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Barbara Cole, owner of the storied John Cole's Book Shop, died July 19 of congestive heart failure. She was 91. ... ...
July 2004 Archives
Guardian Unlimited Film | Interviews | Detroit spinner
At the end of this Guardian piece about Elmore Leonard's opinion of the movies made from his books, he confesses that his children's novel, A Coyote's In The House, was written with half an eye to adaptation for the big screen:
Despite vowing never to write another screenplay - "you're thrown into this situation with all these people who think they know how to write movies" - even Leonard's impressive first children's book, A Coyote's In The House (Puffin), was written with an adaptation in mind."It was, as a matter of fact," he admits. "We have already offered it to animation companies like Disney. They like the story but they say, 'There's not enough sentimentality: there's not a soft little character that you can feel sorry for.'" Leonard laughs at the very idea. "I don't write that," he says. "But if that's what they want to film..."
Publishing News reports that the UK supermarket chain, Sainsbury's, has signed a deal with Jacqueline Wilson and Nick Sharratt to sell an exclusive range of stationery - The Best Freinds range - from September.
www.delawareonline.com : The News Journal : BUSINESS : Just Us Books creates a niche
Feature about US independent children's publisher, Just Us Books...
Guardian Unlimited Books | By genre | Blurring the boundaries
From a Guardian article about the ways a few authors are using the internet creatively:
Ned Vizzini, 24, whose teen novel Be More Chill has just been published in the UK. Faust re-mixed for the age of invasive teen marketing, it casts Mephistopheles as a sentient quantum computer, known as a "squip", which takes up residence in the mind of a dorky teenage boy and advises him how to be cool. To publicise his novel, Vizzini worked with a friend to create websites that pretend squips are real. Google the word squip and you will see links to 15 or so sites with names such as SquipNews and Mothers Against Squips, which was created by a fan. In other words, Vizzini hasn't just extended his novel online, he's opened it up, so readers can add to the story. "It's a little world we've created - the squipiverse," says Vizzini.
Squip News
Celebrity Squip
I Want To Be Cool
Squip Works
SquipFest
I was disappointed to have to miss an informal evening gathering in Covent Garden yesterday to celebrate publication of Terri Paddock's YA novel, Come Clean (HarperCollins). I had also gathered - only on the grapevine, since no information had been sent to me directly - that there was to be some kind of launch for the Centre for the Children's Book in London during the afternoon, so had intended to try and cover both events. In the end, I had to stay at home for the delivery (and construction) of a bed.
The novel, about a draconian drugs rehabilitation programme in America, and based on the experience of Paddock's sister, poured out of the author, according to a report in the TES:
?I borrowed a friend?s flat in Monaco,? [Paddock] says, ?and wrote 60,000 words in a week. One day alone I wrote 20,000. I hardly slept. I hardly ate. Writers sometimes talk about being a channel. It had never happened to me before, but this just seemed to pour out of me.At times I was writing it with tears streaming down my face. I guess it had preyed on my mind for years.?
News: Weasley dad won't be Minister; Tom Riddle not 'Prince'
JK Rowling has updated her website to address pressing questions about Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince...
Telegraph | Arts | A writer's life: Elmore Leonard
A writer's life: Elmore Leonard
(Filed: 26/07/2004)
The crime writer tells Tim Geary how he came to write a children's book in the voice of a coyote...
This feature appeared in the paper a few days ago, and has just come online.
A Coyote's In The House is the current ACHUKA CHOICE.
Salon.com Books | The funniest children's book ever
Philip Pullman nominates the funniest book ever for Salon:
"The Magic Pudding" is the funniest children's book ever written. I've been laughing at it for 50 years, and when I read it again this morning, I laughed just as much as I ever did.
You'll have to be a Salon subscriber to read the full piece...
Portuguese author Jose Saramago, a Nobel literature laureate, said Sunday he believed the world would be a better place if adults were forced to read children's books.
ACHUKA was subjected to its third hack in as many weeks last night. Key files were removed from the server and replaced with others carrying a cryptic(?) message in Russian(?):
Каучуковые чукакабры захватили мир!!! :)
[Linguists, please translate]
I'm advised that the script which powers the ACHUKA calendar is the most vulnerable part of the site's architecture, and that script has therefore been temporarily disabled. All other parts of the site should be A - OK; if not, please report.
