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It’s been quite a week for Australian literary award shortlists (and a pair of longlists). We share them with you here – along with a reminder about the inaugural Stella Prize, with the winner announced next week.
If you’re looking for something to read next, here’s a selection that might whet your literary appetite,
The prize goes to the best first novel published in 2012, with one overall winner and a winner from each of five regions (Africa, Asia, Canada and Europe, Caribbean, and the Pacific).
The Australian shortlisted authors are:
Floundering by Romy Ash (Text)
Mazin Grace by Dylan Coleman (UQP)
A Tiger in Eden by Chris Flynn (Text)
The Last Thread by Michael Sala (Affirm)
Beneath the Darkening Sky by Majok Tulba (Penguin)
CBCA Awards
The shortlists for the Children’s Book Council of Australia Awards were announced this week, too. Here are a few of the shortlists. Visit their website for full details.
Award for Older Readers
The Ink Bridge by Neil Grant (Allen & Unwin)
Sea Hearts by Margo Lanagan (Allen & Unwin)
The Shiny Guys by Doug MacLeod (Penguin)
Creepy & Maud by Dianne Touchell (Fremantle Press)
Friday Brown by Vikki Wakefield (Text)
The Wrong Boy by Suzy Zail (Black Dog Books)
Award for Younger Readers
Pennies for Hitler by Jackie French (Angus & Robertson)
Other Brother by Simon French (Walker Books)
After by Morris Gleitzman (Viking)
Children of the King by Sonya Hartnett (Viking)
Pookie Aleera is Not My Boyfriend by Steven Herrick (UQP)
The Tender Moments of Saffron Silk by Glenda Millard (Stephen Michael King)
Award for Picture Books
The Coat by Ron Brooks, illus by Julie Hunt (Allen & Unwin)
Tanglewood by Vivienne Goodman, illus by Margaret Wild (Omnibus)
Herman and Rosie (Gus Gordon (Viking)
Sophie Scott Goes South (Alison Lester (Viking)
Lightning Jack by Patricia Mullins, illus by Glenda Millard (Scholastic)
A Day to Remember by Mark Wilson, illus by Jackie French (Angus & Robertson)
The Kibble Literary Award recognises the work of an established Australian woman writer.
The Dobbie Literary Award recognises a first published work from an Australian woman writer.
Kibble Literary Award
Questions of Travel by Michelle de Kretser (Allen & Unwin)
The Beloved by Annah Faulkner (Pan Macmillan Australia)
The Engagement by Chloe Hooper (Penguin Group Australia)
My Hundred Lovers by Susan Johnson (Allen & Unwin)
Like A House On Fire by Cate Kennedy (Scribe)
The Mind of a Thief by Patti Miller (University of Queensland Press)
An Opening: Twelve love stories about art by Stephanie Radok (Wakefield Press)
Mateship with Birds by Carrie Tiffany (Picador)
Dobbie Literary Award
Floundering by Romy Ash (Text)
Darkness on the Edge of Town by Jessie Cole (HarperCollins Publishers)
The Burial by Courtney Collins (Allen & Unwin)
Toyo: A Memoir by Lily Chan (Black Inc.)
Finding Jasper by Lynne Leonhardt (Margaret River Press)
Red Dirt Talking by Jacqueline Wright (Fremantle Press)
The Stella Prize
The Stella Prize winner will be announced next week, on Tuesday 16 April.
The shortlist is:
The Burial by Courtney Collins (Allen & Unwin)
Questions of Travel by Michelle de Kretser (Allen & Unwin)
The Sunlit Zone by Lisa Jacobson (Five Islands Press)
Like a House on Fire by Cate Kennedy (Scribe)
Sea Hearts by Margo Lanagan (Allen & Unwin)
Mateship with Birds by Carrie Tiffany (Picador)
We’ll be hosting a post-prize-announcement panel event on Thursday 18 April, at the Wheeler Centre. (With chair Aviva Tuffield, chair of judges Kerryn Goldsworthy, founding patron Ellen Koshland and the first-ever winner. Chaired by Sian Prior.)
Last Sunday, we held our annual Children’s Book Festival (in partnership with the State Library of Victoria). From 10am until 4pm, the State Library Lawns, our Performance Space, Little Lonsdale Street and various venues inside the library were overtaken by an extremely busy programme of events and activities.
More than 15,000 kids (and their adults) joined us for the day – a record turnout! We slept well that evening.
Amongst the throng, you may have noticed a gentleman quietly observing, his wrist whipping across the pages of his sketch pad. That man was, of course, Oslo Davis – our artist in residence for the day.
Today, we’re pleased to share with you Oslo’s illustrations from the Festival. Were you there? Is one of those people you?
What were your favourite childhood reads? The books that formed and nurtured your childhood imagination?
In honour of the Children’s Book Festival this weekend, Wheeler Centre staff have shared their favourite books from childhood.
There are some you’ll recognise – Enid Blyton, Harry the Dirty Dog – and other more hidden gems that might send you on a journey of discovery, or make you reflect on your own forgotten favourites.
From Harry the Dirty Dog.
Donica Bettanin, programming coordinator
As picture books go, Harry the Dirty Dog is simply perfect. Harry is a scrap of a dog who hates baths (what kid wouldn’t identify with that?) When he buries his scrubbing brush and runs away for a day of messy adventures he goes from being a white dog with black spots, to a black dog with white spots. He arrives home to find that his own family don’t recognise him, oh no! I can still recall my relief – every single time – at the moment when they finally realise that the black dog with white spots is in fact a very dirty Harry.
To be completely honest though, the one book I ‘read’ more than any other was the Australian Women’s Weekly Children’s Birthday Cake Book. Year-round. No birthday necessary. Just, you know, research. How I would pore over it, imagining the thrill of cutting into the swimming pool cake filled with green jelly or of blowing out the candles on the Sweet Shop. Every home should have a copy!
Jenny Niven, associate director
Predictably I had hundreds of favourite books as a child but I think my absolute favourite was Emerald Enjoyed the Moonlight. It was about a lonely old lady who watched so much television her eyes were all funny (it was written in the early sixties I think).
She was quite sad. Her only companion was her cat, Emerald, who one evening was so bored with the television he went out into the woods and disappeared. Mrs Brocklethwaite, the old lady, became very concerned and eventually went out into the woods to find him. It was dark and she was unfamiliar with the woods, so she got extremely battered and scraped and I remember specifically that her tights got torn (she couldn’t see properly, because of the TV-watching, remember) and she was just about to give up hope … when finally, she entered a clearing and found Emerald sitting very peacefully by the side of a lake, quietly watching the moonlight.
To be honest, I’m really not sure why I loved it so much. The illustrations were definitely very of their time which appealed to me (the moon was a big psychedelic light globe), but I think I also just responded really well to the emotion in the book – it showed me that books could be sad and moving and you could feel genuine empathy for the characters again and again every time you read it. And Emerald and Mrs Brocklethwaite were just so peaceful at the end of the story, by the light of the moon! But who knows, I was only about five.
Shannon Hick, marketing coordinator
Looking back on it now most of my favourite books as a kid involved some kind of subversive or deviant behaviour. Whether it be the adventures of Enid Blyton’s Naughty Amelia Jane – the handmade toy that didn’t quite fit in and had a pyromania habit – or Madeline, the naughty little upstart at boarding school who gets appendicitis, needs an operation and everyone ends up being her BFF. (I always wanted an operation when I was a growing up too).
A few that stand out for me that were read to death in my house are Amelia Bedelia by Peggy Parish and Harry the Dirty Dog by Gene Zion. In Amelia Bedelia, Amelia is a maid who takes her chore list a little too literally but is redeemed by her pie-making skills. To this day I’m convinced she was very cleverly avoiding her life of domestic servitude in favour of doing something she was passionate about. Harry the Dirty Dog is about a dog called Harry who hated bath time so much he buried his scrubbing brush, ran away and got very dirty. I just adore the illustrations in this book by Margaret Bloy Graham. All I want to do now is rush out and buy these again to read to all the little people in my life!
Jo Case, senior writer/editor
My parents were both English teachers, so our house was full of books. My favourite picture book as a kid was probably Susanna Gretz’s The Bears Who Stayed Indoors, about a 1970s sharehouse of mismatched bears who stay inside on a rainy day and make a cardboard rocket to travel to the moon, eat piles of pancakes, swim in the bathtub and have other similarly cosy adventures. I read it so often that it fell apart and Mum had to buy me another. She laminated the old pages and stuck them to the walls of my bedroom. I also adored The Tiger Who Came to Tea, about what happens when a tiger knocks on the door of a proper English household and politely asks for tea – then eats and drinks everything in the household (even draining the taps).
