Matt Whyman is keeping a blog while working for the British Council in the Yemen.
Recommended
ACHUKA: July 2007 Archives
The problem with this online version of a thought-provoking piece about the quality of fiction for boys is that it has no byline. If someone, can let me know whose opinions these are I'd be really grateful.
...The Chaos Code (Faber ?7.99) is clearly intended as a Da Vinci Code for kids. Now I've read no further than the first page of The Da Vinci Code, but I gather that, although badly written, it does at least have plenty of pace and incident. The Chaos Code is also badly written. (A dead giveaway is that the characters invariably express good nature or amusement or friendliness or reconciliation by grinning; a book where the characters keep grinning at each other is never worth reading.) Unfortunately, it is also lacking in pace and incident. Okay, it's got monsters made of sand and a hidden palace in the South American jungle and the Lost City of Atlantis and quite a few fights. Yet it's all curiously lifeless, padded out by pages of tedious conversations in which the characters give each other lectures about the Knights Hospitallers of Jerusalem. This won't make boys read. It's more likely to put them off. Dean Vincent Carter, author of Hunting Season (Random House ?10.99) has been called "the next Stephen King". I've read some Stephen King and the big difference is that he knows what's frightening, and Dean Vincent Carter doesn't...
Recommended
The Bookseller has launched a series of blogs at www.theBookseller.com/blogs. The blogs will be written by journalists at The Bookseller as well as by industry commentators such as Scott Pack and Anthony Cheetham.Launch blogs include Lesley Agnew, manager of the Children's Bookshop in Muswell Hill, on "36 hours with Harry Potter"; Bookseller reporter Katherine Rushton on "Who won the PR battle over Harry?"; and Caroline Horn, The Bookseller's Children's news editor, on the price of children's books, plus other submissions from across the editorial team....
Interview: Why Michael Rosen will relish being the Children's Laureate
by Nick Tucker, The Independent
Highly Recommended
Harry Potter: Genius or garbage? | the Daily Mail
Have we become so intellectually destitute that we want to examine good and evil through the paradigm of a teenage boy? Potter has nothing to teach us about life or love or eternity that has not been said before and better. TANYA GOLD, Daily Mail
Harry Potter and the man who conjured up Rowling's millions | UK News | The Observer
Recommended profile of J. K. Rowling's agent, Christopher Little:
Throughout the canny construction of 'Brand Potter' - books, films, video games, and now even stamps - one figure has been ever present, like a shadow glimpsed in the cloisters of Hogwarts school. This enigmatic but utterly crucial influence is Christopher Little, literary agent, fierce protector of Rowling and, thanks to the boy wizard, now a millionaire many times over.
Interview: Shirley Hughes | Review | The Observer
Hughes's birthday is to be variously celebrated: there is a retrospective exhibition, A Life Drawing, at London's the Illustration Cupboard. A new book, Alfie and the Big Boys, is published by Random House on 2 August. Her books have sold 12 million copies worldwide (Alfie makes up a quarter of sales). And she has just won an award for the best book ever to have won the Kate Greenaway Medal (to add to a list of honours, including an OBE for services to children's literature). Dogger is the story of an undistinguished, beloved toy dog who gets lost. It is about security and kindness - a perfect comfort read. I'm glad it won the prize: if I'd had the chance, I would have voted for it myself. And as we walk up to Hughes's study, I ask if there might be any chance of meeting the original Dogger...
See also (Recommended) this profile, which starts in very similar vein, by Anne Simspn in The Herald:
http://www.theherald.co.uk/features/features/display.var.1546620.0.0.php
Harry ever after? - Times Online
With reference to the title of this entry, just consider for a moment what Barry Cunningham and the authors of Tunnels (see Guardian review, blogged futher down) will have thought on reading the folllowing:
Such is the desperation to get in on a $7 billion global business that when J. K. Rowling's original editor, Barry Cunningham, announced last month that he had found “the new Harry Potter” in a debut novel called Tunnels there was a flurry of publicity and many Hollywood studios instructed producers to bid for the rights without having read a word of it. A number of them read my reviews in The Times and asked my opinion, so I was able to tell them not to bother. There is far, far better stuff out there... ... AMANDA CRAIG
Write and wrong - Times Online
Anne Fine and Nick Tucker reflect on the Tintin/racism/censorship debate...
Guardian Unlimited: Arts blog - books: Why don't teenagers think reading is fun?
Interesting exchange of views here, kicked off by Adele Geras in response to Julia Eccleshare's opener...
In end, Potter magic extends only so far - The Boston Globe
Can't possibly link all the media attention to the end of the Harry Potter sequence. This piece covers most of the angles...
Recommended
Grant Slatter, author of the Oddies series of early readers, has been selected as Hot Men Of Children's Literature, Part 40
Fearless by Tim Lott
Jacqueline Wilson thinks Tim Lott's first children's book (he is already an
accomplished novelist for adults) is "an immediate children's classic".
Find out if you agree - enter our competition and win a signed copy!
What was the title of Tim Lott's first novel?
Answers with FEARLESS in the
subject line....
Recommended Blog - in Spanish
Harry Potter is not magic for everybody | Business | The Observer
,,,,despite the expected sales bonanza, HSBC analyst Paul Smiddy says Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows will amount to a 'black hole' in summer trade when it goes on sale on 21 July. The majority of booksellers will lose money on the title as they try to match the aggressive pricing of Tesco, Asda and Amazon, while no sensible rival publisher would dare launch a decent title against it, he says...
Recommended market feature in The Observer by Zoe Wood, with commentary by Robert McCrum
