Recently in ACHUKA Category
Worth a read... + resulting comments
It's a new weekly children's story comic launching next month. Visit the website for 'early bird' subscription offers...
http://www.theherald.co.uk/features/features/display.var.2160361.0.In_my_view_Anthony_Horowitz.phpAnthony Horowitz Interview - The Herald
Interesting Guardian blog discussion about reviewers and reviewing, with contributions by Adele Geras, Meg Rosoff and (just now if briefly) myself.
featured in The Observer by Carole Cadwalladr
I saw Donald Sutherland interviewed on Jonathan Ross on Friday night. It was midly entertaining, in an end-of-week kind of way. This interview in The Observer was much more effective, however, in communicating the personality of the man. One of the reasons why children's authors and illustrators remain low profile is that they are so rarely afforded the luxury of a feature interview. And when they are the subject of a feature in one of those highly laudable publications such as Books for Keeps it tends to be, by comparison with Cadwalldr's skillfully vivid rendition, earnestly bland. There are some exceptions. Which makes the loss of Dina Rabinovitch all the more tragic. Her profiles in The Guardian were exceptional in that they approached children's writers just as if they were any other part of the entertainment industry - in other words, as if they were actors or musicians. She was as good a profile writer as Cadwalldr (whose work I don't really know, but who certainly did a good job here). It is easy to be dismissive of the effect a good feature or profile can have. The writers, after all, are not reviewers, or critics, but mere journalists or hacks - so the argument goes.
To my mind, it's not more review space that children's books need, it's more interview and profile columns.
[Posted to provoke comment!]
Simon & Schuster UK Ltd today announced the joint UK and US acquisition of a new fantasy trilogy aimed at young adults from début author, Sarah Rees Brennan.
The deal, which is for US and UK rights, including audio, was negotiated by Ingrid Selberg, Publishing Director of Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, Karen Wojtyla, Executive Editor of Margaret K. McElderry Books, and Kristin Nelson of Nelson Literary Agency, LLC.
Ingrid Selberg, Publishing Director, comments "Sarah Rees Brennan is an amazing new talent and we are thrilled to add her to our list of stunning début authors. The Demon's Lexicon is a compelling tale, full of mystery, passion and danger, set in the dark shadows of contemporary London. Fans of Stephanie Meyer, Holly Black and Cassandra Clare will welcome this new voice."
The first book in the series will publish in the UK in paperback, summer of 2009, followed by Book 2 in 2010 and Book 3 in 2011.
Sarah Rees Brennan was born and raised in Ireland. She has lived and worked in New York and London but she has now returned to Ireland to write and use as a home base for her future adventures. Visit Sarah online at www.sarahreesbrennan.com.
Although The Demon's Lexicon will be her first novel, the Irish author already has a large fan base for her writing, and has developed a wide audience through her popular blog, http://mistful.livejournal.com/, where she writes movie parodies, book reviews, original stories and fan fiction, and has over four thousand registered visitors.