And I still love the first novel I ever read, Frances Hodgson-Burnett’s The Secret Garden, about contrary orphan Mary, bedridden grouch Colin, kindly boy-gardener Dicken and the garden they bring to life. It’s closely followed in my affections by Noel Streatfield’s Ballet Shoes, about an explorer who collects objects for museums on his travels – including three orphan babies, who grow up to be ballerina Posy, actress Pauline and tomboy Petrova. In his absence, the children are brought up by his housekeeper, and attend a theatre and dance school, where they supplement their meagre allowance by the money they earn from performing. I guess I’m drawn to orphan stories?
Vikki Woods, events coordinator
Growing up, I was obsessed with books from a really young age, but the books that I remember first capturing my imagination were any and all by Enid Blyton. When I was really young, with all the innocence of childhood, I called my first cat Bimbo, after Blyton’s Bimbo and Topsy, ensuring years of fun for the whole family every time the cat wandered away.
From there I discovered the folks of The Magic Faraway Tree. How I longed to go on adventures with Moon-Face and Silky, and the rest of the gang and and feast on tins of pop cakes and have crazy adventures in whatever land the tree was in! I climbed on to the Wishing Chair and flew wherever it took me, I solved mysteries with The Famous Five and the Secret Seven, and secretly rejoiced with the misbehaviour of the Naughtiest Girl.
Thankfully, books have never lost that power for me, I can still open the pages of a book and be instantly whisked away to a whole new world!
Gemma Rayner, series producer
In early childhood, I was struck by two rather world-weary stories, Jenny Wagner’s John Brown, Rose and the Midnight Cat, and Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree. Very different books, but both quietly powerful in their evocation of loneliness, friendship, the passage of time, and the give and take of love.
I also loved the two wordless picture books, Sunshine and Moonlight by Jan Ormerod, which depicted in gorgeous and often funny illustrations the first, and last, few hours of a typical day in family life. I liked to be spooked by the Berenstain’s Bears in the Night (‘Whoooo!’), and also Mary Rayner’s dark tale of ten piglets and their hairy-legged babysitter Mrs Wolf, in Mr & Mrs Pig’s Evening Out.
Robert Munsch’s The Paperbag Princess in which Princess Elizabeth rescues the awful Prince Ronald from the dragon’s lair, was perfect fodder for the budding feminist, and Maurice Sendak’s weird and wonderful In the Night Kitchen never failed to capture my imagination (the nudity was of course quite a drawcard).
From The Paperbag Princess.
Enid Blyton’s Faraway Tree books and Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows were on high rotation at bedtime. I have just read Wind in the Willows to my own small tribe, and am amazed that, despite the somewhat antiquated language and often lengthy descriptive passages (such a different pace to the books of today), it still packs a punch a century on. Nothing beats the world of Ratty, Mole, Badger and Toadie as fuel for the imagination when roaming outdoors. Ah, to be a child again!
Oren Gerassi, technical coordinator
One of my favourite childhood books is The Soul Bird by Michal Snunit. I loved it it because it gave me a lesson about the nature of emotions. When I think about it, I can hear my mother reading it to me in her soft voice:
‘Deep down, inside our bodies, lives the soul. No one has ever seen it, but we all know it’s there. There is a 'soul bird’ who lives inside us all This special bird opens and closes the drawers of our soul, in which we keep all our feelings. There are drawers for our innermost secrets, but also places where we hide away our happiness, anger, joy, jealousy and sorrows. The soul bird has the keys to these drawers, and can open them when we ask. But sometimes the soul bird seems to disobey our wishes, and tolerance turns to fear, or calm turns to anger. Perhaps we don’t listen to our soul bird often enough. Indeed, some of us only hear it once in a lifetime. We should try, maybe late at night, or at another time of peace and quiet, to hear the voice of the soul bird, and listen to what it is telling us.'
Katherine Lynch, executive assistant
There are so many wonderful books to choose from but one which stands out from my childhood is The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling (the original as opposed to the Disney version). I was a ‘bookworm’ from a young age and vividly remember my mother reading this in the evenings before bedtime with my brother and I snuggled up on either side of her in our pyjamas. We were enthralled by the adventures of Mowgli, the wolves who raised him along with their cubs, Bagheera the panther, Shere Khan the tiger, Baloo the Sloth bear, Hathi the elephant, Rikki-Tikki-Tavi the mongoose, the cheeky tribe of monkeys and of course the python Kaa.
Lucy De Kretser, project coordinator
A book that stands out from my childhood is The Whales' Song by Dyan Sheldon, illustrated by Gary Blythe. My Mum bought it for my sister, because the little girl in it looked just like her at the time, but I fancied the book as mine. It is a beautiful story about a grandma passing on secrets about the ocean, mesmerising her granddaughter, Lily, with stories about whales singing. Lily listens for the whales, and watches the ocean, and is eventually rewarded. My favourite page when I was little was this one:
I wanted that shell so badly!!!
But as an adult my favourite is this one:
I have a slightly spiritual, besotted love for whales to this day.
The Children’s Book Festival takes over the State Library Lawns this Sunday 24 March, for a free day of bookish fun. There will be fire trucks, face-painting … and of course, your favourite kids' authors.
Full programme details available online.
For the chance to win fabulous bookish prizes, encourage your child to come dressed as their favourite character. The best of the day will take part in a costume parade onstage at 12.40pm.
We share some of our favourite links and articles found on the internet this week.
Mitt Romney versus Big Bird versus Obama
The US presidential campaign has taken another bizarre pop culture twist in the past week. First, there was Clint Eastwood and the chair. Now, Sesame Street’s Big Bird has reluctantly taken the stage. In the first presidential debate (which Obama thoroughly lost), Mitt Romney stated that he would cut subsidies to PBS. ‘I love Big Bird,’ Romney said. ‘But I’m not going to keep on spending money on things to borrow money from China to pay for.’
The Obama campaign responded with a funny (though dubiously useful) ad that jumped on the Big Bird statement. ‘Big. Yellow. A menace to our economy. Mitt Romney knows it’s not Wall Street you have to worry about, it’s Sesame Street.’
‘You have to scratch your head when the president spends the last week talking about saving Big Bird,’ Romney told an Iowa crowd this week. And most media commentators (including The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart) think he has a point. On his show last night, Stewart showed a clip of Will.i.am addressing a university crowd with Obama, grinning and playing the Sesame Street song. The Children’s Television Workshop, the makers of Sesame Street, have asked the Obama campaign to remove the ad.
The Atlantic has a slideshow of images created by the internet to mark this pop cultural moment.
Banned Book Trading Cards
It was Banned Book Week recently in the US, and to commemorate the occasion, Lawrence Public Library commissioned a set of seven Banned Book trading cards, with artwork submitted by local artists and facts about why the books were banned, and how they affected the artists' lives. The titles chosen included Charles Darwin’s On the Origins of Species (banned in Tennesee from 1925 to 1967) and George Orwell’s Animal Farm (banned in Soviet Russia for its political theories, banned in the US for its political theories, banned in the United Arab Emirates for imagery contradicting Islamic values).
The 1984 trading card
Why food is the new drugs, religion and sex
As western culture becomes ever more food-obsessed, elevating chefs like Jamie Oliver and critics like Matt Preston to the status of artists or rock stars, a discomfort with our culinary worship is starting to creep in for many. Steven Poole’s new book, You Aren’t What You Eat is a clever and often funny skewering (pun intended) of the cult of foodism. A lengthy and fascinating extract in the Guardian will give you a taste.
It should be obvious that a steak is not like a symphony, a pie not like a passaglia, foie gras not like a fugue; that the “composition” of a menu is not like the composition of a requiem; that the cook heating things in the kitchen and arranging them on a plate is not the artistic equal of Charlie Parker.
Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan bond over expensive food in The Trip
First world problems aren’t problems
If you’ve ever ironically tweeted or complained about ‘first world problems’ (and how many of us haven’t?), this ingenious ad campaign will make you feel a little ashamed and a lot lucky. Created by relief organisation Water For Life, this one-minute video feature Haitians standing in front of their houses, in ruins or among pigs and chickens, reading ‘complaints’ like ‘I hate it when my neighbors block their wifi’ and ‘I hate it when I tell them no pickles and they give me pickles’. Moving and thought-provoking.
The afterlife of books
In a beautiful and inspiring essay, Maria Tumarkin considers the afterlife of books – how they touch readers' lives and what they can mean for the individuals who connect with them. Some of the books she looks at are Helen Garner’s Joe Cinque’s Consolation, Chloe Hooper’s The Tall Man, Anthony Macris’s When Horse Became Saw and Maggie Mackellar’s When it Rains. She asks the question:
What books can sustain you, hold the pieces of you together, remind you of who you are and what matters to you, not ever lie to you no matter what?
Most people know that children’s author Dr Seuss used a pseudonym: his real name was Theodor Geisel. But did you know that his day job was in advertising?
In this week’s Friday High Five, we share five examples of Dr Seuss’s advertising work. If you took out the captions, it could easily be ripped from the pages of one of his iconic books.
