Every human being has something the others don’t have. That makes him an individual. You should be aware of your differences and exploit them. This is why I often use animals that everyone hates — a snake, a vulture, a bat — in my books. All those animals are redeemed by the fact that they had appendages or qualities the others didn’t have. In the end they become the heroes.

    Q. Your books avoid simple words like tree or bird or flower.

    A. Yes. I’m in love with language. Between the ages of 3 and 7, children can learn three languages a year. If you’re not teaching them another language, you can always develop their vocabulary. Make them ask, “What does that mean?”

    Q. Do you think children’s literature underestimates children?

    A. Absolutely. Children are born critical; they’re not stupid. They know what’s going on.

    The very fact that they have lists of words for different ages: these are the words a 6-year-old should know. That was what was so wonderful about Ursula Nordstrom [Mr. Ungerer’s celebrated editor at Harper & Row]: she let me use the words I wanted to use. I always go back to Edward Lear and Hilaire Belloc and Lewis Carroll. Nonsense words. Everybody should learn “Jabberwocky.”

    Q. In your conversation with Jules Feiffer, you talked about the difference in writing and illustrating children’s books rather than just doing one or the other.

    A. Look, it’s a fact that the children’s books that withstand the grinding of time all come from authors who did both. Because the author has a vision, and there’s an osmosis between the oral and the visual, which come together and mix.

    Q. Is there a line between children’s literature and grown-up books?

    A. That’s a very good question. If I write a book, I do it mostly for myself, for the child in me and for the adult in me. The criterion for my children’s books is: If I were a child, would I like it? That’s very egotistical, but it’s the same thing with my books for adults. I wouldn’t do a book if I didn’t want to partake and share. With a book, I can do both: I give and I share.

    via nytimes.com

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  • 07/10/11--16:39: Gruffalo creator Julia Donaldson is new children's laureate | Books | The Guardian (chan 2105780)

    • Gruffalo creator Julia Donaldson is new children's laureate

    Donaldson plans to promote music and drama and champion libraries during her tenure

    Julia Donaldson talks about becoming the new children's laureate Link to this video

    Julia Donaldson, known to millions of unsleepy children and their drooping adult bedtime readers as the creator of the Gruffalo, he of the "terrible tusks, and terrible claws, and terrible teeth in his terrible jaws", has been appointed the new children's laureate.

    "The laureateship is an honour but it's not the kind of honour you can just bask in, so I'm planning to have quite an active two years," she said. "I'm hoping to bring some drama and music to the job. I always act out my own stories with lots of audience participation so I'm planning to do lots more of that. I hope to encourage and inspire children to act stories out, though it's too early to say whether there will be one major theatrical event."

    Donaldson becomes the seventh laureate, and was described as "a wonderful choice" by one of her predecessors, the poet Michael Rosen.

    "She has written such accessible and brilliant books and she's so clever and funny. She believes in taking her stuff out to kids, and sharing it," he said.

    Her immediate predecessor, the illustrator Anthony Browne, left her an open letter urging: "Do everything you can to support libraries – God knows, they need every bit of help they can get nowadays." Everyone, he warned, "will pay the price in the long term" for school and public library closures.

    In fact Donaldson, who lives near Glasgow and is the first Scottish-based laureate, needed no urging. In recent months she has flung herself into the campaign to save libraries, leading a protest meeting at the Scottish parliament, signing petitions, and turning up at readings in libraries in Scotland and England.

    She is promising even more ardent efforts in her new role.

    "I'd love to do a libraries tour from Land's End to John O'Groats," she said. "The children who would come to events in libraries would have been briefed beforehand that they would come to perform something to me, so the first 10 minutes of each session they might perform a class poem they had written or act out a favourite picture book.

    "Maybe I'll be able to talk to the minister of culture and persuade the government to have some kind of overall plan because at the moment I feel all the library cuts and closures are very piecemeal, so I'll do what I can," she added.

    Donaldson is expecting to be very busy in her new role: "Anne Fine, one of the previous laureates, sent me an email saying the most important thing is to book two really good holidays."

    She already receives sackloads of post, including mass write-ins from at least 30 schools a month; she puts her favourites on display in her bathroom. "I got one the other day saying: 'Dear Julia Donaldson, do you have your own library? And do you have your own husband?'"

    Although she has written 120 books for various age groups, her superstar is the outwardly ferocious Gruffalo, written in deceptively simple verse with illustrations by Axel Scheffler, which was first published in 1999.

    Just 700 words across 32 pages, the tale of an anxious mouse struggling to keep his courage up and a cowardly monster was instantly recognised as a classic, laden with awards, and has now -- taking together The Gruffalo's Child and other related Gruffalo books -- sold more than 10.5m copies, and been translated into languages including Polish, Hebrew, Lithuanian and Russian.

    The sequel, The Gruffalo's Child, won a best children's book award in 2005, and the original was voted the best bedtime story of all time by BBC radio listeners in 2009. The Gruffalo has recently sparked a multimillion pound merchandising operation on a scale to rival the other furry marketing Exocet, Paddington Bear.

    The jagged-toothed creature is now available as a mug, a doll or a duvet cover, a 30-minute animation with the voices of Robbie Coltrane and James Corden as monster and mouse, and a stage show which has run in London's West End for the past five Christmases and looks likely to become a seasonal fixture.

    Donaldson takes on a role that was dreamed up by Ted Hughes, then poet laureate, and his friend Michael Morpurgo, to mark a lifetime's contribution to children's literature and highlight the importance of children's books.

    The first laureateship was awarded to the illustrator Quentin Blake in 1999 and Morpurgo himself took on the role in 2003. Previous children's laureates include the creator of Tracy Beaker, Jacqueline Wilson, and novelist Anne Fine. The winner is presented with a medal and a bursary of £15,000.

    The former children's television presenter Floella Benjamin chaired the panel of judges, which included children's book reviewers, lecturers and buyers, and the judges considered nominations from children, who could vote online, and organisations representing libraries, critics and writers.

    The Waterstone's children's laureate 2011-2013 is managed by literature charity Booktrust

    • This article was amended on 10 June 2011. To clarify: the titles whose sales total more than 10.5m include The Gruffalo, The Gruffalo's Child and other related Gruffalo books (including activity and song books).

    Comments in chronological order (Total 77 comments)

    • This symbol indicates that that person is The Guardian's staffStaff
    • This symbol indicates that that person is a contributorContributor

    • intheglen

      7 June 2011 12:20PM

      yeah! she has kept me sane and the kids entertained for many more hours than i care to count over the last couple of years. she's a genius and an angel. good luck to her.

    • mexicanbandit

      7 June 2011 12:31PM

      I am involved in the design and construction of some new academies and am horrified by the lack of books. There are libraries in these academies that are no more than social spaces for students. Learning is done by computer with interactive white boards etc.
      If libraries are not supported at this level we will lose generations of people wanting to read and look at books

    • Contributor
      MichaelRosen

      7 June 2011 12:32PM

      Julia has created books that I've seen children of all ages and backgrounds absolutely loving: they are clever, funny, humane and full of feeling and thought. What's more, children remember whole chunks of them. She takes her own shows out to schools and festivals and there are people always keen to put on versions of her books. It's all great for her, great for children and great for children's books. Hurrah.

    • gordonstru

      7 June 2011 12:32PM

      Brilliant appointment.

      My favourite of her books is A Squash and a Squeeze. Just fantastic poetry, wisdom and humour.

      And much recognition due to Axel Scheffler, the illustrator of her books.

