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Saturday 1 November 2014

Blogging Sabbatical

Work and life are taking over so blogging plans are consequently on hiatus for the time being, shall see how long it lasts!

Sunday 17 August 2014

Replica

Title: Replica
Author: Jack Heath
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: August 2014

I finished Replica, placed the book on my desk and took a moment. Many bookish people will know the sensation when a world holds your imagination so rapt that you look up on completion, feeling vaguely astonished (and perhaps annoyed) that yes, the real world is still there. There are some books that lure you in like a drug and hold you like a vice. You are left reeling.

Teenager ‘Chloe’ awakens to a grim reality: she is a robot, a replica of herself. She has all real Chloe’s memories, Chloe’s emotions, Chloe’s ingrained knowledge and habits. She has a list of books Chloe has read pre-programmed into her system, even though she has read none of these, nor has she met Chloe’s parents or interacted with Chloe’s friends. When we meet her, she is waking up for the first time, humanness hardwired. (Does this make it fake?) One of the strengths of this story lies in posing ethical questions to the reader, and in the characterisation of rendering a robot absolutely human; I found myself desperately wanting a happy ending for Replica-Chloe as she tries to work what has happened, how she came into being – and, with her, we distrust the frightening (and often less humane) humans surrounding her. An LGBT romance is also deftly and sensitively written into the storyline, ultimately tied into the culmination of all the action: can there ever be a happy ending for her? Can there be a place – or ‘room’  – for her in this world?

Replica is disturbing, frightening and maybe not for everyone, but it is an addictive, thrilling and challenging read. The world we enter is dark and disturbing; cliffhangers and bombshells practically besiege the close of each chapter and just when you thought things could not get worse, that Jack Heath had to have run out of narrative this time, more of them crop up. The ground caves again and we plunge deeper into the Rabbit Hole.

If you enjoy your YA with thrills, you may love this. (I know I did.)

(*Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender.)

Saturday 16 August 2014

Some Thoughts on Packaging and Gender in Children's Publishing

In March 2014, ‘Let Books Be Books’ (#LetBooksBeBooks) decried ‘gender-specific’ children’s titles that were published specifically for boys or girls with marketing (over content) foremost in mind. ‘Let Books Be Books’ vilified reading material that seemed marketed purely to exploit gender preferences, rather than advance the quality of children’s literature; the argument (and it is a good one) was that the best children’s books and stories ought to transcend notions of gender (i.e. Harry Potter, His Dark Materials, etc.).

My sympathies were immediately aligned with ‘Let Books Be Books’, since I do think great literature for children indeed transcends gender. Yet I could see that books considered typically for girls (e.g. A Little Princess or Charlotte Sometimes) might still be excellent and yet not generally appeal to boys (and there would be nothing wrong with boys liking such books, either).

Though leaning more in favour of #LetBooksBeBooks, I decided to research a little and found out a few things. I did not know, for instance, that the practice of publishing fiction and magazines for separate readerships began during the Victorian era, and the idea of writing material for boys or for girls was even considered innovative. I also discovered, to my surprise, that Louisa M. Alcott’s classic stories were commissioned by her publisher, who wanted her to pen a book for girls; Alcott protested in a journal that ‘I don’t enjoy this sort of thing. Never liked girls or knew many’ (Wadsworth 2009, 42). Much as I love Little Women, this appealing to gender tastes seems so much more about the bottom line, as Michael O’Mara of Buster Books admitted to. It is understandable, and I know publishing is ultimately a business and that commissions must be able to sell if a publishing house is to survive and thrive. Yet it seems right to believe in the altruistic value of publishing good literature for young people, which brings fiscal profit, too. This is not only true of J.K. Rowling or J.R.R. Tolkien; authors like Diana Wynne Jones, Neil Gaiman, Philip Pullman and Roald Dahl have written books featuring protagonists of both genders, loved regardless by avid boy and girl readerships (ditto for picture book writers like Allan Ahlberg or Dr Seuss). These sorts of reads are the ones that are reissued, reprinted, a revenue source for the long term as well as a continual stream of literary nurturing for the children growing up with them.

I interpreted #LetBooksBeBooks as a plea for this sort of creativity in publishing; it came to me as a welcome nod to the need for creativity over commerce when publishing books for children. Here’s hoping that continues.

Sources

Wadsworth, Sarah A. 2009. ‘Louisa May Alcott and the Rise of Gender-Specific Series Books’, Children’s Literature: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends, edited by Montgomery, Heather, and Watson, Nicola. Houndmills, England: Palgrave Macmillan.

Friday 15 August 2014

Links: Promoting Diversity in Children's Fiction

Some links to websites and people that challenge stereotypes and promote diversity in fiction for young people.

This is a campaign to ‘take the stickers off’ books for boys and girls, arguing that certain books help compound gender stereotypes and alienate those children who have a preference for doing so not stereotypically ‘boyish’ or ‘girlish’. Many authors, including Philip Pullman, backed the campaign. Usborne chose to no longer publish gender-specific content in direct response. 

Katy Guest is literary editor of The Independent, and chose to back the Let Books Be Books campaign by pledging to no longer review gender-specific books. There are links to her articles here

Beth Cox and Alexandra Strick run the Inclusive Minds project and work as professional editorial consultants on diversity in publishing, offering training to public speaking to manuscript consultation. Having heard Beth speak, she can certainly deliver new and challenging ideas. 

Letterbox Library is a bookseller for parents, teachers and librarians promoting inclusion and diversity in fiction for children, with emphasis on multicultural content. 