I was intending to rethink the EVENTS Calendar listing this summer anyway, as it has not developed into the resource that I hoped it would provide, with only a small number of users actively entering event details. I have even had publishers objecting to publication of party/event details, on the basis that it puts them in an embarrassing position with people who do not receive invitations. There's little point in maintaining a section of the site which is not seen as useful and, moreoever, considered by a few to be a positive nuisance.
Garth Nix, interviewed by various readers of The Times, who bowl him a mixture of long-hops and googlies. No registration required. We learn that NIx is very behind schedule with Drowned Wednesday, the third book in The Keys To The Kingdom series.
Highly recommended
The Leaky Cauldron
On Friday, the Leaky Cauldron website reported: "Extremely reliable sources tell us that British actress Miranda Richardson will play Rita Skeeter in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire." Confirmation is expected today.
The Sunday Times - The Boy With No Shoes by William Horwood, extract
William Horwood, children?s writer, recalls an inspirational teacher who helped drag him out of the darkness of failure, bullying and family rejection... ...
The Boy With No Shoes by William Horwood published August 2nd
Amanda Craig reviewed The Star of Kazan by Eva Ibbotson and How To Be A Pirate by Cressida Cowell in Saturday's Times...
Sunday Times Children's Book Of The Week
In thew Sunday Times 'A littl;e night reading' slot, Jennifer Donnelly, winner of the Carnegie Medal, says that she is 'currently devouring' Michael Morpurgo's Private Peaceful:
The story is beautifully written, both heartfelt and heartbreaking, and makes the reader think hard about the dreadful sacrifices soldiers made ? and still make ? for the rest of us.
J.K.Rowling Official Site - Harry Potter and more
J. K. Rowling has reasssured fans that the sixth Harry Potter title 'remains well on track' in the wake of news that she is pregant with a third child.
This is a piece about a Brian Wildsmith Exhibition in Taiwan:
The works hail not from the UK where Oxford University Press publishes them, nor from Castellaras, France where the Wildsmith family live, but from the Brian Wildsmith Museum in Izukogen, Japan, founded in 1994 to preserve and display his illustrations of famous European fairy tales, nursery rhymes and learning aids.
Guardian Unlimited Books | Review | State of the art
"Comics will be around long after most literary novels are forgotten, and they'll show us what was going on in the world a lot clearer," says Charlie Higson in The Guardian, reviewing McSweeney's 13 edited by Chris Ware:
Scotsman.com News - News Archive - A dogged determination to survive
I missed the link to my reviews of teenage fiction in last Saturday's Scotsman. But here it is now...
The New York Times > Books > 'Harry Potter' Inspires a Christian Alternative
Long New York Times piece on G. P. Taylor:
G. P. Taylor, an Anglican vicar, onetime roadie for the Sex Pistols and former all-around sinner, was roaring across the Yorkshire moors on his Yamaha XV1100 in a lightning storm when the idea for his hit Christian children's book, "Shadowmancer," came to him.
Recommended
A feature interview with Eva Ibbotson by Nicholas Tucker in The Independent...
Highly recommended
Times Obituary - Paula Danziger
Paula Danziger - London Times Obituary
The opening paragraph gives the flavour of this peculiarly disdainful obit.
HOLDEN CAULFIELD, in The Catcher in the Rye, has a lot to answer for. Certainly he was not the first American adolescent to commune with his readership about the weight of his woes, but his arrival in 1951 was to inspire a new generation of writers to the exploitation of tales told in a teenage demotic. The lucrative literary sub-genre of young adult fiction became fashionable, and prominent among its exponents, and with an eye fixed upon girl readers, was Paula Danziger.
Pessimistic summary of US report on the book business, which points out that while revenues are increasing (due to price rises) both book sales and book reading are declining.
According to Ipsos, children's books had a fairly good year in 2003, with early lackluster sales jolted by the June release of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. But despite the Potter phenomenon, Rappaport said, the consumer base for children's books is actually shrinking, with 33 percent of American households buying at least one book for someone under the age of 14 in 2003, compared with 35 percent in 2002."Even with exciting, new and value-added books on the market," Rappaport reported recently on the Ipsos Web site, "the children's book industry has not managed to substantially increase the volume of children's book purchases or share-of-wallet."