    • KateP

      7 June 2011 12:44PM

      She's a real library supporter, so I'm hopeful.

      If she does one thing, it should be to campaign for library provision to be compulsory in schools, with protected funding and Ofsted rating depending on it.

    • curtlyambrose

      7 June 2011 1:00PM

      Brilliant appointment.

      My favourite of her books is A Squash and a Squeeze. Just fantastic poetry, wisdom and humour.

      And much recognition due to Axel Scheffler, the illustrator of her books.

      exactly what I was going to say.

      Congratulations to her.

    • mattdiamond

      7 June 2011 1:00PM

      "Silly old Pauli, doesn't she appreciate

      There's no such thing as a Children's Laureate!"

      (But glad she's speaking up for libraries)

    • gpjcyprus

      7 June 2011 1:03PM

      This comment was removed by a moderator because it didn't abide by our community standards. Replies may also be deleted. For more detail see our FAQs.

    • tomo42

      7 June 2011 1:08PM

      I really like her books too and think she's a great choice.

      One tiny thing - has anyone else noticed that bits of Zog don't quite scan?

    • iaia78

      7 June 2011 1:08PM

      Wonderful choice!

      My husband and I love her books and the fact that they're actually enjoyable to read, even over and over again!

      As well The Gruffalo, Stick Man and Tyrannosaurus Drip are favourites in our house.

    • sadoldpedant

      7 June 2011 1:14PM

      Sorry to introduce a sour note, but I strongly dislike The Gruffalo: I just can't take the bits that are, if not plagiarized from, then certainly uncomfortably similar to, Where The Wild Things Are. (One could say the same about the illustrations too.) And the rhymes are forced. It just not written well enough to deserve its reputation as a great classic of children's literature.

    • Deportivodeej

      7 June 2011 1:15PM

      Top quality choice.

      We have most of her books and cd's too.

      Of all of them I particularly enjoy Snail and the Whale and The Magic Paintbrush. But my youngest son is first and foremost a Gruffalo fan.

    • Contributor
      AnnabelWynne

      7 June 2011 1:16PM

      Absolutely brilliant choice, she will be wonderful in this post. Good news all round.

      Unfortunate that the photographer took her portrait at exactly the same angle as the accompanying Gruffalo illustration. :-/

    • Deportivodeej

      7 June 2011 1:21PM

      sadoldpedant - That is a sour and not to mention mealymouthed note. Accusations of similarities to WTWTA are pretty baseless.

      WTWTA is probably a better book but I just don't get your point. From my view the books are visualy and thematicaly different and the synchpated language of WTWTA is totaly different to the gentler flow of The Gruffalo.

    • davidpostlelondon

      7 June 2011 1:26PM

      I can't think of a better person for the job. My Daughter loves them over and over again. Tiddler & a squash and a squeeze are my personal favourites.

    • Monkey21

      7 June 2011 1:31PM

      I'd have to take issue with saoldpedant...Gruffalo is quite different in tone & illustrations from "wild things"...the message is totally different also... as an aside & maybe its just me but i think it can be read as a metaphor for US intervention in the middle east (only kind of joking)...which may be where you confuse it with wild things ...he he

      Anyway it's a very clever & charming story, (as is the gruffalos child, if not quite as good). I love all the ineteconnecting elements of her stories - stick man's cameos etc. She's a great appointment

      If you're a parent of young children , she's a godsend, as her work is enjoyed by both parent & child . "The snail & the Whale" is the masterpiece though...a perfect childrens book....

      Re <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/discussion/comment-permalink/11071104"

      I'm sure the photgrapher knew exactly what they were doing....

    • brainsoftheoperation

      7 June 2011 1:33PM

      The Gruffalo is excellent but my four year old's favourite (and mine) is Charlie Cook's Favourite Book.

      Much credit, again, to the illustrations which we always take time to look at because they show us that books are magical and can make the play things real. he he he.

      He is scared of gruffaloes but that's ok because so am I so we look after each other when he appears.

    • Foxest

      7 June 2011 1:33PM

      Everyone seems to agree? Why? Just because it's right?

      What is the world coming to?

    • Lasereyedcorgis

      7 June 2011 1:36PM

      Sorry to introduce a sour note, but I strongly dislike The Gruffalo: I just can't take the bits that are, if not plagiarized from, then certainly uncomfortably similar to, Where The Wild Things Are. (One could say the same about the illustrations too.) And the rhymes are forced. It just not written well enough to deserve its reputation as a great classic of children's literature.

      Which bits would those be then? They are absolutely nothing like each other in any respect other than each have a monster in them. They have no similar themes, there's no similarity in writing style and there's absolutely no sharing of subtext. Other than that they are identical.

      as for it being a 'great classic of children's literature'. Maybe it's not up there with the best of Roald Dahl, but children love it, and that's all that really matters in that field.

    • OurPlanet

      7 June 2011 1:38PM

      Sounds a really creative woman. We need her over here in Canada where she could lighten up the world for many disabled and sick children.

    • iamnotwise

      7 June 2011 1:38PM

      Great children's books. I like Room On The Broom especially.

      Good choice, though she's got her work cut out for her with the charming Government we currently have.

    • dan1973

      7 June 2011 1:54PM

      Hey, one thing though Donaldson:

      Giraffe does NOT rhyme with scarf. Not where I come from.

      Otherwise, jolly good.

    • SpaceInvader

      7 June 2011 2:13PM

      One of the best of all time. Books like The Stickman are so incredibly clever. The wordplay is so natural it makes you think the language was specifically invented for Julia Donaldson to do what she does with it. Congratulations Julia.

    • joshthedog

      7 June 2011 2:15PM

      She's ok.

      I wonder how many people would buy an unillustrated compendium of her work?

      I had the absolute priviledge of meeting Axel Scheffler recently. A more humble and self-critical man, it would be hard to meet. He took the time to sign about 6 of our children's books, each with a little sketch. He told us that he thought he could have done a better job on the Gruffalo -- one of the most iconic images in children's literature today.

      However, that image is HIS creation. Julia Donaldson gave him some parameters, like spines and so forth. It is his enduring images which put the pictures in young children's minds. Both have said in interviews that there is very little extra communication between the author and the artist.

      Having said that, I do not believe that either would have had the success they have had without each other.

      At the VERY least, this should have been a joint role Donaldson and Scheffler. Scheffler made Donaldson's work as ludicrously marketable and merchandisable as it is.

    • Zirbelnuss

      7 June 2011 2:18PM

      Julia Donaldson would be welcome for tea in our logpile house any time. (You're right, though, tomo42, but I forgive her!)

    • reverend61

      7 June 2011 2:35PM

      @joshthedog

      I had the absolute priviledge of meeting Axel Scheffler recently. A more humble and self-critical man, it would be hard to meet. He took the time to sign about 6 of our children's books, each with a little sketch. He told us that he thought he could have done a better job on the Gruffalo -- one of the most iconic images in children's literature today.

      However, that image is HIS creation. Julia Donaldson gave him some parameters, like spines and so forth. It is his enduring images which put the pictures in young children's minds. Both have said in interviews that there is very little extra communication between the author and the artist.

      Having said that, I do not believe that either would have had the success they have had without each other.

      You know, you're spot on with that. I'm a big fan of her books (having had to read the Gruffalo more or less every night for the past two months you find yourself falling in line) but it is the illustrations that make them particularly memorable. The style even bleeds over into the animated Gruffalo, which - despite its CG approach - strongly resembles the work of Scheffler. He sounds like a nice chap, too.