Barefoot Books is an incredible children’s bookseller and publisher, with branches in Concord, MA, and in Oxford. Barefoot publishes books with a focus on promoting multiculturalism and environmental awareness. Their offices are above the shop premises, where storytelling becomes a fun, communal activity; story times are hosted at Barefoot and there is a cafe and storytelling chair that children and parents can use when formal sessions are not taking place. The story of their set-up, and breaking of established publishing patterns (namely refusing to sell books via Amazon), is available to read here.

Sunday 3 August 2014

Rooftoppers

Title: Rooftoppers
Author: Katherine Rundell
Publisher: Faber and Faber
Published: March 2013

Rooftoppers won the 2014 Waterstones’ Children’s Book Prize and Blue Peter Book Award, and was shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal, Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize and UKLA Children’s Book Award. It is a beautiful story, an odd and lyrical fairy tale about a rescued orphan and written in dreamy prose. 

Having been rescued from her cello case floating in the ocean, Sophie builds a wonderful kinship with her eccentric guardian Charles, but is still haunted by memories of her mother – and Sophie is sure she can remember her, despite being a baby. When circumstances threaten their happy life in England of writing notes for each other on the walls, dusting around cobwebs and reading Shakespeare on the roof, Sophie and Charles set out for Paris to look for Sophie’s mother, having discovered the address of a cellist maker engraved into the case. But Sophie also befriends another group of orphaned children in Paris – the rooftoppers, who live above the city on the rooftops and in the trees – and specifically Matteo, who teaches Sophie (among other things) how to cook a pigeon and walk across a tightrope.

More than anything, this book is an ode to the “almost impossible” (and, as Sophie would say, “Never ignore a possible”). Everything is surreal and far-fetched, but that is the point, and the final pages are at once satisfying and open-ended. The crux of the story is Sophie’s need to grow in herself, and to find her mother – so (for me) we don’t need to know what happens to certain characters afterwards, whether or not certain individuals ever receive justice for misdeeds. The nature of the narrative reassures us that everything will somehow be well once the book is closed, because the power of the individual and a little imagination is asserted in Rooftoppers so powerfully.

Taken as a magical, brief interlude of a life, Rooftoppers is a stunning and beautiful novel for anyone who believes in chasing dreams.

Saturday 2 August 2014

Some Thoughts on the Carnegie Medal and Children's Book Prizes

I have been fascinated to look over some of the recent writings on the Carnegie Medal choice this year, particularly looking at compelling articles from Lorna Bradbury. The idea that the Carnegie Medal has, for a long time, stopped honouring the sort of books that tick boxes, preferring anything that offers a dose of controversy or challenge (i.e. Stone Cold, Northern Lights or Junk in the nineties), seems increasingly confirmed by so many contemporary choices.

During MA studies this year, I found (slightly to my surprise) that there had not been much general thought or concern given to the quality of literature for children before the Carnegie Medal was created (in the 1930s), and one of the Carnegie’s aims was to raise competitiveness among authors through honouring the most outstanding fiction of the year. Inevitably, given the subjective nature of one ever judging a book, there were controversies from the start (i.e. when The Hobbit lost to The Family from One End Street). But the Medal certainly took care to award its fiction conscientiously, which (to me) is understandable; it was the first of its kind and the ‘right’ fiction needed to be recognised, taken seriously and applauded.

A glance at the list of early prize winners can see that some now classic books are included, i.e. the culminating books of The Chronicles of Narnia and Swallows and Amazon series from C.S. Lewis and Arthur Ransome, as well as The Little White Horse by Elizabeth Goudge (a favourite book of J.K. Rowling’s). Social factors seemed to be at work in eventually altering the Carnegie’s typical book choices, however, as children’s books began to deal with “parental discord, social misery and delinquent behaviour” (Barker 1998, 42), according to one theorist, with passing time. The Carnegie eventually adapted the nature of its choices, especially in the nineties.

The initial aim set forth by the Carnegie of awarding outstanding fiction was vague enough to be beneficial, though, and I think there is a lesson for any future book prize in it; choosing an “outstanding” novel for children is both a vague and subjective undertaking, but it allowed the Carnegie to adapt and move with the times. So it is not surprising that the Carnegie continues to flex its own prize-giving muscle and leverage by awarding darker stories like Stone Cold in 1993 and, with the awarding of The Bunker Diary, not much has changed. In another sense, though, this could also be symptomatic of Carnegie choices bracketed by the times, particularly in a time when darker, edgier YA fiction is in vogue.

Sources

Barker, Keith. 1998. “Prize Fighting”, Children’s Book Publishing in Britain since 1945, edited by Reynolds, Kimberley and Tucker, Nicholas. Aldershot, England: Scolar Press

Friday 1 August 2014

Links: Children's Writing Prizes and Opportunities

Many people know about the well-established prizes for children’s books like the Carnegie Medal and the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize, how books for these prizes are selected and granted a certain prestige in the book industry. I wanted to share just a few new prizes for writers (especially debut writers) that I have stumbled upon since starting my Publishing MA, and seem especially great for new writers looking to publish.

A Few Newer Prizes for New Writing

The Times and Chicken House Fiction Competition 
I love the premise of this prize and focus on finding new talent and voices. Chicken House invites writers to submit manuscripts every year for the chance to win a book deal and the honour of this accolade, and the website includes comprehensive advice and tips (recorded by Barry Cunningham himself) on a designated page. Click this link for more.

Hot Key Young Writers’ Prize 
The Hot Key Young Writers’ Prize is for writers aged eighteen to twenty-five who write YA fiction, and works by writers submitting their entries to Wattpad (in 2014).

The Big Idea Competition
As simple as coming up with the idea!

Unsolicited Manuscripts and Opportunities

At the time of writing, small and innovative publishers for children taking unsolicited manuscripts include Nosy Crow, David Fickling Books, Phoenix Yard and also Hot Key. Their focus is the story (and I can imagine being published with any of these names would be a dream come true for a debut writer)!