We take a look at our five favourite links from around the internet this week.
Keep the night-light on: Terrifying French picture books
Some believe we should tread cautiously with our children’s books, being careful not to startle young minds. Others, such as the late Maurice Sendak, believe that children are naturally drawn to dark tales, and we shouldn’t coddle them with pastel sweetness. The French are certainly in the second camp, if their recent literature is anything to go by.
The ABC of Anger: Cover and inside illustration. Have you ever seen such an ominous-looking koala?
The Guardian has recently published ten terrifying children’s picture books from France, with topics including My First Nightmare, The Rabbits' Revenge, The ABC of Anger, and a book in which death visits a little girl and kills her. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll hide under the bed.
We Were Here: AIDS in San Francisco
Ben Law’s moving and insightful essay on Timothy Conigrave’s Holding the Man and AIDS in Australia has had an overwhelming reader response over the past week (with good reason). Many have commented on how his piece has made them want to discover (or revisit) Holding the Man. Others have expressed a desire to find out more about the early days of the AIDS epidemic and how it affected the individuals caught up in it.
A still from the documentary We Were Here
Last Sunday night, ABC2 aired a terrific documentary on AIDS in San Francisco in the early 1980s, during the days a diagnosis meant almost certain death. When We Were Here interviews five people who lived through that time, including a man who survived the deaths of two lovers and countless friends (and his own diagnosis) and a nurse who worked in the first AIDS ward. You can watch it on iView now.
$9.65 Big Macs: On location at the mining boom
Meanjin has just published a brilliant essay looking at Australia’s mining boom from the inside – and it’s fascinating, mind-boggling reading. Gillian Terzis channels Michael Lewis, as she travels to the Pilbara and visits the mining communities at the heart of the boom, where a three-bedroom house in the middle of nowhere rents for $1650 to $1900 a week, workers live in caravans in the driveways of houses with yachts in the front yard, the backpackers' accomodation is booked 12 months in advance, and a council street sweeper earns $91,000 plus per year.
Naturally, when you walk into Karratha McDonald’s and discover the cost of a single Big Mac is $9.65, you are forced to recalibrate your understanding of economic bubbles. The Big Mac index, invented by the Economist in 1986, is a light-hearted attempt to compare purchasing-power parity (what you can buy for your dollar) in different economies. My Victorian dollars did not take me very far out west.
A Big Mac in mining boom town Karratha costs $9.65; rents for a two or three bedroom house are $1650 to $1900 a week.
Farewell to Ray Bradbury
Iconic writer Ray Bradbury (best known for Farenheit 451) died this week, aged 91. Neil Gaiman, a fan and friend of the great writer, has written a lovely piece remembering him in the Guardian:
Some authors I read and loved as a boy disappointed me as I aged. Bradbury never did. His horror stories remained as chilling, his dark fantasies as darkly fantastic, his science fiction (he never cared about the science, only about the people, which was why the stories worked so well) as much of an exploration of the sense of wonder, as they had when I was a child.
Bradbury himself has a piece in the current New Yorker, a science fiction special, in which he writes about his own childhood inspiration, Edgar Rice Burroughs:
I memorized all of ‘John Carter’ and ‘Tarzan,’ and sat on my grandparents’ front lawn repeating the stories to anyone who would sit and listen. I would go out to that lawn on summer nights and reach up to the red light of Mars and say, ‘Take me home!’ I yearned to fly away and land there in the strange dusts that blew over dead-sea bottoms toward the ancient cities.
Short Fiction From Maile Meloy
Looking for some long weekend reading? Maile Meloy’s collection Both Ways is the Only Way I Want It was the pick of 2010 for many reviewers; her latest short story, ‘The Proxy Marriage’, is available for free on the New Yorker’s website. Here’s a taste:
But Monty made a mistake. He sat Bridey down in his parents’ living room, two days after the dance, and told her that he’d wanted three things out of high school: to be captain of the tennis team, to get into Berkeley, and to have a serious girlfriend. The first two had already happened, and Bridey would be perfect for the third. She reported the conversation to William, laughing. ‘He was so earnest,’ she said. ‘About his goals.’
Thanks to all who joined us yesterday for our big day out for small people, the Children’s Book Festival.
A crowd of 13,000 little literati populated the State Library lawns and Little Lonsdale Street, where would-be illustrators bent it like Banksy, decorating the bitumen with colourful chalk art.
Mum and crime writer Angela Savage was one of many bloggers to write up her experiences of the day, though she said it was ‘impossible to do justice to it all’. One of her highlights was author Sally Rippin, creator of Billie B. Brown. ‘Given some of the inane, poorly written fiction targeted at young girls, Billie B Brown is a breath of fresh air: well written stories with a feisty heroine at the centre who might well be my daughter’s peer,’ she said.
Mandi at That Book You Like stopped off at the 1001 Nights tent and said, ‘It never wears off really does it? The little flutter of joy when watching your kids really enjoy a story.’ Emily Gale enjoyed Gabrielle Wang’s draw-a-dragon workshop, but reported that ‘the rockstar of the day was Andy Griffiths. The Wheeler Centre was absolutely packed for his first talk and there was some argy-bargy over the good seats.’
Meanwhile, My Book Corner was impressed by Boori Monty Pryor. ‘His ability to involve everyone in the audience, to really engage and involve the children with his captivating story telling was a perfect start to a Sunday morning. Two boys in particular were in absolute fits of contagious giggles and hanging off his every word – now that’s what you call a Children’s Laureate!!’
774 ABC Melbourne’s Libbi Gore was there, too, broadcasting the action live from 10am to midday.
Thanks to all for making it a big day out to remember – and we’ll see you again next year.
Working with Words is a series where we talk to writers about their work – and other bookish things. This time, we talk to Andy Griffiths, Australia’s most popular children’s writer.
Andy is best known for the comic pulling power of books like the Just series and The Day My Bum Went Psycho. But while his books are seriously funny, he’s just plain serious about the business of writing.
What was the first piece of writing you had published?
Well, if you want to go right back to the start it was in 1975, when I was 14 years old. Pursuit magazine, a Victorian education department publication which was distributed to schools across the state, published my short story, ‘Lost in Time’.
It was about being at a cricket game at the MCG with my dad and then, while attempting to buy three packets of potato chips and two cans of cola, suddenly finding myself transported 100 centuries into the future. It contained many of the same hallmarks of my work today … a first-person narrator (ie. me!) a believable everyday setting, a bizarre occurrence, some fun and games and then my desperate attempt to put things right again – but only making it worse in the process. It also contains my hopeless attempts at descriptive prose, which were no better then than they are today. My wife still laughs about my attempt to describe a complex time machine: ‘a room full of electronic controls, levers and switches – there was just about everything an electronics enthusiast could wish for’.
Nevertheless, I was paid ten dollars for my story. When they sent the payment, I initially thought it was a fine for an overdue library book called Lost in Time. Ironically, many years later when I submitted a story to Pursuit as an adult it was rejected. It took me a number of years after this to recover the pure storytelling voice I possessed as a 14-year-old.
What’s the best part of your job?
Having the time and freedom to follow my imaginative ideas and hunches and over many days, weeks and months watching them slowly coalesce into coherent characters, situations and stories – there’s nothing more exciting, satisfying or mysterious and I never get sick of this process.
I love nothing better than sitting down with a blank piece of paper and playing with words and ideas, challenging myself to come up with something new. The knowledge that you have to write something that you know is going to be read eagerly by many children – and the strong desire not to let them down – can really get the creative juices flowing.
What’s the worst part of your job?
Sitting down with a blank piece of paper and playing with words and ideas and NOT being able to come up with something new – especially when an urgent deadline is looming. Mostly I avoid deadline panics by being fairly organised well ahead of time (I usually know what I’m going to publish at least a year or two in advance), but there’s always surprises and last-minute schedule changes. I find my creativity works best when there’s plenty of time to revise, rethink and backtrack if necessary – I have to be relaxed so I can enter the playful state of mind I need to be in to create an entertaining story. My audience is too critical, and too savvy to go out with anything less than the best I’m capable of.
Of course, once a book is published I can always see ways I could have improved it … that’s the other worst part of the job!
Pippa Grandison and Patrick Brammall in Just Macbeth!: ‘Children are capable of understanding a great deal if you don’t patronise or talk down to them.’
What’s been the most significant moment in your writing career so far?
There’s been a lot, but maybe the one that comes immediately to mind was the opening night performance of Just Macbeth! by the Bell Shakespeare company at the Melbourne Arts Centre in September 2008. My wife Jill and I worked on adapting Macbeth for young people for almost three years. We wanted to fully involve them in the action and immerse them in as much of the original language of Shakespeare’s original script as we could get away with. Oh yeah, and it had to be funny as well.