    • sadoldpedant

      7 June 2011 3:20PM

      Clearly I should clarify my earlier remark. I completely agree that the story as a whole is nothing like Where The Wild Things Are. I'm actually referring to a couple of sentences where the wording is so similar that anyone familiar with WTWTA cannot help noticing. Unfortunately I don't have The Gruffalo in front of me so can't give the exact quotation, but it's the sentence involving terrible claws. If you don't believe me, go back and read the two books and put those parts side by side: the echo is just too strong.

      I'm not accusing Julia Donaldson of plagiarism. I think probably she just unconsciously used words from a book with which she was undoubtedly familiar. It's an easy thing to do, but a better writer would have noticed and changed it.

      To repeat -- I'm talking about some of the detailed wording and not the story in its entirety, or the atmosphere, or anything like that. But that little detail just kills the book for me. Without it, the book's success would still be inexplicable, but I wouldn't find it positively irritating -- just averagely charming, like many children's books that are churned out these days.

    • sadoldpedant

      7 June 2011 3:28PM

      OK, found it online.

      From The Gruffalo:

      "A gruffalo? What's a gruffalo?"
      "A gruffalo! Why, didn't you know? He has terrible tusks, and terrible claws, and terrible teeth in his terrible jaws."

      From Where The Wild Things Are:

      "And when he came to the place where the wild things are
      they roared their terrible roars and gnashed their terrible teeth
      and rolled their terrible eyes and showed their terrible claws"

      Again, to forestall any misunderstanding, I'm not claiming these are identical (the scansion is different for a start -- I much prefer Sendak's) but you can't read the first without being strongly reminded of the second (assuming you're familiar with it).

    • 4hd93kiw

      7 June 2011 3:29PM

      I would like to say that her work is just typical contemporary dross or detritus, but some of it is more sinister than that. I admit that I have only read Gruffalo and A Squash And A Squeeze, but they can by no means be classed as literature.

      A Squash and a Squeeze is the repackaging of a Jewish folk-tale, which, depending on one’s opinion, is either a fresh retelling or plagiarism, but the tale does at least have meaning and purpose. I have nothing against the book.

      Gruffalo, on the other hand, verges on Kafkaesque. I don’t think this was intended, because I don’t think that Donaldson is that evil. Even my nephew, after watching the televised version (the irony of another picture book for small children being converted to the screen so that it will reach those with even shorter attention and smaller comprehension: this is about market penetration not philanthropy) expressed the moral as: “so lying gets you what you want!” The main character in the story has no scruples, no responsibility and experiences no distinction between reality and imagination nor between truth and lie. Unlike Metamorphosis where the protagonist experiences the impossible nightmare (and the story actually has a point) it’s every character but the protagonist that suffers here; even the nightmare experiences the nightmare. The protagonist lives happily ever after in the moment; no justice is done because there would only be justice if he were to imagine it. I think the book has no intended point beyond being amusing so here Donaldson has out-Kafkaed Kafka. Existentialism for the under-fives served in the post-modern way. Either that or it’s a glimpse into the mind of a psychopath (or MP?). Either way, this isn’t merely the ‘twaddle’ that educators like Charlotte Mason advise us to avoid.

      It’s clear to see what sort of effect this can have on impressionable developing minds, especially if this is the kind of intellectual, philosophical and moral diet that is encouraged and lauded, but parents are blissfully ignorant. Ask any parent about reading and they will unequivocally state that they want their children to read more, but ask them what is worth reading and you’ll just get a blank stare. “Books are good full stop” is the mantra of most parents I know. They will raise equally un-thinking offspring. It would be preferable to let your child play a mindless computer game like Moshi Monsters than to read him this book.

      And the confusing of the value of reading aloud to children and having them watch the TV (the former encouraging they develop their own imagination, the latter making them passive, unimagining receivers) is, frankly, obscene. So here the delivery is plainly considered no more important than the content, it’s audience size that is the goal. This laureate, as far as I can see, is concerned with popularity not virtue and hence with entertainment not education, but education happens anyway, it’s just that it is wrong values that are inculcated.

      Before you flame me, consider if you would have bought the book for your child if it were called Deluded Bare-Faced Liar Wins the Prize. As an exercise, ask your child what he thinks the story is about and what title he might give it. Ask him who and what he thinks is good and bad (as in morally right and wrong) in the book. If your child isn’t too corrupted already his answers could surprise you.

    • Popovski

      7 June 2011 3:30PM

      I am very pleased with the choice of JD for the Children's Laureate. She has written wonderful books familiar to children all over the world. I can certainly say that she is well respected in Croatia where I come from.
      It is wondefrul that she would like to promote music and drama as well as local libraries.
      I just hope that she will be able to organise public to fight for our local libraries. I am grateful to her that she mentioned them in her inaugural speach. We are already fighting for our three local libraries in north west London hoping that the Government will understand that such an important public service can not be sold just because there is no guts to tax the City. What we spend on libraries is next to nothing in comparison with City bonuses. Since we live in the age of celebrities I sincerely hope tha JD's rightly deserved fame and new position will help save our 'street-corner universities' (in the words of Deborah Moggach).

    • AGeekTragedy

      7 June 2011 3:44PM

      She's essentially a brand: safe and predictable (and more than a little bit cynical); you always know what you're going to get, because every one of her books is exactly the same.

      Even if you squint your eyes up to the point where "Main character gets in trouble then cleverly gets out of it" is "the same" that only accounts for a bout half the stories.

      Plus she seems to have switched to mostly writing in prose now, which given the response I've seen is not so much "safe" as "brave to mental"

    • Staff
      SheilaPulham

      7 June 2011 3:44PM

      Great appointment.
      In my view Snail and the Whale and Stick Man (which we also have beautifully translated into rhyming German) are the best. I wonder if Alex Scheffler did the translation as well as the illustrations...

      Pointless factoid: the German for The Gruffalo is 'Der Grüffelo' with an umlaut.

    • AGeekTragedy

      7 June 2011 3:49PM

      @4hd93kiw Actually, I really don't have a problem with my daughter learning the lesson that it's OK to lie to things that are trying to eat you.

    • Staff
      SheilaPulham

      7 June 2011 3:58PM

      @4hd93kiw

      Gruffalo, on the other hand, verges on Kafkaesque. Even my nephew, after watching the televised version [...] expressed the moral as: “so lying gets you what you want!” The main character in the story has no scruples, no responsibility and experiences no distinction between reality and imagination nor between truth and lie.

      Have we read the same book? Unless you're joking, and I don't think you are, isn't the Gruffalo about a clever mouse using his brain to outwit bigger, fiercer foes that want to eat him? Surely even Kafka would agree it's ok for the underdog to tell a few white lies if it saves him from annihilation.

      But if you want to get philosophical, the question of whether the Gruffalo is real or a figment of the mouse's imagination goes to the heart of existentialism within reassuring moral parameters of right and wrong...

    • LaurenceAnholt

      7 June 2011 4:20PM

      Well as someone who writes and illustrates children’s books, I know how incredibly difficult it is to create picture books like The Gruffalo. Julia Donaldson is a wonderfully talented writer who speaks directly to young children. I know her pretty well and she is a charming, modest person who is also extremely determined. A perfect choice for Children’s Laureate. Well done, Julia. God bless the Queen. God bless the Gruffalo. Laurence Anholt

    • Deportivodeej

      7 June 2011 4:42PM

      sadoldpedant - Make your mind up:

      First: -

      "if not plagiarized from, then certainly uncomfortably similar to, Where The Wild Things Are. (One could say the same about the illustrations too.)"