USATODAY.com - Meryl works her magic
Streep's hot streak continues with this fall's Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, based on the darkly whimisical children's book series. She says of her Aunt Josephine, "She is a woman who is afraid of everything. Everything that happened. Everything that might happen. Everything that she feels is happening now. She is sure of it."The smallish yet significant part gave her an opportunity to match acting wits with Jim Carrey, who stars as the greedy Count Olaf.
Jabuti Awards
Due to a tie between seven books in the children's books category only the winners of 16 categories were announced. Jurors are being called once again by the Jabuti Award organizer to break the tie in the coming days.
The illustration award was announced:
Category: Child or Juvenile Book Illustration
1st place
Title: Com a pulga atr?s da orelha
Illustrator: Ivan Zigg
Publishing House: Salamandra
2nd place
Title: O circo da lua
Illustrator: Eva Furnari
Publishing House: ?tica
3rd place
Title: Brincando Advinhas
Illustrator: Elisabeth Teixeira
Publishing House: Paulinas
At long last, having retrieved the memory stick from the laptop, here are the photos from Tuesday night's Walker Books Party. My own favourite is the one of Allan Ahlberg bending down to speak with Naomi Lewis, with several animated conversations going on behind. Also featured (for the first time on ACHUKA) are the '2 Sues' from Birmingham Schools Library Service, with whom I sat to eat the barbecue meal.
David Lloyd's speech, echoing back to last year's, was once again a wild kind of sonic jamming on the story of a saint. The faces in the crowd of people who had never before witnessed a Lloyd speech were pictures it would have been lovely - but a little too obtrusive - to capture.
I have left my camera's memory stick in my laptop, so those eager to see photos from last night's Walker Books Summer Party will, I'm afraid, have to wait another day.
ACHUKA is not as hot-off-the-press with this news as we would have liked (blame it on end-of-term distractions) but during the splendid Walker Books summer party last night (the picture gallery will be posted tonight) we learnt that Kate Wilson (who has been in charge at Macmillan Children's Books for the entire life of ACHUKA) is moving to Scholastic.
More on this anon.
booktrade.info : news : full news listing
Geraldine Brennan, books editor of the Times Educational Supplement, joins Libby Purves, Mark Lawson and children's author Sally Gardner on the panel f
of judges for the Smarties Awards.
NPR : Writer Paula Danziger: An Appreciation
An online radio appreciation of Paula Danziger by Susan Stone.
Highly recommended
Little Girls On the Prairie (washingtonpost.com)
Long, highly-readable piece about the annual Laura Ingalls Wilder gathering...
Laura's world is now about collapsible canvas lawn chairs, strollers and people wearing tank tops and sandals with their bonnets. It has a snack bar. A German sociology student from the University of Cologne, dressed in prairie garb, greets audience members as they come in and asks them to fill out a survey, which she will use for her PhD dissertation, which is an examination of people's powerful need to visit the places where their favorite pop-literary characters lived.
Guardian Unlimited Books | Review | The Bookseller
The Guardian's Bookseller column observed yesterday that the paperback edition of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix has been kep off the #1 spot in the weekly sales chart:
It is a surprise when a JK Rowling novel performs like any other successful title. That is what the paperback of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Bloomsbury) did on its first day in the shops last week, selling 37,000 copies in adults' and children's editions, and just failing to overtake the weekly sales of the two editions of Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time (Vintage/Red Fox).
It is a surprise when a JK Rowling novel performs like any other successful title. That is what the paperback of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Bloomsbury) did on its first day in the shops last week, selling 37,000 copies in adults' and children's editions, and just failing to overtake the weekly sales of the two editions of Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time (Vintage/Red Fox).
Information about Turning Point - a one day national conference on the state of Young Adult Fiction - Saturday 27/11/04, the brainchild of David Belbin.
Dinah Hall's summer roundup appears in this week's Sunday Telegraph (July 18th) - sadly, though, no online link.
Hall kicks off her piece with a book ACHUKA is equally keen on:
Ten Wriggly Wiggly Caterpillars by Debbie Tarbett (Little Tiger Press)
Hall writes:
I would not like to own up to the amount of time I have spent fingering the 10 brightly painted bead-like caterpillars, embedded 9in the pages, which magically disappear one by one until the final spread unfolds in a psychedelic flurry of butterfly wings. With its tactile qulaity, perfectly paced rhyming text and effortless educational purpose this is a winner all round...