It was an insanely difficult project and we gave up on it many times. But Bell Shakespeare were persistent and we always ended up going back to it. By the time it got to opening night, we were pretty sure we had something that worked, but there was no way of knowing until it was performed for real in front of a full house. Fortunately it worked. I’ve never sweated so much in my life.
It was significant for many reasons, not the least being that children are capable of understanding a great deal if you don’t patronise or talk down to them.
What’s the best (or worst) advice about writing you’ve received?
I had a number of great and inspiring writing teachers, such as Carmel Bird. They all gave me useful pointers and lots of encouragement, but perhaps the most practical advice I received was from Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg. She advocated vast amounts of writing practice.
Writing is a muscle, and like any muscle it gets stronger with use. In her book, Goldberg advocates doing a number of hours of timed writing practice each day. In these practice sessions, you set a countdown timer for a particular time and then write as fast as possible in order to evade the inner censor/critic that lurks in all of us.
By following this method you start discovering who you are as a writer and what subject matter and style really turns you on. It helped me to stop imitating other writers and find a voice that was all my own.
What’s the most surprising thing you’ve ever read or heard about yourself?
At the height of the controversy over The Bad Book – a book of cautionary tales gone mad – a feature article in the Herald Sun accused me of coming up with the idea for the book with my accountant as a way of swindling children out of their hard-earned pocket-money. I had to laugh at that one. Despite the success stories, if there’s one field that you DON’T go into to make money, it’s children’s writing. If you have a sincere desire to tell stories and entertain children and you’re willing to do that whether anybody pays you or not, then maybe you have a chance.
The Bad Book: ‘The Herald Sun accused me of coming up with the idea for the book with my accountant as a way of swindling children out of their hard-earned pocket-money.’
If you weren’t making your living by writing, what do you think you’d be doing instead?
I strongly suspect I’d still be the secondary English teacher that I was when I began writing funny stories to inspire my Year Seven English class to get excited about reading and writing. Either that, or a stand-up comedian. I employ a lot of stand-up comedy in my talks to children and I often think of my stories as extended stand-up monologues.
There’s much debate on whether creative writing can be taught – what do you think?
I think the principles of good writing can be taught – there are proven methods to improve a piece of writing. And I’ve had a lot of success at getting kids – and adults – to tell entertaining stories based on the events of their own lives.
The question of whether somebody is naturally suited to being a good storyteller, however, is a little more open I think. There are plenty of good writers who, for all their strengths, are not so great at telling story – and plenty of good storytellers who are pretty average writers. But in the end, I believe you get better at most things with a sincere desire to improve and the discipline to learn, study and practise.
In April 2013 I’m planning to publish a book called Once Upon a Slime: 50 Fun Ways to Write Stories … Fast! It will be a book of resources for school teachers, creative writing students and children to have fun with writing and storytelling.
What’s your advice for someone wanting to write books for children?
In a nutshell, I’d recommend that you write the sort of books that you loved to read as a child. And when you think you’ve done it read it out aloud to a small group and see if you have their complete attention. And if you don’t, be prepared to go back to the drawing board/writing desk for as many times as it takes. Did I mention persistence? Oh yeah … persistence!
Do you buy your books online, in a physical bookshop, or both?
I’ll love bookshops and paper books until the day I die, but I must admit I’m enjoying e-books – especially for non-fiction. I prefer to buy them through Booki.sh, so that I’m still supporting an independent bookshop.
(NB: Of course, as the proud author of my first and recently published digital-only book, Andypedia: A Complete Guide to the Books, Stories and Characters of Andy Griffiths, I may be open to accusations of a conflict of interest on this subject. I stand accused.)
What’s the book that’s had the most significant impact on your life or work – and why?
The Catcher in the Rye. I never got over the surprise and delight of the idea of an unreliable narrator. And Holden Caulfield is one of the most funny, sad and complex of all unreliable narrators!
Andy Griffiths is one of the guests for our Children’s Book Festival, a big day out of free fun held on the lawns of the State Library of Victoria on Sunday 25 March. You can check out the full program here. Andy will be signing books at 1.40pm and 3.40pm.
Andy was one of the 12 guests for this year’s Wheeler Centre Gala, Stories to Believe In. You can watch his talk here. His next book, the much-awaited Just Doomed!, will be released in April.
Our article on the politics of pink and pastel Lego for girls provoked furious debate on our Twitter and Facebook accounts last week.
Writer, philosopher and dad Damon Young, one of those who spoke to the Wheeler Centre for last week’s article, shares his thoughts on why pink bricks and ponies may be dodgy, but can be subverted by savvy parents for imaginative free play.
I’ve been playing with Lego for over thirty years. First, as a kid, now as a dad. Over the decades, Lego’s become more ‘boyish’: less smiling minifigures in space-suits, and more snarling villains, stubbled heroes and licensed film tie-ins. More guns, tanks, missiles, fast cars and so on.
Girls can play with all of this, of course – my daughter does. But they often don’t, because they’re taught that girls like pink, flowers, horses, fairies, nail salons, cafe chats and so on. Play is gendered very quickly.
From what I can tell, Lego was once gender-neutral, then ‘boyed’ itself to get market share. If boys like cops and robbers and Star Wars starfighters, then Lego would have them. Bam. Sales skyrocket.
Many girls responded to this typically: it’s not for us.
Having gained a foothold with the boy-branded toys, Lego can now brand with girl toys: hyper-feminised minifigures who like to chat with girlfriends at the cafe before hitting the beauty salon, for example. Not an alien or grave-robbing archaeologist in sight.
‘Knee-jerk sex divisions are dodgy’
Now, is this a problem? Yes, because more knee-jerk sex divisions are dodgy. They uphold traditional ideas about gender roles: girls talk and worry about beauty, while boys fight, die and save princesses. The problem is not necessarily the gender traits: as if one has more value than the other. The problem is that we grow up thinking that they’re ‘natural’; that our education, professional and domestic lives can be no other way. This is what so many toys do: they’re typically conservative, because they recognise and reinforce the easy market categories that already exist, such as ‘boys’ and ‘girls’.
But this is not the end of the story. Together with the media, family life, schooling and employment, toys clearly help to shape our gender identities. But there is no evidence for a straightforward causal relationship between ‘X toy’ and ‘X personality’. Plenty of independent, smart, well-educated, strong women played with Barbie, My Little Pony or Cabbage Patch dolls – I’m married to one of them. She did not simply play out the Barbie fantasy: the dolls were taken from their Valley Girl fantasy-land and given new identities and plots. And regularly taken apart.
The magic of free play
Lego is perfect for this. Much of the magic with Lego happens, not with the off-the-shelf play – although it’s clearly good for concentration and motor skills – but with the later free play. All the bits go back into the bags and boxes, and are transformed into new characters, vehicles, buildings. My son’s space police starships and fire stations became a library, a museum, a house, a cafe, and a hundred other things with wheels, walls and sometimes guns.
My hope is that the girl-branded Lego can be used in this way. With good encouragement from parents, girls need not be stuck with traditional feminine characters and scenes. If pink bricks or ponies are first step, they are not necessarily the end of the road.
Parents can provide primary colour bricks alongside the pinks and purples. They can prompt children to remake their cafe or salon, rather than keeping them pristine on the shelf.
If a family genuinely cares about gender equity, and provides a home life of robust respect and reflection, Lego play – regardless of its colour – will reflect this.
If you’re a fan of imaginative free play for kids, you’ll love our Children’s Book Festival, held in conjunction with the State Library of Victoria.
The festival includes workshops, activities, book signings, face painting, petting zoo and more. guests Guests will include Graeme Base, Leigh Hobbs, Hazel Edwards, Andy Griffiths and Sally Rippin.
The Children’s Book Festival is held on the State Library lawns (with plenty of indoor activities, too) from 10am to 4pm on Sunday 25 March, this weekend.
The Agereported today that Lego’s controversial new line for girls, Lego Friends, has won Toy of the Year for its City Park Cafe.
Lego Friends was launched last December, with curvy doll-like figures, given names and distinct personalities, pastel-coloured bricks (including lots of pink) and playsets that include the Butterfly Beauty Shop, Andrea’s Stage and Mia’s Puppy House.
The Lego Friends Butterfly Beauty Shop
The product – which borrows elements from Disney Princess – is a response to the fact that Lego has appealed mostly to boys in recent years, especially over the past decade, with the company adding superhero and Harry Potter themed sets to its line. Lego CEO Jorgen Vig Knudstrop said they’re aiming ‘to reach the other 50 percent of the world’s children’.
Lego Friends has attracted outspoken enemies, with an active petition to ban it.
‘Girls see blocks in primary colours and think they’re not for them.’
‘So, now we have boys’ Lego and girls’ Lego, instead of just Lego, a creative toy that all children could play with,’ says Monica Dux, Wheeler Centre regular and author of The Great Feminist Denial. ‘This development is symptomatic of the deepening gender divide in early childhood, a divide which is becoming ever more ubiquitous, and is being forced onto children at younger and younger ages. But where does this process end?’