      Second Post: - .

      I'm not accusing Julia Donaldson of plagiarism

      As for the quotes I do know them well, and obviously the use of the terrible teeth, terrible claws is noticable but I dont think they can be cited as significant or detracting in regard to the whole. I think you must have an extremely strong affinity with the Sendak line to find it bothersome in Donaldsons effort.

      Regardless I'd think the Gruffalo as an individual book and Donaldson as an author of many very good verses for childrn deserved a little kinder than your first post.

    • Oilriggers

      7 June 2011 5:06PM

      The Gruffalo is a great book and I'm sure Julia will serve well in this role. I must admit, however, to some sympathy with @sadoldpedant. Having read TG to my kids repeatedly over the years, I was struck by that one page (terrible teeth etc) and the similar 'look' of the monsters when I eventually broke out my old childhood copy of WTWTA. That said, it doesn't add up to much as the stories are vastly different......

    • sadoldpedant

      7 June 2011 5:10PM

      Deportivodeej:

      Your comment confuses me. In both my comments I said that it wasn't plagiarized, as is clear from the parts you quoted. So my mind was made up then and still is: I think that it was probably an accidental similarity, but nevertheless one that stops me from being able to enjoy The Gruffalo.

    • elfwyn

      7 June 2011 5:24PM

      @ dan1973

      Hey, one thing though Donaldson:

      Giraffe does NOT rhyme with scarf. Not where I come from.

      Otherwise, jolly good.

      Well, it does where I come from, so nah-nah nah-nah-nah!

      Congratulations to Donaldson - great choice. I was planning anyway to have her as Children's Author of the Month in my little library in July (it's Diana Wynne Jones this month). My one regret is that my own kids are now pretty much adult and didn't know the joys of the Gruffalo - though my younger one went to a theatre performance with his then girlfriend, who was doing drama and needed to see a professional production. They were the only ones there who were neither parents nor toddlers, and they thoroughly enjoyed it!

    • elfwyn

      7 June 2011 5:25PM

      @ sadoldpedant

      Deportivodeej:

      Your comment confuses me. In both my comments I said that it wasn't plagiarized, as is clear from the parts you quoted. So my mind was made up then and still is: I think that it was probably an accidental similarity, but nevertheless one that stops me from being able to enjoy The Gruffalo.

      Sorry, mate, your loss!

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  • 07/14/11--19:12: The Real Secret Garden - Telegraph (chan 2105780)

    • The Real Secret Garden

    On the centenary of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s best-loved story, The Secret Garden, Helen Brown visits the corner of Kent behind the myth.

    Image 1 of 2

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    5:08PM BST 08 Jul 2011

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    It is a sun-baked afternoon deep in the Kentish countryside which once left Frances Hodgson Burnett feeling “flower drunk”. Hollyhocks skirt the old brick walls, lavender nods beneath the weight of drowsy bees and the ivy-wreathed archway of my childhood fantasies is just one step ahead of me. It’s a step that children have dreamed of taking for 100 years. A step into a world of friendship, mysteries and magic. A step into The Secret Garden.

    Or, at least, into the kitchen garden of Great Maytham Hall, Rolvenden, which inspired Hodgson Burnett’s classic children’s novel, first published in 1911. She had moved to the old hall in the late 1890s and rented it for almost 10 years. As soon as the lease was signed, she set to work with the head gardener, ordering flowers and ripping out hedges to open up views from the terrace. “I have seen a great many places that interested me,” she wrote in a letter to her youngest son, “but Maytham I love.”

    Today, with the gentle acres keeping out all traffic noise, I feel I’m experiencing the same scent and hum that seduced her. The hall’s present estate manager, Roger Watts, beckons me beneath the glossy green foliage, pointing out the changes made by Edwin Lutyens in 1909 when the hall was rebuilt. The design is relatively formal now. “But when Frances first came here,” he says, “it was all one big orchard, overgrown with brambles. She created a rose garden. Over there is an old pink variety she loved, called ‘Madame Moussigny’.”

    It was 1897 when Hodgson Burnett first stood within these lichened walls. By her late forties, she was exhausted from decades as a “pen-driving machine”. Born into shabby gentility in Manchester, Frances’s father died when she was four. After struggling for 12 years to keep the family’s decorative ironwork business afloat, Frances’s hapless mother shipped the family across the Atlantic to Knoxville, Tennessee, hoping that her brother – Frances’s uncle William – would be able to support her and her five children.

    But the poverty-stricken Hodgsons nearly starved in their log cabin and their fortunes only improved when 18-year-old Frances began selling stories to ladies’ magazines, soon averaging six per month. When she married Swan Burnett in 1872, she kept up the pace in order to pay for her husband’s advanced medical training in Paris and to support her two sons, who slept beneath her desk as toddlers.

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    By the time she arrived in Kent, she was one of the world’s most successful authors: her many romantic stories, novels and plays for adults were as popular in her day as her more enduring children’s books, which by then included Little Lord Fauntleroy and A Little Princess.

    She had spent years shuttling between the United States and England with trunks full of beautiful clothes, befriending authors such as Henry James, Oscar Wilde and Louisa May Alcott. But there had been depression and numerous nervous breakdowns along the way. She was separated – soon to be divorced – from Burnett and had become entangled with an aspiring actor whom she would also divorce. In 1890 her eldest son, Lionel, died of tuberculosis at the age of just 16.

    Frances’s biographer Gretchen Gerzina writes that for months after her son’s death, she “wandered Europe like a ghost”, thinking “incessantly of Lionel’s body lying in the St Germaine Cemetery, where to prevent the soil touching his casket she had the grave walled and arched over and lined with flowers and green boughs”.

    Her grief may have been tinged with guilt. She had regularly left her boys with their father in America and, after meeting her second husband in London, became an irregular correspondent to the ailing Lionel when his illness first became serious – although she nursed him devotedly at the end. After Lionel’s death, she did not return to comfort her surviving son, Vivian, either. But she wrote to Lionel for years in her journal: “I tried to carry you in my arms to the gates of Heaven, past Pain and Death so that you would wake up to a beautiful, strange surprise at your new, strong, happy body and the day that has no night, and the city whose gates are never closed.”

    In The Secret Garden, the sickly, teenaged Colin Craven really is restored to health and happiness. He is brought to life by the friendship of the novel’s gloriously “disagreeable” heroine, Mary Lennox, her Pan-like friend Dickon and the healing power of the garden his mother once loved.

    Gerzina suggests Frances was resurrecting her own Lionel through fiction. But A S Byatt has written that the whingeing and hysterical “Colin has nothing at all in common with the real Lionel, or with the idealised dead son”. She argues that “what readers come back to again and again in this potent tale is the irony and realism with which these not-so-nice children are presented, and the way they save each other”.

    Significantly, Mary and Colin do not just save each other. They also rescue Colin’s widowed father. Like Frances, Archibald Craven had been wandering Europe, “alone through such beauty as might have lifted any man’s soul out of shadow. He had walked a long way and it had not lifted his.” But when he returns to the secret garden and his long-forsaken son, he finds himself looking at the “embowered temple of gold” and laughing “until tears came into his eyes”.

    It is a moment that has enchanted generations. And its message of the power of digging and planting is certain to chime with the 21st-century grow-your-own philosophy: two centenary editions, illustrated by Robert Ingpen and Lauren Child, will be published this autumn.

