children's & YA recommendations on the go
This very fine piece in Guardian Review (extracted from I Murdered My Library, published as a Kindle Single available at www.amazon.co.uk at 99p) is a must-read for anyone who loves reading, and loves books.
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/may/17/linda-grant-author-killed-books-library-murder
My Independent Bookshop is a new initiative in the UK that allows any reader to set up their shop with twelve books at a time on their shelves—changing the display as often as they choose by season, genre or simply their mood. The owners of the shelf can earn a 8% commission from their favorite indie bookstore. Today the service gets out of beta and over 400 bookshops are opening in the UK.
via 400 My Independent Bookshops Launch in the UK.
The ‘bookshops’ opening today, following a month-long invite-only beta period, include several high-profile authors and book lovers from Irvine Welsh to Simon Mayo to Carys Bray, many of the UK’s independent bookshops from South London stalwart Dulwich Books to the UK’s smallest island bookshop, Hayling Island Books, and hundreds of specially selected VIP readers.
E-books will not replace printed children’s books, bestselling children’s author Judith Kerr told the BBC.
Some books are “alright” as e-books, but only if they’re the type of book that is read once then cast aside, she said. “I don’t think printed books will ever disappear, they’re a totally different thing.”
via Judith Kerr: E-books will not replace print for children | The Bookseller.
Before you published your first book in 1977, you were a bookseller. What do you think about what is happening to bookshops now?
With the book trade, if anyone tells you they know what’s going on, they’re lying. Everyone is winging it, and it changes from month to month. It’s quite alarming. Bookshops are closing every week because Amazon and the wholesalers are deliberately squeezing them out. If you’re notreviewed in the nationals and on the front table in Waterstone’s, you may as well set fire to your books. I think soon there will be a few big-name authors at the front [of the average bookshop] and cookbooks and art books at the back. I’m depressing myself now. Maybe one ought to get a proper job.
You have magnificent facial hair. How did that come about?
At the age of 19, I inherited an electric shaver which gave me a terrible rash. I decided to stop inflicting this pain on myself. The amazing question is not "Why do you have a beard?" but "Why do 99% of the male population shave every day?" It is quite unnatural.
Children’s book publishers, agents, authors, and artists from around the world descended on Bologna, Italy, this week for the 51st annual Bologna Children’s Book Fair. While official attendance figures aren’t yet available, program director Roberta Chinni told PW that she was "very happy" with attendance and that the publishers she had spoken with were pleased with the number of appointments and overall energy of the fair. For those who couldn’t attend, here’s an overview of the fair in photos.
Click through for the gallery
via Bologna 2014: Photos from the Fair.
Ten years ago there was talk of taking the price off book jackets leaving shops to charge whatever they wanted, on the basis that RRP (recommended retail prices) had already become meaningless.
The Guardian reported authors’ reactions to the proposal – and, it being the Gaurdian, the link referenced in the original blog post still works.
http://www.achuka.co.uk/achockablog/archives/2004/03/books-are-not-e.html
Shine author Candy Gourlay on ‘The Invention of the Teenager’ – a really thoughtful and thought-provoking blog post with a large number of video-clip references.
Very Highly Recommended
via Notes from the Slushpile: The Invention of the Teenager.
The events for Children and Young Adults at this year’s Oxford Literary Festival have now all been booked and confirmed, and what a fine programme Nicolette Jones has put together.
Follow the link below to see the full listing and to book your tickets.
http://oxfordliteraryfestival.org/literature-events/2014/children-young-adults
Henry Jeffreys, writing in The Spectator
[you might also want to read this piece: Why do most children’s books have a liberal bias? also in The Spectator]
I think I might be a bad parent; whenever my wife is out, I plonk our two-year-old daughter in front of the television. The other day we watched a rainbow nation of children marching around the British countryside singing ‘Let’s make sure we recycle every day’, and I realised that something has changed in children’s programming since I was little. These young recyclers are from a show called Green Balloon Club, which is ostensibly a wildlife programme, but the song had more in common with one of those Dear Leader dirges you see in North Korea. It wasn’t education, it was propaganda.
The purpose of children’s stories has always been to educate as well as entertain. I was brought up on the Railway Stories by Revd W. Awdry, which later became the TV series Thomas the Tank Engine. These stories have a strict moral code: when an engine misbehaves he is chastised and often punished by the Fat Controller. In a story that terrified me as a child, my namesake Henry the Green Engine refused to leave a tunnel because he didn’t want the rain to mark his new paint job. To teach him a lesson, the Fat Controller had him bricked up in the tunnel. The lesson was clear — don’t be vain about your shiny new paint job.
Compare this with a programme on CBeebies (the channel of choice for my daughter) called Mike the Knight. Mike is a knight in training and each episode consists of a ho-hum quest such as stopping the local Vikings stealing pies. He’s not a very like-able figure, Mike, arrogant and stupid, just the sort of character who might benefit from a bit of bricking up in a tunnel. Through over-confidence he initially fails in his quest and becomes disheartened. Rather than tell him where he’s going wrong, his companions — a couple of camp dragons and his sister — bolster his confidence and eventually, with a bit of luck and a lot of help from his friends, the quest is completed successfully. Everyone then tells Mike that he ‘has saved the day’.
via Agitprop for toddlers: the oddly strident politics of CBeebies » The Spectator.
A single page listing all the titles (bar those currently featured) picked out in ACHUKA’s category pages during 2013.
The list is randomised on each page load.