‘Though there is educational value to playing with Lego, it’s just a toy company that needs to make money,’ said feminist website Jezebel. ‘Girls have already been conditioned to want pink and sparkly toys about ponies and princesses (though mercifully there’s no royal family in Heartlake City) and it isn’t the company’s job to change that … we’ve reached the point where girls see blocks in primary colours and think they’re not for them.’
Neuroscientist Lise Eliot, author of Pink Brain Blue Brain, also believes girls are put off Lego by social conditioning rather than any implicit need for pink and princesses. But she reluctantly endorses the Lego Friends range nonetheless. ‘If it takes colour-coding or ponies and hairdressers to get girls playing with Lego, I’ll put up with it, at least for now, because it’s just so good for little girls’ brains.’
‘Silly, insipid girl version’
Penni Russon, author of books for children and teenagers and mother of two girls, recalls playing with Lego as a child ‘in a way that could probably be perceived as gendered’; she made houses and cars, and especially liked the doors and windows that opened and the flowers. But she says that although she probably would have played with pink Lego if it was around, she won’t be buying the ‘silly insipid girl version’ for her children.
‘I think we have all been conditioned by nostalgia to see Lego as something beyond a product and a corporation. Talk about lifelong brand affiliation! Nostalgia (and totally brilliant marketing) drives us to see Lego as some kind of vital childhood experience that enhances intelligence and creativity. But do kids really get more from Lego than wooden blocks, art materials, electronics sets etc? Is it so vital that every child find a Lego set that suits them?’
Girls talk, boys fight and die
Writer and philosopher Damon Young is, like so many of us, a product of that lifelong affiliation. He’s been playing with Lego for 30 years – first as a kid, now as a dad. ‘Over the decades, Lego’s become more ‘boyish’: less smiling mini-figures in space-suits, and more snarling villains, stubbled heroes and licensed film tie-ins. More guns, tanks, missiles, fast cars and so on,’ he says. ‘Girls can play with all of this, of course – my daughter does. But they often don’t, because they’re taught that girls like pink, flowers, horses, fairies, nail salons, café chats and so on. Play is gendered very quickly.’
The curvy, pastel-clothed Lego Friends minifigures
He says the hyperfeminised Lego Friends is a problem; toys that reinforce traditional ideas about gender roles and make concepts like ‘girls talk and worry about beauty, while boys fight, die and save princesses’ make these stereotypes seem natural, rather than choices, among many available. ‘Toys clearly help to shape our gender identities.’
But he believes that girl-branded Lego, while ‘dodgy’, can still encourage free play that transcends the boundaries of its pastel boxes.
‘With good encouragement from parents, girls need not be stuck with traditional feminine characters and scenes. If pink bricks or ponies are first step, they are not necessarily the end of the road. Parents can provide primary colour bricks alongside the pinks and purples. They can prompt children to remake their café or salon, rather than keeping them pristine on the shelf. If a family genuinely cares about gender equity, and provides a home life of robust respect and reflection, Lego play – regardless of its colour – will reflect this.’
But Monica Dux remains sceptical. ‘If you think this initiative from Lego is benign, just look at the focus of their new gendered product. Girls get to play ‘cafe’ and hang out in Lego hair salons (!!!), while boys can do almost anything, from travelling through space to constructing cities, having adventures in a wide variety of worlds both historical and imaginary.’
‘If children do learn through play, which of these two lessons would you rather give your daughters?’
Tomorrow, March 8, is International Women’s Day. The Wheeler Centre will be marking the occasion with two free events.
At 12.45pm, The Stella Prize’s Christine Gordon will deliver this week’s Lunchbox/Soapbox on the topic Feminism is Personal.
And at 7.15pm, conflict reporter Eliza Griswold will talk about her journeys through some of the world’s most fascinating and divided societies in The Tenth Parallel.
We share five of our favourite links to news, reviews or articles that we’ve discovered over the past week.
Feast of Thrones: Eyeballs, pigs’ heads and dragon eggs
Fans of Game of Thrones, the series based on George R.R. Martin’s novels, shouldn’t miss eyeballing the medieval feast staged to celebrate the DVD release. But they might want to miss out on actually eating it. Complete with bloodied pigs’ heads, ‘eyeballs’ and ‘dragon’s eggs’ drizzled with liquid gold, it’s a feast for the eyes, but not one that will necessarily work up an appetite.
‘Anything about chopping dudes up, I’m into that,’ says chef Grant King, who hopes to make Darth Vader in chocolate next.
‘They belong to me’: Rachel Cusk’s divorce memoir
Rachel Cusk’s latest memoir, Aftermath, about her separation from her husband of ten years, includes lines like, ‘My husband said he wanted half of everything, including the children. No, I said … They’re my children … They belong to me.’ Cusk caused a scandal – and spawned the ‘mummy memoir’ genre – with her brutally self-analytical memoir of early motherhood, A Life’s Work, in 2001. She sharply divided critics, who either loved or hated her for laying bare the dark side of motherhood. The Guardian says of Aftermath (April): ‘She has again mined her life and told of her experience of being a woman, in a Read the extract and make up your own mind.
Rachel Cusk: ‘If there is a disjuncture between how women live and how they actually feel – which to me there is, in motherhood and marriage – I will feel entitled to attempt to articulate it.’
Colbert to write kids' book
Stephen Colbert is making bookish news this week, after a gag during a two-part interview with Maurice Sendak (which he began by saying ‘I don’t like children or books or children’s books’) has turned into a book deal. After pitching an idea for a sequel, While the Wild Things Are: Still Wildin’ (starring Vin Diesel), Colbert joked he was writing a picture-book-in-verse, I Am a Pole (and So Can You!) and read a preview aloud. Sendak, who told Colbert that most children’s books are ‘very bad’, admitted, ‘The sad thing is, I like it.’ So did Grand Central Publishing, who has signed him up, with a publication date of 8 May 2012. ‘It’s been a lifelong dream of mine to write a children’s book,’ said Colbert. ‘I hope the minutes you and your loved ones spend reading it are as fulfilling as the minutes I spent writing it.’
Stephen Colbert: ‘I don’t like children or books or children’s books’.
Best Books of 2012
Wondering what to read this year? Readings’ Martin Shaw has asked a handful of Australian writers to share the books they’re most looking forward to in 2012 for a series of posts for Kill Your Darlings. Nam Le is looking forward to new books from Chloe Hooper, Hilary Mantel and Richard Ford – and the second novel from Rachel Kushner. And there were multiple mentions of Texts in the City host Ruby Murray’s first novel, Running Dogs (Scribe, May) and Paddy O’Reilly’s Fine Colour of Rust (Harper Collins, March), which will be released simultaneously in Australia and the UK. Israeli comic short-story writer Etgar Keret, who will be appearing at the Wheeler Centre next month, also earned a nod for his new collection Suddenly a Knock at the Door, which got a rave review in last weekend’s Australian.
Etgar Keret: The Australian says, ‘There is method in Keret’s madness, and genius, too.’
Hollywood ate my novel
In the lead-up to this week’s Oscars, the Independenttalked to five novelists about their books’ transitions from page to screen. Kaui Hurt Hemmings, author of The Descendants, said director Alexander Payne ‘met my whole family, and they all ended up being in the movie’. He said, ‘Almost every line of dialogue was right out of the book, every sequence, the music I’d mentioned, the clothes they wore, the places they went to.’ Lionel Shriver thinks Lynne Ramsay’s movie of We Need to Talk About Kevin is ‘rather wonderful’, though ‘the movie does lean towards Kevin being evil from birth, whereas that’s more up for grabs in the novel’. Fay Weldon, however, enjoyed the money for the rights to her book The Life and Loves of a She Devil, but says the movie (starring Roseanne Barr and Meryl Streep) ‘missed the point entirely’. She’d still do it again, though.
‘I still see myself as a struggling writer,’ says Kaui Hurt Hemmings, author of The Descendants
Is it too soon? Just 11 years after it was first brought to screen, Bret Easton Ellis' novel American Psycho is set to be remade. Variety reported last week that Lionsgate has a remake of the film in the early stages of development. The news prompted Ellis to tweet, “I have warned Lionsgate that I will not approve a new version of "American Psycho” unless it stars SCOTT DISICK or MILES FISHER.“ Watch the video of Bret Easton Ellis' 2010 appearance at the Wheeler Centre.
Meanwhile, not-so-young adults who enjoy reading young adult fiction – and there are a lot of us who do – may recognise themselves in a new film starring Charlize Theron. Written by Juno writer Diablo Cody, Young Adult tells the story of the author of young adult novels who goes to great lengths to seduce her high school boyfriend, who’s now married with a young child. Here’s a glowing review of the film by a writer of young adult novels.