    Having struggled with conventional Christianity since Lionel’s death, Frances had been deeply influenced by the “New Thought”, which combined ideas of vital links between the spirit and the physical world. She would not name her new belief, but put it into practise during her few happy years in Kent.

    Although she would continue to struggle with ill health until her death, in the US in 1924, Frances never lost the passion for freshly turned soil that she developed in her Kentish rose garden. She always said: “As long as one has a garden, one has a future, and if one has a future, one is alive.”

    * Two new editions of The Secret Garden illustrated by Robert Ingpen (Templar, £14.99) and Lauren Child (Puffin, £25) will be published in September

    * The gardens at Great Maytham Hall open to the public once a year as part of the National Gardens Scheme. See www.ngs.org.uk for more details

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  • 07/17/11--18:19: Salman Rushdie's Luka fires up animation imaginations | Children's books | guardian.co.uk (chan 2105780)

    • A children's novel by Booker prize-winning author Sir Salman Rushdie has inspired animation students at London's Kingston University to create short films based on the book.

    Luka and the Fire of Life tells the story of 12-year-old Luka Khalifa who, along with his two loyal companions, a bear called Dog and a dog called Bear, is on a quest to steal the fire of life to revive his beloved storyteller father Rashid who has fallen into a deep sleep. The book was written by Rushdie as a gift for his son Milan on his 12th birthday.

    It inspired students Han Byul Lee, Sam Falconer, Irsiz Heathershaw, So Hewi Lee and Dawn Smit to create this short film, which was judged the winner:

    Rushdie said of the winning film, "I loved the post-Sendak wit of the drawing style, in which the boat becomes as much of a character as the characters. It was also the animation that succeeded best in telling its story without words, and both the comedy and the drama worked perfectly."

    Students from the University's faculty of art, design and architecture visited the book's publisher Random House to meet the author and present their ideas for visual concepts. Four of these concepts were selected to be made into four animations, which then went to a panel of judges including Rushdie and Milan, to whom the book is dedicated, to select an overall winner.

    Luka and the Fire of Life One of Sam Falconer's 'concept' drawings for Luka and the Fire of Life

    The choice came as a surprise to the students' teacher, senior lecturer in animation Damian Gascoigne. "He [Rushdie] didn't seem wedded to a fixed idea of how his characters should look but seemed extremely receptive to some very individual interpretations of the figures from the book," said Gascoigne. "The work he chose was a surprise to me – but in a good way. He didn't latch on to those ideas that had obvious commercial appeal but, instead, selected some that were really trying to do something a bit different."

    There were three runners-up and their films are available to watch on YouTube:

    Zach Ellams, Moira Lam, Tim O'Leary, Sophie Powell: watch their film

    Frank Burgess, Angus Dick, James Lancett, Ben Tobitt, Sean Weston: watch their film

    John Balallo, Jun Hyoung Chun, Katie Robson, Yao Xiang: watch their film

    Read the opening paragraph of Luka and the Fire of Life:

    There was once, in the city of Kahani in the land of Alifbay, a boy named Luka who had two pets, a bear named Dog and a dog named Bear, which meant that whenever he called out 'Dog!' the bear waddled up amiably on his hind legs, and when he shouted 'Bear!' the dog bounded towards him wagging his tail. Dog the brown bear could be a little gruff and bearish at times, but he was an expert dancer, able to get up on to his hind legs and perform with subtlety and grace the waltz, the polka, the rhumba, the wah-watusi and the twist, as well as dances from nearer home, the pounding bhangra, the twirling ghoomar (for which he wore a wide mirror-worked skirt), the warrior dances known as the spaw and the thang-ta, and the peacock dance of the south. Bear the dog was a chocolate Labrador, and a gentle, friendly dog, though sometimes a bit excitable and nervous; he absolutely could not dance, having, as the saying goes, four left feet, but to make up for his clumsiness he possessed the gift of perfect pitch, so he could sing up a storm, howling out the melodies of the most popular songs of the day, and never going out of tune. Bear the dog and Dog the bear quickly became much more than Luka's pets. They turned into his closest allies and most loyal protectors, so fierce in his defence that nobody would ever have dreamed of bullying him when they were nearby, not even his appalling classmate Ratshit, whose behaviour was usually out of control.

    • Luka and the Fire of Life by Salman Rushdie published by Vintage

    Buy Luke and the Fire of Life at the Guardian bookshop

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  • 07/17/11--22:21: The Illustration Cupboard (chan 2105780)

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  • 07/20/11--16:22: Guardian children's fiction prize | Books | The Guardian (chan 2105780)

    • Guardian children's fiction prize

    Julia Eccleshare introduces the longlist of eight titles

    David Almond
    David Almond at his home in Humshaugh, Northumberland. Photograph: Mark Pinder for the Guardian

    There are eight books on the longlist for this year's prize. Established in 1967, the award has an outstanding list of previous winners, including Leon Garfield, who won the inaugural prize for Devil-in-the-Fog, Alan Garner, Joan Aiken, Ted Hughes, Philip Pullman, Jacqueline Wilson, Meg Rosoff, Patrick Ness and, last year, Michelle Paver. It is the only children's prize to be judged by writers; I was chair of this year's judges Michelle Paver, Julia Golding and Marcus Sedgwick.

    1. My Name is Mina
    2. by David Almond

    3.
    4. Buy it from the Guardian bookshop
    1. Tell us what you think: Star-rate and review this book

    My Name is Mina, by David Almond (Hodder, £12.99). 9+
    Mina was Michael's thoughtful, resourceful and spiky neighbour in David Almond's prizewinning Skellig. This is the story of her life before his arrival, in a series of stunningly individual essays, poems, written dreams – each in a narrative style carefully chosen to catch the mood. Together they capture her confusion and sometimes anger about many aspects of her life, including the death of her father and her antipathy to school. They also celebrate her love of language and her passionate understanding of how it works. Seeing the world through Mina's eyes and hearing it through her voice is a journey of unbridled imagination and touching honesty.

    Small Change for Stuart, by Lissa Evans (Doubleday, £10.99). 8+
    Small Stuart embarks on an awfully big adventure in this quirky puzzle-solving novel. Uprooted from London by his kindly but distracted parents, Stuart finds himself with nothing to do in his seemingly lifeless new home town. The only interest comes from the confusion caused by the identical triplets next door, and that just makes things worse. But a long-lost letter from a long-lost great uncle sets Stuart off unlocking one baffling puzzle after another. Each more curious than the one before, the far-fetched solutions they require bring the book to a hugely satisfying conclusion.

    Twilight Robbery, by Frances Hardinge (Macmillan, £9.99). 11+
    Mosca Mye, born under a malign star and orphaned early, ducks and dives her way through a new adventure with her unusual travelling companions, the smooth-talking but hapless Eponymous Clent and the ferocious goose Saracen. In the city of Toll, where the good live by day and the bad by night, Mosca and her crew get trapped as the last scraps of luck evade them. Floridly recounted, how they spring their prison and release the whole city is a triumph of vividly imagined invention.

    Momentum, by Sacci Lloyd (Hodder, £6.99). 12+
    From its breathtaking opening, which conjures a dystopian London in a not-too-distant future, this is an action-packed thriller with a warm heart and a disturbing message about a broken society. The city is disintegrating; after a global fuel crisis, society has fragmented into warring factions of ruling Citizens, disenfranchised Outsiders and gun-toting Kossaks who keep the peace violently. Teenage Citizen Hunter shrugs off the comfort of his privileged existence for the "reality" of the favelas, home of the Outsiders. Meeting Outsider Uma challenges everything he has believed as he is drawn into the desperate fight to help those who still understand what really matters in society.