Times Online - Newspaper Edition
Sunday Times Children's Book Of The Week
This book is inspirational. There is romance in it, and neighbourliness and family affection. NICOLETTE JONES
Guardian Unlimited Books | Review | The longlist
Guardian Longlist
Millions by Frank Cottrell Boyce (Macmillan)
Murkmere by Patricia Elliott (Hodder)
Private Peaceful by Michael Morpurgo (Collins)
No Shame, No Fear by Anne Turnbull (Walker)
Last Train from Kummersdorf by Leslie Wilson (Faber)
Last Train from Kummersdorf by Leslie Wilson (Faber)
Kissing the Rain by Kevin Brooks (Chicken House)
How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff (Puffin)
Useful Idiots by Jan Mark (David Fickling)
From Julia Eccleshare's introduction to the longlist:
The submissions for the Guardian Children's Fiction prize reflect an enthusiasm for writing them. At a time when attitudes to childhood are confused, as innocence gives way to experience and we raise a generation of over-examined and over-protected shoppers, this confidence is critical. Success is unpredictable; there are no limits to what is possible in a children's book. In both the story and how it's told, anything and everything is up for experiment.
This year's judges are: Mark Haddon, who won the award last year with The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time; Ad?le Geras, whose latest novel for young adults is Other Echoes; and Marcus Sedgwick, whose most recent novel is The Book of Dead Days. The panel is chaired by Julia Eccleshare.
The shortlist for this year's prize will be published in September and the winner will be announced on October 9.
ic Wales - Illustrator's solitary paradise
Feature about illustrator Jackie Morris.
A bright-eyed woman with a jolly laugh, Attenborough started her career in publishing, rising eventually to run children's books at Penguin and to a seat on the board. In 1995, she packed it in to take up a portfolio of jobs with charities and committees. One such job was to run the National Year of Reading, established in accordance with Labour's 1997 manifesto commitments, and the contract was granted to the National Literacy Trust whose director Neil McClelland put Attenborough in charge.
A long piece about Liz Attenborough's new campaign to boost young children's speaking and listening skills.
Highly recommended
A page of reviews from straight.com
News-Leader.com | Weekend | Adventures in Oz continue with great-grandson
The latest Oz title by the original author's great-grandson, Roger S. Baum, is Toto Of Oz And The Surprise Party.
Orion has established a reputation for providing Real Food at its parties and last night's Summer Party, held at Westminster Abbey Hall, was no exception. Pictures to follow...
Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Paula Danziger
Paula Danziger - Guardian Obituary by JUlia Eccleshare
The Alien Online - Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror News, Reviews, Articles and more...
Marvel Comics have launched a brand new prose imprint, Marvel Press, which will focus on producing novels about all your favourite Marvel characters.
Marvel has hired seven-year veteran of children's and young adult publishing, Ruwan Jayatilleke, formerly of Scholastic, to head Marvel Press and he'll have his work cut out for him as they open with three titles for 2004 and a minimum of twelve titles through 2005.
Star-Telegram | 07/13/2004 | Snog and Tell
Snog and TellBritish author Louise Rennison's teen titles, penned by an imaginary adolescent handful named Georgia, are pure geniosity...
An amusing US Louise Rennison review in Georgia-speak...
This news of a Diana Wynne Jones film adaptation comes from the Neil Gaiman journal:
HOWL'S MOVING CASTLE TRAILER - downloadable here:
... ...For those not paying attention, HOWL'S MOVING CASTLE is a marvellous book by Diana Wynne Jones, one of my favourite authors (and favourite people), and it's Mr Miyazaki's next film. The clip looks like it's going to be a very faithful adaptation, which are mostly the best kind.
USATODAY.com - Amherst shows its affection for Eric Carle
...WHEREAS the year 2004 is the 75th birthday of Eric Carle and the 35th anniversary of the very first publication of The Very Hungry Caterpillar, "Now, therefore, we the members of Amherst Select Board, proclaim June 20, 2004 as Eric Carle day in Amherst."...