What would Shakespeare’s plays have looked like had they been published as kids' books? Maybe something like this.
The Dolly Parton show is in town and so it’s a good occasion to pay tribute to the veteran country singer’s work to promote literacy among poor kids. Since 1996, Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library USA has mailed every child under five in participating counties a book every month until their fifth birthday.
Should YouTube have a literature channel? It’s a question raised by the blog The Fiction Circus (brought to our attention by Media Bistro). Needless to say, we endorse the campaign wholeheartedly so that videos such as this one may find their true home. But then again, we would say that, what with our own YouTube channel and all.
One of our favourite collective nouns is ‘murmuration’, in reference to groups of starlings. Murmurations used to be a more common and more spectacular sight in Europe, but starling numbers have dropped some 70% since 1970. It refers to the sound made by the great clouds of starlings that flock together on late wintry afternoons in northern Europe. We found this YouTube video of murmurating starlings hypnotic for all kinds of reasons. It’s a promotional video for a book on economics, although you wouldn’t know it from the footage, which inspires in the narrator all kinds of grandiloquent philosophising. Do murmurations of starlings have something to teach us about the future of humanity? We’ll reserve our judgment on that, but enjoy the spectacle. (More murmuration.)
In 1984, American author Chris Van Allsburg published a book called The Mysteries of Harris Burdick. The highly unusual book consisted of a series of drawings with a title and a single line. The conceit that linked the drawings together – explained in a fictional editor’s note at the start of the book – is that each drawing was taken from a different book, created by a mysterious artist called Harris Burdick. The 14 drawings, effectively, were supposed to be samples by an illustrator who, in 1984, had left them at at the office of a children’s book editor called Peter Wenders, promising to return the following day with all 14 completed manuscripts. Harris Burdick, the story goes, never returned. The drawings are intended to be finely imagined prompts for readers to make up their own stories.
Now, 14 children’s authors, including Lemony Snicket, have taken Harris Burdick’s legacy to the next level. The authors – who include Lois Lowry, Louis Sachar, Kate DiCamillo, MT Anderson, Linda Sue Park, Gregory Maguire and Jon Sciezska – have created stories to match the illustrations. The new book is called The Chronicles of Harris Burdick – here’s a preview.
Illiteracy and poverty go hand in hand. There are almost 800 million adults and children alive today who can’t read, and most of them live in the developing world. Closer to home, only 15% of indigenous children at year 7 level in remote communities can read at an acceptable standard.
A hiking trip in the Himalayas in the 1990s exposed Wood to the high levels of illiteracy among Nepalese children. A Nepalese teacher explained the paradox in these terms: Nepal is a country that is too poor to pay for universal education, and yet as long as children remain uneducated Nepal will remain a poor country.
At the time, John Wood was Microsoft’s Australian marketing manager. He left the boardroom to found Room to Read with the motto, ‘World change starts with educated children.’ “Education,” Wood told the Wheeler Centre audience, “is the one issue that affects every other issue.”
Tomorrow night at the Wheeler Centre, the Indigenous Literacy Foundation is hosting the Art for Country auction to raise money for literacy resources for the communities that have provided the artworks to be auctioned.
Mark Mordue on why modern-day fatherhood is all about eating breakfast standing up.
It’s Father’s Day morning, the year 2011. No Glad Wrap in the house. Do you have any idea how that screws with dad’s main day of the year? Three kids, lunches to make and pack, no Glad Wrap! My day is in tatters, man. Ruination. It’s going be a big climb back after this kind of start, let me tell you.
The kids are up early. I notice on special sleep-in days like this they always wake up early. They’re excited. There are two different father’s day events at the two eldest kids schools. I’m a guest DJ at one. Which effectively means loading up my ipod with 70s rock, 80s post-punk pop and a few hip hop tunes and old country numbers, then I’m on my way to found my own groove nation.
Of course you try to be a crowd pleaser, but personal taste creeps in. At the last minute I get cold feet about the prospect of playing Nick Cave’s ‘No Pussy Blues’ at the school Fathers’ Day breakfast. What was amusing and irreverent last night when I put my ‘mixed tape’ (I’m so old) together now seems crude and likely to offend. Dear me – what to do?
I’ll swap it for Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel’s ‘Come Up and See Me, Make Me Smile’. I always remember one of my friends’ fathers accusing me of being a homosexual for liking that song when I was 12. I think it was because Harley wore mascara and a fur coat with no shirt on in the video clip, which seemed kinda cool to me at the time – not that I ever adopted the look for myself.
Anyway, back at Masterchef Central I use some disposable plastic containers – left over from takeaway Indian meals and rinsed clean – to pack the sandwiches in. Dads are genius improvisers like that. My partner is meanwhile trying to make sure the kids get dressed – and put their shoes on as well! Then we are finally out of our own private madhouse and on our way to a larger, school-organised one.
My DJ efforts prove to be somewhat frustrated as the hall stereo keeps getting turned off due to surges brought on by all the tea urns. So I stand beside the electrical mains switching the power on again every time it goes off. It strikes me this is not the safest way to celebrate Father’s Day, but damn it, I put David Bowie’s ‘Golden Years’ and Johnny Cash singing ‘Solitary Man’ on this mix, and whether the crowd wants it or not I am giving it to them. ‘Golden Years’ comes out a little like this: Golden ..ears, G..ears… Wah.” Long pause. “Wah.”
My partner has been co-opted to do the barbecue and has disappeared into a cloud of smoking bacon fat. I am amazed she can smile at all but she seems to be enjoying herself.
Image via terriseesthings/Flickr
Somehow my youngest son has attached himself to my leg, and is weeping and crying because he wants a bottle of strawberry milk from the canteen, which is still officially closed. Which means he cannot have that strawberry milk. The tears and screaming suggest he has been through a savage beating or received news of a death in the family.
I have to drag him across the stage where I am DJing in front of audience of about 100 other highly distracted dads and their families. Most of them are busy dealing with their own kids or trying to have a conversation over my annoying music, but I still feel my crying-son-attached-to-my-leg-and-being dragged-along look lacks the right aura of parental harmony and love that I am seeking to project. He finally lets me go and I make a break for it as he lays resentfully in a tantrum-ish heap.
I decide to get a bacon and egg roll off my partner and a coffee as well. What the heck. It’s 8am and I’m just a modern guy, as Iggy Pop used to sing. Every now and then as I walk around with breakfast in my hand – and isn’t modern fatherhood the art of having breakfast standing up? – I catch another father’s eye, and get some weird amused smile or a hard-working, stunned nod of the head.
Up on the stage the kids all start reading poems for their dads that are very hard to hear, then the whole event declines into a rambling multiple-choice quiz that no one ever wins. My partner takes off with our two youngest children to the next port of call, the Father’s Day celebration at my daughter’s school down the road. My son goes to his class. I’m left with his football and my ipod throbbing to Dylan’s ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ in an almost empty hall.
Outside the sky is grey as my hair, threatening rain that does not seem to come. I’m able to stop for a more solitary and calming coffee at a local café where what sounds like Johann Sebastian Bach is being piped through the stereo. It’s now 10am. And there is plenty of Father’s Day yet left to burn. I promise myself not to yell at the kids tonight when they bicker and harass me. All the time I sense the main game is tolerance, patience, listening, and more patience. It’s the lesson I keep having to re-learn every day.
I know the kids have surprises for me, cards they’ve made, presents they have picked up at the stalls being held at their respective schools. A key ring, a bottle opener, a bath flannel with a football team logo, maybe I will even score some red wine as well if I am lucky. I realize I can get some Glad Wrap at the shops on the way home, and feel a new mood of fatherly zen begin to descend over me. The static of the morning is still subsiding, and yet what I find I want – and need – all over again is my family around me once more. Though maybe not attached to my leg. Just to be safe, I’m thinking I’ll buy some strawberry milk as well anyway.
Mark Mordue is the 2010 Pascall Prize Australian Critic of the Year. He is currently working on a biography of Nick Cave.
You’ve heard Samuel L. Jackson read it. You’ve maybe even heard Werner Herzog read it. But have you heard Australia’s favourite storybook reader, Noni Hazlehurst, read the children’s book spoof sensation, Go the F-ck to Sleep?
Noni will be a guest at the ‘Unaccustomed as I am’ event next week at the Wheeler Centre.
A new book claims that television shows such as Sesame Street propagate radical left-wing ideology. Newspapers across the world – including this Telegraphreport, taken up in The Age – have reported on the publication of Primetime Propaganda, by US conservative columnist Ben Shapiro. Shapiro interviewed leading producers of shows like Sesame Street, and concluded they are trying to “shape America in their own leftist image”. This is how the Independentsummarised the book’s findings: “The TV series Friends undermined family values; Sesame Street taught ethnic minorities about civil disobedience; Happy Days had a subtle anti-Vietnam subtext; and the 1980s cop show MacGyver tried to persuade pistol-packing Americans that guns are bad”.