    Moon Pie, by Simon Mason (David Fickling, £10.99). 10+
    How love is tested, challenged and threatened, but can ultimately hold families together is at the heart of Moon Pie. Martha is used to managing her father's sometimes erratic behaviour after her mother dies. Dealing with his oddities and caring for her small brother Tug seems not much stranger than her friend Marcus's obsession with Hollywood movies. But finally, even for her, it is all just a bit too much. This is a beautifully told story that is long on affection and short on preaching.

    Return to Ribblestrop, by Andy Mulligan (Simon & Schuster, £6.99). 10+
    Ribblestrop, boarding school extraordinaire, opens for a new term. Ribblestrop is renowned for its endearingly chaotic buildings, unusual headteacher, eccentric teachers and, most particularly, its extraordinary pupils, such as Millie and Sanchez. When they are reunited, along with some circus animals and a suitably unusual school chaplain, many hilarious and wildly improbable capers follow. All reflect the Ribblestrop ethos: it is a school full of warmth, generosity, kindness of spirit and the love of learning – of a kind . . .

    My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece, by Annabel Pitcher (Orion, £9.99). 10+
    Heartbreaking and funny in equal measure, 10-year-old Jamie's direct and wide-eyed account of the emotional chaos he and his family live through following the death of his sister in a terrorist attack is poignant and warm-hearted. Beginning a new life in the Lake District with his older sister and his father, who mourns his daughter through alcohol and a wild rage against her killers, Jamie knows he should feel sadder than he does. The truth is, he can hardly remember his sister; and what is happening with his new school and new friends, especially Sunya, is more urgent – as is his yearning for his absent mother. Emotionally charged, this is a wonderfully touching story which never slips into worthiness.

    Mr Gum and the Secret Hideout, by Andy Stanton, illustrated by David Tazzyman (Egmont, £5.99). 7+
    The revolting Mr Gum (pictured) – who hates Christmas, pop music, animals, comics and children – has terrorised Lamonic Bibber through several books already. Now he has gone missing, and the town is enveloped in a cloud of disgusting, filthy smoke. Are the two connected? Almost certainly. How Polly and Friday set about investigating the unusual happenings that always seem to surround Mr Gum is a corkscrew of hilarious impossibility.

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    • freyaodell

      4 June 2011 12:53PM

      Hiya
      Just wondering what the time frame is? E.g. when will the short list be announced and when will the winners be announced? Quite fancy shadowing this award with my students.

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  • 07/26/11--17:37: Man Booker Prize 2011 longlist announced: Man Booker Prize news (chan 2105780)

    • Four first time novelists selected

    26 July 2011

    The longlist for the 2011 Man Booker Prize for Fiction - the ‘Man Booker Dozen' - is announced today, Tuesday 26 July. The 13 books on the list include: one former Man Booker Prize winner; two previously shortlisted writers and one longlisted author; four first time novelists and three Canadian writers. The list also includes three new publishers to the prize - Oneworld, Sandstone Press and Seren Books.

    The titles were chosen by a panel of five judges chaired by author and former Director-General of MI5, Dame Stella Rimington.

    A total of 138 books, seven of which were called in by the judges, were considered for the ‘Man Booker Dozen' longlist. They are:

    Julian Barnes The Sense of an Ending (Jonathan Cape - Random House)
    Sebastian Barry On Canaan's Side (Faber)
    Carol Birch Jamrach's Menagerie (Canongate Books)
    Patrick deWitt The Sisters Brothers (Granta)
    Esi Edugyan Half Blood Blues (Serpent's Tail - Profile)
    Yvvette Edwards A Cupboard Full of Coats (Oneworld)
    Alan Hollinghurst The Stranger's Child (Picador - Pan Macmillan)
    Stephen Kelman Pigeon English (Bloomsbury)
    Patrick McGuinness The Last Hundred Days (Seren Books)
    A.D. Miller Snowdrops (Atlantic)
    Alison Pick Far to Go (Headline Review)
    Jane Rogers The Testament of Jessie Lamb (Sandstone Press)
    D.J. Taylor Derby Day (Chatto & Windus - Random House)

    The chair of judges, Dame Stella Rimington, comments:

    'We are delighted by the quality and breadth of our longlist, which emerged from an impassioned discussion. The list ranges from the Wild West to multi-ethnic London via post-Cold War Moscow and Bucharest, and includes four first novels.'

    The four first time novelists on the list are Stephen Kelman, A.D. Miller, Yvvette Edwards and Patrick McGuinness. Canadian author Alison Pick, like McGuinness, is a published poet and is joined by fellow Canadians, Patrick deWitt and Esi Edugyan, on the longlist.

    The list includes one former winner, Alan Hollinghurst, who won the prize in 2004 for The Line of Beauty. He was also shortlisted in 1994 for The Folding Star. Two previously shortlisted authors also make the list: Irish writer Sebastian Barry (The Secret Scripture, 2008 and A Long Long Way, 2005) and Julian Barnes (Arthur and George, 2005, England, England, 1998 and Flaubert's Parrot, 1984). Carol Birch was longlisted in 2003 for Turn Again Home.

    The shortlist of six authors will be announced on Tuesday 6 September at a press conference at Man Group's London headquarters. The winner of the 2011 Man Booker Prize for Fiction will be announced on Tuesday 18 October at a dinner at London's Guildhall and will be broadcast on the BBC.

    The winner will receive £50,000 and each of the six shortlisted authors, including the winner, will receive £2,500 and a designer bound edition of their book.

    The judges for the 2011 Prize are writer and journalist, Matthew d'Ancona; author, Susan Hill; author and politician, Chris Mullin and Head of Books at the Daily Telegraph, Gaby Wood. Dame Stella Rimington is the Chair. 

    via themanbookerprize.com

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  • 08/09/11--03:40: Summer readings: My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell | Books | guardian.co.uk (chan 2105780)

    • Summer readings: My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell

    A family holiday on the Greek island of Paxos was the perfect setting for my first encounter with hermit crabs and a classic tale

    Corfu
    Naturally inspiring ... Corfu, where Gerald Durrell's My Family and Other Animals is set. Photograph: Robert Harding Picture Library L/Alamy

    I am not sure quite why I have such an affection for My Family and Other Animals: my brother referred to me as Margo for quite some time, not because of my effortless ability to attract various languid Greek youths, but because I was a bit spotty, and so was she: "swollen up like a plate of scarlet porridge", as Larry puts it. How unfair.

    1. My Family and Other Animals (Penguin Essentials)
    2. by Gerald Durrell
    4. Buy it from the Guardian bookshop
    1. Tell us what you think: Star-rate and review this book

    But love it I do, perhaps because events conspired to get me to read it for the first time in the most perfect setting: a family holiday on the Greek island of Paxos one summer. As Gerry discovered hermit crabs and sea cucumbers, dung beetles and lizards, so did I. As he swam in the clear blue waters, wandered through the olive groves, gorged on figs, learned about cypress trees, which if you sleep under "you wake up ... mad, head as empty as a whistle", so did I. I longed for a round-bottomed boat like the Bootle-bumtrinket (could there be a more gloriously named craft?), for a Roger-esque faithful companion to adventure with.