It’s not the first time Sesame Street or its host network, the Public Broadcasting Service, have come under political fire – and it tends to come from both sides of politics. Sesame Street has regularly been accused of promoting a gay agenda. However, it’s also been criticised for its depiction of women and Latinos as well as for being “too wholesome” – here’s a Time review from 1970. In that same year, in just its second season, it was banned in the southern US state of Mississippi. Conversely, in 1973, Sesame Street was denounced in the USSR as “the latest example of United States cultural imperialism”. Rock, meet hard place. As of 2009, the show had won 118 Emmy awards.
Melbourne author Alison Goodman’s fantasy children’s book Eona has debuted at number five on the New York Times best-seller list in its category. The children’s chapter book best-seller list lists best-selling books intended to be read by children aged between seven and ten. The name refers to the fact that most of these lavishlly-illustrated books are divided into short chapters. Alison Goodman has published books for children and young adults since 1998, when her debut novel Singing the Dogstar Blues was published. She has previously been a DJ O'Hearn Memorial Fellow at the University of Melbourne.
Four Australian author-illustrators of children’s books will be touring China this month and next as part of an initiative to promote the local industry in the Middle Kingdom. The tour, billed as the ‘Swimming with Stories’ festival, will feature an exhibition of book illustration as well as workshops focusing on writing, illustration and other facets of narrative performance.
A kids' book with a twist is proving to be a pre-publishing phenomenon in the US. The book, Go the F—– to Sleep, is actually an adult cry for help, presented in a tongue-in-cheek spirit as a kids' book. And it has its origins on Facebook. The New York Timesreports author Adam Mansbach – writer of ambitious, and unmistakeably adult, literary novels – posted the book’s title last year at a time when his then two year-old daughter Vivien was taking two hours to fall asleep. Reaction from his friends was so positive that he extended the idea and invited kids' book artist Ricardo Cortes to illustrate it.
The book isn’t due to be published until October. That hasn’t stopped it from becoming an enviable publishing success story. On the basis of its title alone, it’s already an Amazon bestseller. It peaked at number 2 on the Amazon bestseller list last Thursday, after the author appeared on a panel over the Easter weekend – the first publicity he’s done for the book – prompted a Twitter frenzy and was picked up by Boing Boing.
The shortlist for the Children’s Book of the Year has been announced. The awards – hosted by the Children’s Book Council of Australia – are the nation’s most prestigious. Congratulations to all shortlisted authors, as well as authors of notable books for each category, as listed on the CBCA website.
The shortlist for the 2011 Picture Book of the Year is: Mirror by Jeannie Baker, Family Forest by Kim Kane and Lucia Masciullo, My Uncle’s Donkey by Tohby Riddle, Two Peas in a Pod by Chris McKimmie, Hamlet by Nicki Greenberg, and Why I Love Australia by Bronwyn Bancroft.
The shortlist for the 2011 Early Childhood Book of the Year is: Maudie and Bear by Jan Ormerod, Look See, Look At Me by Leonie Norrington and Dee Huxley, It’s Bedtime, William! by Deborah Niland, Noni The Pony by Alison Lester, The Tall Man and the Twelve Babies by Tom Niland Champion, Kilmeny Niland & Deborah Niland, and The Deep End by Ursula Dubosarsky, illustrated by Mitch Vane.
The shortlist for the 2011 Younger Readers Book of the Year is: Duck for a Day by Meg McKinlay, Toppling by Sally Murphy and Rhian Nest James, The Red Wind: The Kingdom Of The Lost Book One by Isobelle Carmody, Henry Hoey Hobson by Christine Bongers, Just A Dog by Michael Gerard Bauer, and Violet Mackerel’s Brilliant Plot by Anna Branford.
The shortlist for the 2011 Older Readers Book of the Year is: The Piper’s Son by Melina Marchetta, The Life of a Teenage Body-Snatcher by Doug MacLeod, The Midnight Zoo by Sonya Hartnett, About a Girl by Joanne Horniman, Graffiti Moon by Cath Crowley, and Six Impossible Things by Fiona Wood.
The shortlist for the 2011 Eve Pownall Award for Information Books is: The Return Of The Word Spy by Ursula Dubosarsky and Tohby Riddle, Our World: Bardi Jaawi: Life At Ardiyooloon by One Arm Point Remote Community School, Wicked Warriors and Evil Emperors by Alison Lloyd and Terry Denton, Zero Hour: The Anzacs on the Western Front by Leon Davidson, Drawn from the Heart by Ron Brooks, and Science Behind: Theme Parks, Playgrounds and Toys by Nicolas Brasch.
If you pass the State Library lawns today and they seem to have a slightly crumpled look, you’re not hallucinating. It’s estimated that about 9,000 kids, parents and grandparents attended the Children’s Book Festival yesterday in overcast but mostly dry conditions, crushing every single one of those blades of grass. The event was a roaring success and we wish to thank everyone involved: our co-hosts the State Library of Victoria, Alan Brough and ABC 774, all the volunteers and event supporters, the authors and illustrators who were the stars of the show, and most of all everyone who attended. We’ll be publishing a selection of images in tomorrow’s Dailies, and in the meantime here’s a link to a review of the event in today’s Age.
All week we’ve run a series of articles on kids' and young adult books to coincide with the inaugural Children’s Book Festival this Sunday from 10am to 4pm.
Today we finish the series by following up on a story we ran last week, when the UK’s education secretary Michael Gove suggested school kids should be reading 50 books a year. The Guardian reports that some kids' book authors have reacted to the comments with scepticism. Anthony Browne has suggested that the government’s library closures give the lie to Gove’s comments, and Phillip Pullman, author of the ‘His Dark Materials’ trilogy, agrees, adding, “Where are they going to get these 50 books a year from?” In a related article, the newspaper asked its readers to suggest reading lists for kids aspiring to meet Gove’s challenge – here are the responses.
The conventional wisdom is that it’s usually wise to read the book before you see the film. But as filmmakers cast their sights further and further afield for inspiration, sometimes the film is definitely betterthanthebook.
A case in point is news that a film is to be made of a how-to guide to pregnancy. Production company Lionsgate has announced that Kirk Jones, director of Waking Ned Devine and Nanny McPhee, is to adapt What to Expect When You’re Expecting for the screen as a romantic comedy. Written by Sharon Mazel and Heidi Murkoff (who will co-executive produce the film), the pregnancy manual spent almost 10 years on the New York Times bestseller list and is now in its fourth edition.
It’s not the first time the book will have graced the silver screen: it has already made cameo appearances on film (in Knocked Up) and on television (Jennifer Aniston’s character Rachel is seen reading it during her pregnancy on Friends). It’s also not the first time a feature film has been made based on an instruction manual. The film He’s Just Not That Into You (starring the aforementioned Aniston) was based on eponymous 2004 how-to book on dating written by Greg Behrendt and Liz Tuccillo (excerpt), which was in turn inspired by a TV show (Sex and the City). For more book recommendations on pregnancy and parenting, see this recent Daily.
The Children’s Book Festival, hosted on the State Library Lawns by the Wheeler Centre and the State Library of Victoria, is on this Sunday 3 April from 10am.
Chris is a young adult author who’ll be appearing at the festival on Sunday. He wrote the first four titles in the smash-hit Zac Power Mega Missions series. He has since written a total of 12 Zac Power books as well as six titles in the popular series The Phoenix Files.
Chris writes for a segment of the children’s book market educationalexperts have come to call the reluctant reader. There are several kinds of reluctant readers: smart kids who like books but who read with difficulty; kids, some of whom can read well, who aren’t interested and thus at risk of falling behind; and kids with learning problems that impede their reading. Fortunately there’s a wealth of websites, research and resources to help teachers and parents with reluctant readers.
On the subject of how he came to write for reluctant readers, Chris comments, “I’ve never made any conscious decision to create a career out of writing for reluctant readers. It all happened more or less by accident … I am constantly amazed by the number of humbling, heart-warming emails I receive from parents of formerly-reluctant readers – or even from the children themselves – telling me how The Phoenix Files has helped to change their mind about books…
“But it does make me wonder if we have a tendency to get a bit too fixated on uncovering a magic formula for ‘curing’ reluctant readers when, at least for some of them, the solution may simply be a case of finding the right book for the right child…
“Reluctant readers are not some peculiar alien species with an entirely different way of interacting with texts. If they’re going to connect with a story, they’ll do it for the same reasons that all of us do: characters we can fall in love with, plotlines that make us think and dream and gasp and wonder, expressions of hope and redemption that shine light out into the darkness of the world.”