    Yani the shepherd's tale of a man stung in the ear by a tiny scorpion, whose head "had swollen up as though his brains were pregnant" before he died in terrible pain, also put the fear of god into me when it came to scorpions – I can remember sleeping curled into a ball in my bed, terrified that one might scuttle by and be tempted to bite any limb protruding over the mattress. I survived, though, and at home again in England, I was (briefly) inspired to become a collector, like Gerry and Theodore, although my bits of broken bird egg and stag beetles were, in retrospect, rather pathetic when compared to their trapdoor spiders, pet owls and pigeons.

    When I was young, I loved My Family and Other Animals for its minutely detailed descriptions of animals and insects. Now, it's the human portraits which I adore – the wonderful Spiro, "a short, barrel-bodied individual, with ham-like hands and a great, leathery, scowling face surmounted by a jauntily-tilted peaked cap", the magical Rose-Beetle man, the myriad bonkers bit-players. Here's just a taster, from one of Margo's beaus (not too spotty to have beaus, then, huh, little brother?). "'I have no fear,' said the Turk modestly. 'I am a superb swimmer, so I have no fear. When I ride the horse, I have no fear, for I ride superbly. I can sail the boat magnificently in the typhoon without fear.' He sipped his tea delicately, regarding our awestruck faces with approval. 'You see,' he went on, in case we had missed the point, 'you see, I am not a fearful man.'" Impeccable comic timing.

    Rereading the novel this summer, in Greece again for a friend's wedding, I notice a slight tendency to overwrite (Durrell refers to tortoises as "the shelled owners of the hills"). But it still caused me to snort with laughter on several occasions, and to wonder what on earth the Durrell family made of its publication, particularly Lawrence, who comes across as a pompous prat. "'What an entry,'" he says bitterly, as they arrive as chaotically as ever in Corfu. "'I had hoped to give an impression of gracious majesty, and this is what happens ... we arrive in town like a troupe of medieval tumblers.'"

    But a quick Google tells me he didn't mind too much: "This is a very wicked, very funny, and I'm afraid rather truthful book – the best argument I know for keeping 13-year-olds at boarding schools and not letting them hang about the house listening in to conversations of their elders and betters," he said, according to a Gerald Durrell biography.

    It is also a heart-warmingly affectionate portrait of Corfu and its inhabitants and, for me at least, utterly evocative of sun-soaked summer holidays.

    via guardian.co.uk

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  • 08/22/11--02:50: Annabel Pitcher: 'Nobody wants to write about a perfect family' | Children's books | guardian.co.uk (chan 2105780)

    • The first agent Annabel Pitcher approached with her debut novel, My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece, may well be kicking herself now. "Commercially disastrous" was her crisp rejection of the novel that went on to be the subject of an auction war between publishers in both the UK and the US, a crossover sales success and is in the running for the Guardian children's fiction prize, among other awards.

    1. My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece
    2. by Annabel Pitcher

    3.
    4. Buy it from the Guardian bookshop
    1. Tell us what you think: Star-rate and review this book

    "That was the first time that I thought, 'Have I just spent a year of my life writing a book that no one is going to touch with a bargepole?'," admits Pitcher with a wry grimace.

    In fairness, a synopsis of the book may not sound too promising. The story is told by ginger-haired Jamie, a 10-year-old boy who lost his sister five years previously in a July 7-style terrorist attack. His mother has disappeared off the scene with a member of her bombing survivor's support group, his father has become an alcoholic and his 15-year-old sister – who survived her twin's death – is flirting with anorexia. Oh, and Jamie is bullied at his new school and risks losing the only friend he makes, a Muslim girl, after a racist outburst from his father who hates everything to do with Islam since the bombing.

    Fortunately, the second agent Pitcher approached recognised the humour, sensitivity and warmth in the beautifully written story and snapped it up. The book has gone on to sell more than 20,000 copies in hardback, and the money negotiated from the bidding war has allowed Pitcher to dedicate herself full-time to writing its follow-up.

    She can hardly believe her luck, especially given what she calls the "randomness" of the inspiration for the book, which came out of the blue while she was on a year off from being an English teacher, travelling the world with her husband, as she explains over tea in a London hotel.

    "I got this incredible idea one night in a youth hostel in Ecuador..." she begins in her soft Yorkshire accent. "Loads of things happened that made me think it was destiny that I should write it. We flew to Ecuador and our plane was delayed and so all the restaurants were closed, which meant that we ended up getting some food and taking it back to the youth hostel and eating it in front of the television and the only English film was United 93, about the September 11th attacks, and then because I was jetlagged I couldn't sleep and I had the idea for the book – and so it was this series of fortunate events."

    It all fell into place within two minutes, says Pitcher. "How weird it is to lose someone personal to you in such a public way – that's what really interested me. I saw Jamie, I saw him in his Spiderman T-shirt and I saw his ginger hair, and I saw that he had lost his sister and the urn on the mantelpiece and I thought wouldn't it be even more interesting if he couldn't care less about her because then it stops it from being sentimental."

    Tying her hiking socks round her husband's head as a blindfold when the light in the hostel room she was writing by disturbed his sleep, she worked until the small hours on the first chapter and then continued to write the novel in little notebooks while travelling – "I could just pick it up in Brazil on a bus or in Cambodia" – and it was completed, ready for her to type up, on their return to England.

    "It was the most blissful 12 months of my life – I was 25, 26, I had just got married, I wasn't working and was writing a book I wanted to write and also seeing all these incredible things," she says.

    Which might all sound annoyingly smug coming out of some young authors' mouths but Pitcher is so likeable, such gigglingly fun company and has produced such a good book, as well as being genuinely grateful for the way things have worked out for her, that any response other than to cheer her on would be churlish in the extreme.

    Despite the themes of the book, Pitcher says "I've never seen it as an issues book, ever" and it is certainly anything but worthy. The warmth and directness of Jamie's voice and the (frequently very dark) humour throughout lifts the book right out of that territory. The very first lines of the first chapter give a pretty good indication of the tone: "My sister Rose lives on the mantelpiece. Well, some of her does. Three of her fingers, her right elbow and her kneecap are buried in a graveyard in London."

    "For me it's a story about a boy coming to terms with grief. It's about him learning what his dad's going through. It's about hope and courage, not a book about terrorism or racism," says Pitcher.

    It is also heartbreaking. There is a scene involving the death of Jamie's beloved cat Roger, when he comes to understand the overwhelming grief his father lives with, which should not be read without a box of tissues to hand, while Jamie's conviction that his mother will return, and his belief that a TV talent contest is the way to win her back, is equally honestly and searingly written.

    "Nobody wants to write about a perfect family that's perfectly happy," argues Pitcher, but Jamie's childhood sounds a long way from her own upbringing in the small Pennine village of Holmfirth. She is the second oldest of four within a close, very stable family. Her parents fell in love with each other at the age of 12 and have been together ever since. Pitcher has recently moved back to live in the village with her own husband, whom she met when they were both students at Oxford. It was a childhood of freedom and imagination, filled with books and poetry courtesy of her English teacher mother, and games of make-believe drawing on her own love of "putting on plays and dressing up and looking for Narnia in my cupboard".

    "I solved a lot of crime at 10," says Pitcher, mock-seriously. "I loved mysteries and the Famous Five and so I had a detective club in my shed with all the neighbours' kids and a password and lemonade. I used to scour the local paper for burglaries and then go round to the burgled person's house in the village and try to do evidence-gathering interviews with them."

    "I was a bit of a Peter Pan, I didn't really want to grow up, I wanted to be 10 years old forever," she admits.