Winners of the Book Trust’s Best New Illustrators Award have been announced in the UK. According to the Trust’s website, the winners – Joe Berger, Claudia Boldt, Katie Cleminson, Chris Haughton, Alice Melvin, Sara Ogilvie, Levi Pinfold, Salvatore Rubbino, Viviane Schwarz and Kevin Waldron – “represent the best rising talent in the field of illustration today, who demonstrate remarkable creative flair, artistic skill and boundless imagination in their work”. An exhibition of the winning artists' work the Illustration Cupboard has just ended and will commence a tour of the UK.
In this narrated slideshow showcasing examples of the illustrators' work, award judge and children’s laureate Anthony Browne notes, “these illustrators recognise that the true picture book has a gap between the pictures and the words, a gap that’s filled by the imagination of the reader.”
Last year in Australia, two illustrators – Andy Geppert for Little big tree and Andrew Joyner for The terrible plop – shared the Crichton Award for Children’s Book Illustration. Here’s a link to the Illustrators Australia award winners for 2011, and here’s another to the Australia and New Zealand chapter of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators.
First-time couples about to embark on the long haul of raising children are often understandably eager to read up on what they’re in for. But with so many books out there, where do you start? Well, probably not here. There’s the ‘tiger mother’ approach currently doing the rounds recently touched on here at the Dailies and then there’s the Philip Larkin approach (Oliver James turned it into an entire pop psychology), whose effect is most likely to be prophylactic.
There are heaps of great blogs on parenting too, including Planning With Kids and Bad Mummy. But on pregnancy? Here’s a freshly-minted reading guide to get you started. It’s author, Edan Lupicki, is expecting and writes on pregnancy with insight: “A lot of childbirthing books focus on what you can do, what you must do, etc. as though it all depended on your efforts and will. What bothers me about that is that it can turn into disappointment and blame, if things don’t go as planned.”
The Children’s Book Festival is being held at the Wheeler Centre and the State Library of Victoria on Sunday 3 April from 10am to 4pm for kids who love books and their parents (regardless of their parenting philosophy).
It seems the world of ideas is in the throes of one of its periodic visitations on the subject of talent, success and parenting. This latest wave is all about tough love. Just in the last few weeks, the term ‘tiger mothering’ has entered the popular lexicon in a quite spectacular way following the publication of a memoir of mothering by Chinese-American author Amy Chua. Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother is, according to a New York Timesreview, “a diabolically well-packaged, highly readable screed ostensibly about the art of obsessive parenting.” The book has created a flurry of debate about raising successful children. The writer, a Yale professor, has even received death threats on account of her book (here’s an excerpt). Read some responses to her book here, here and here.
In 2009, NYT columnist David Brooks also wrote – controversially – on childhood and talent. Inspired by two books – The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle and Talent Is Overrated by Geoff Colvin – Brooks described the ideal childhood of a hypothetical literary genius. As well as the usual (reading, mentors, practice and so on), it seems this wunderkind would benefit from some tragedy: “It would also help if one of her parents died when she was 12, infusing her with a profound sense of insecurity and fueling a desperate need for success.”
Top UK literary agent Caradoc King has just published a memoir called Problem Child. In a promotional piece in The Guardian, King argues that a miserable childhood isn’t necessarily such a bad thing. “You could argue,” he opines, “that a conventional happy childhood is rather disabling because it doesn’t prepare you for the real world where the family unit isn’t there making life so good.” It seems King may have been dusting off his Philip Larkin.
The Children’s Book Festival is being held at the Wheeler Centre and the State Library of Victoria on Sunday 3 April from 10am to 4pm for kids who love books and their parents (regardless of their parenting philosophy).
Update: the Raising Children network is a leading Australian online parenting resource. Their website has lots of good advice for parents, including here, here and here.
It’s been quite a week for Australian literary award shortlists (and a pair of longlists). We share them with you here – along with a reminder about the inaugural Stella Prize, with the winner announced next week.
As picture books go, Harry the Dirty Dog is simply perfect. Harry is a scrap of a dog who hates baths (what kid wouldn’t identify with that?) When he buries his scrubbing brush and runs away for a day of messy adventures he goes from being a white dog with black spots, to a black dog with white spots. He arrives home to find that his own family don’t recognise him, oh no! I can still recall my relief – every single time – at the moment when they finally realise that the black dog with white spots is in fact a very dirty Harry.
She was quite sad. Her only companion was her cat, Emerald, who one evening was so bored with the television he went out into the woods and disappeared. Mrs Brocklethwaite, the old lady, became very concerned and eventually went out into the woods to find him. It was dark and she was unfamiliar with the woods, so she got extremely battered and scraped and I remember specifically that her tights got torn (she couldn’t see properly, because of the TV-watching, remember) and she was just about to give up hope … when finally, she entered a clearing and found Emerald sitting very peacefully by the side of a lake, quietly watching the moonlight.
Looking back on it now most of my favourite books as a kid involved some kind of subversive or deviant behaviour. Whether it be the adventures of Enid Blyton’s Naughty Amelia Jane – the handmade toy that didn’t quite fit in and had a pyromania habit – or Madeline, the naughty little upstart at boarding school who gets appendicitis, needs an operation and everyone ends up being her BFF. (I always wanted an operation when I was a growing up too).
My parents were both English teachers, so our house was full of books. My favourite picture book as a kid was probably Susanna Gretz’s The Bears Who Stayed Indoors, about a 1970s sharehouse of mismatched bears who stay inside on a rainy day and make a cardboard rocket to travel to the moon, eat piles of pancakes, swim in the bathtub and have other similarly cosy adventures. I read it so often that it fell apart and Mum had to buy me another. She laminated the old pages and stuck them to the walls of my bedroom. I also adored The Tiger Who Came to Tea, about what happens when a tiger knocks on the door of a proper English household and politely asks for tea – then eats and drinks everything in the household (even draining the taps).
And I still love the first novel I ever read, Frances Hodgson-Burnett’s The Secret Garden, about contrary orphan Mary, bedridden grouch Colin, kindly boy-gardener Dicken and the garden they bring to life. It’s closely followed in my affections by Noel Streatfield’s Ballet Shoes, about an explorer who collects objects for museums on his travels – including three orphan babies, who grow up to be ballerina Posy, actress Pauline and tomboy Petrova. In his absence, the children are brought up by his housekeeper, and attend a theatre and dance school, where they supplement their meagre allowance by the money they earn from performing. I guess I’m drawn to orphan stories?
Growing up, I was obsessed with books from a really young age, but the books that I remember first capturing my imagination were any and all by Enid Blyton. When I was really young, with all the innocence of childhood, I called my first cat Bimbo, after Blyton’s Bimbo and Topsy, ensuring years of fun for the whole family every time the cat wandered away.
I also loved the two wordless picture books, Sunshine and Moonlight by Jan Ormerod, which depicted in gorgeous and often funny illustrations the first, and last, few hours of a typical day in family life. I liked to be spooked by the Berenstain’s Bears in the Night (‘Whoooo!’), and also Mary Rayner’s dark tale of ten piglets and their hairy-legged babysitter Mrs Wolf, in Mr & Mrs Pig’s Evening Out.
One of my favourite childhood books is The Soul Bird by Michal Snunit. I loved it it because it gave me a lesson about the nature of emotions. When I think about it, I can hear my mother reading it to me in her soft voice:
There are so many wonderful books to choose from but one which stands out from my childhood is The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling (the original as opposed to the Disney version). I was a ‘bookworm’ from a young age and vividly remember my mother reading this in the evenings before bedtime with my brother and I snuggled up on either side of her in our pyjamas. We were enthralled by the adventures of Mowgli, the wolves who raised him along with their cubs, Bagheera the panther, Shere Khan the tiger, Baloo the Sloth bear, Hathi the elephant, Rikki-Tikki-Tavi the mongoose, the cheeky tribe of monkeys and of course the python Kaa.
It was about being at a cricket game at the MCG with my dad and then, while attempting to buy three packets of potato chips and two cans of cola, suddenly finding myself transported 100 centuries into the future. It contained many of the same hallmarks of my work today … a first-person narrator (ie. me!) a believable everyday setting, a bizarre occurrence, some fun and games and then my desperate attempt to put things right again – but only making it worse in the process. It also contains my hopeless attempts at descriptive prose, which were no better then than they are today. My wife still laughs about my attempt to describe a complex time machine: ‘a room full of electronic controls, levers and switches – there was just about everything an electronics enthusiast could wish for’.
Writer, philosopher and dad 
But this is not the end of the story. Together with the media, family life, schooling and employment, toys clearly help to shape our gender identities. But there is no evidence for a straightforward causal relationship between ‘X toy’ and ‘X personality’. Plenty of independent, smart, well-educated, strong women played with Barbie, My Little Pony or Cabbage Patch dolls – I’m married to one of them. She did not simply play out the Barbie fantasy: the dolls were taken from their Valley Girl fantasy-land and given new identities and plots. And regularly taken apart.