    There is still something a little Peter Pan-ish about the slight figure of Pitcher, with her confession that she was still reading Enid Blyton's Malory Towers as a teenager and Harry Potter when she should have been studying Dickens at university.

    Yet the pressure is now on. Pitcher has just finished her second novel, which is for a slightly older readership and is written in the form of a letter to a woman on death row ("cheery!") and she acknowledges second-novel nerves after the huge, unexpected success of her first.

    "It's brilliant and terrifying in equal measure," says Pitcher. "When I wrote Mantelpiece I was pretty fearless because I didn't really expect anyone except my mum to read it. But I wouldn't want to be in any other kind of situation. I love that it started with a big bang and if I crash and burn I crash and burn, that's just the way it is."

    via guardian.co.uk

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  • 08/22/11--02:57: Inside the mad modelling mind of Tyra Banks - Telegraph (chan 2105780)

    • Columnist

    Inside the mad modelling mind of Tyra Banks

    A fight to the death to become a top model? Not the new series of ANTM but the plot from Tyra Banks' bonkers fantasy novel 'Modelland'.

    BY Belinda White | 15 August 2011

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    Supermodel Tyra Banks, who rose to fame in the early nineties after becoming the first African American woman to cover GQ and the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue , is more famous these days for her television role as the creator and host of America's Next Top Model - now in its 17th series.

    With a CV like that, who could be better placed to pen a novel set against the backdrop of bitch fighting and backstabbing that is the model industry?

    In pictures: Fashion's multi-taskers

    But anyone expecting Tyra, 37, to write a warts and all exposé of the pressures on young models, or the raw truth behind the fashion business, better think again. 'Modelland' is not so much an auto-biography as the stuff of a mad man's dreams.

    The 576 page 'tome' charts the story of Tookie De La Crème, an aspiring model with 'untamable hair, a large forehead, and a gawky body' who dreams of making it to 'Modelland-the exclusive, mysterious place on top of the mountain' where 'only seven extraordinary young women become Intoxibellas'.

    Still with me? Okay, so Tookie has to go to some kind of intense model boot camp (which makes Next Top Model assignments look like a snooze) where, according to the extracted chapter now previewing on US bookstore Barnes & Noble's website, girls literally fight to the death to make it to the top.

    Her competition? The exotically named Myrracle, Desperada, Zarpessa Zarionneaux, and Theophilus Lovelaces.

    You can soak up a taste of the insanity below, and if that doesn't put you off, you can pre-order Modelland so you can get your hands on a copy just in time for the new series of America's Next Top Model to hit screens. Enjoy...

    There was one rule and one rule only: a girl must be walking in order to be chosen.

    Other than that, there was no prearranged runway on which the girls could walk, so everyone created invisible ones wherever they were standing. Violence was not encouraged nor was it condemned, and some girls' parents insisted on adding martial arts training to their walking lessons in preparation for the big day. T-DOD Square was an every- man- for- himself or, more precisely, an every- girl- for- herself event.

    Scores of girls marched down their own stretches of the square, paused, posed for the cameras (real and imaginary), and then turned around. Trains of walking girls intersected with others. One area behind Tookie was so crammed with street vendors, it bottlenecked into a slow, shuffling line. Some walkers had only enough space to take a few steps before they had to stop and turn. Tookie's heart went out to a young girl in a ruffled pink dress who seemed way below the unofficial thirteen- year-old age requirement. She marched in place as if she were on a drill team.

    Riiiip. A girl stepped on the train of a walker a few feet from Tookie and tore the fabric right off the dress. Both girls fell forward into a heap. The walkers behind them stepped over their bodies and continued.

    Crash. The De La Crème white and cream blow-up tent went down as two brawling girls entered it. Oof. A girl who looked as if she had never walked in heels before stumbled, breaking the tips of both stilettos. Two girls got into a fight at the end of their makeshift catwalk, rolling to the ground. "Kenya, use the Gyaku Zuki move!" her mother screamed. "Reverse- punch the hairy hag! But watch your hair, sweetie!"

    Tookie wheeled around. The hairy hag was Abigail Goode, sideburns in full glory, faint mustache above her upper lip, unshaven leg hair coating her calves, underarm hair swaying in the wind, and a DOWN WITH RAZORS! picket sign still in her hands. The girl she was fighting with tried out a karate move on her, but Abigail expertly evaded her blow...

    Read more at barnesandnoble.com

    Here's an Excerpt From Tyra Banks's New Book Modelland - The Cut

    via fashion.telegraph.co.uk

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  • 08/22/11--04:18: Winners 2011 - CBCA (chan 2105780)

    • Book of the Year 2011 Winners

    The winner and honour books in each of the categories are decided at the Judges' Conferences after extensive discussion and by secret ballot by the Judges.

    Categories:

    Older Readers Younger Readers Early Childhood Picture Books Eve Pownall

    These awards are funded by generous donations to the CBCA Awards Foundation, especially the Benefactors and Major Donors.

    Printer-friendly copy in PDF format: CBCA Winners 2011 | The 2011 Short Lists
     

    Older Readers Book of the Year 2011

    NOTE: These books may be for mature readers
      Author Title Publisher
    WINNER Hartnett, Sonya The Midnight Zoo Viking Books, Penguin Group (Australia)
    HONOUR Crowley, Cath Graffiti Moon Pan Macmillan Australia
    HONOUR MacLeod, Doug The Life of a Teenage Body-Snatcher Penguin Books, Penguin Group (Australia)

    Younger Readers Book of the Year 2011

    NOTE: These books are intended for independent younger readers
      Author Title Publisher
    WINNER Carmody, Isobelle The Red Wind Viking Books, Penguin Group (Australia)
    HONOUR Bauer, Michael Gerard Just a Dog Omnibus Books, Scholastic Australia
    HONOUR

    Branford, Anna 
    Illus: Davis, Sarah

    		 Violet Mackerel's Brilliant Plot Walker Books

    Early Childhood Book of the Year 2011

    NOTE: Intended for children in the pre-reading to early reading stages
      Author Title Publisher
    WINNER Ormerod, Jan
    Illus: Blackwood, Freya    		 Maudie and Bear Little Hare Books
    HONOUR Champion, Tom Niland & Niland, Kilmeny
    Illus: Niland, Deborah    		 The Tall Man and the Twelve Babies Allen & Unwin
    HONOUR Norrington, Leonie
    Illus: Huxley, Dee    		 Look See, Look at Me Allen & Unwin

    Picture Book of the Year 2011

    NOTE: Intended for an audience ranging from birth to 18 years. Some books may be for mature readers
      Author Title Publisher
    JOINT
    WINNER    		  Baker, Jeannie Mirror Walker Books
    JOINT WINNER Greenberg, Nicki Hamlet Allen & Unwin
    HONOUR Bancroft, Bronwyn Why I Love Australia
    		 Little Hare Books
    HONOUR Riddle, Tohby My Uncle's Donkey
    		 Viking Books, Penguin Group (Australia)

    Eve Pownall Book of the Year 2011

    NOTE: Intended for an audience ranging from birth to 18 years. Some books may be for mature readers
      Author Title Publisher
    WINNER Ursula Dubosarsky
    Illus: Riddle, Tohby    		 The Return of the Word Spy
    		 Viking Books, Penguin Group (Australia)
    HONOUR Brooks, Ron Drawn From the Heart: A Memoir
    		 Allen & Unwin
    HONOUR One Arm Point Remote Community School Our World: Bardi Jaawi: Life at Ardiyooloon
    		 Magabala Books

     

    via cbca.org.au

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