The Places You Will Go

Age Ain't Nothin' But a Numberl

The final Tots to Teens of 2007 (and next week's: the first of 2008) see me struggling to find something interesting to say. 2007 has been a crazy-busy year and I need a holiday.

But, I'm looking forward to the library, which we hope to launch in March.

I think a good children's library will help in encouraging children to read - so long as their parents don't interfere. Half the fun is making your own choices and mistakes, experiementing with genres and discovering what floats your boat. It's strange how the people in charge of books for children seem to have forgotten why they loved to read when they were kids.

Red-headed rebel

Pippi Longstocking annoys me to death, but I'd still choose her over Pollyanna.

Lives of the rich, famous and shameless

Yes, sex sells!

By DAPHNE LEE

An author testifies to the truth about the long-held belief among TV producers and tabloid newspaper editors that sex sells – much to the chagrin of earnest literary prize judges, no doubt...

NIGEL Cawthorne, author of more than 80 books, is probably best known for his Sex Lives series, comprising, so far, a dozen books that catalogue the sexual habits of the world’s rich and powerful, famous and shameless.

The 56-year-old British author was in Singapore at the beginning of the month to speak at the Singapore Writers Festival. He was supposed to head a panel discussion on the, erm, ins and outs of writing sex scenes but, unfortunately, this event did not go ahead as planned.

Cawthorne spoke, instead, on being a hired gun. Many of his books are commissioned and he says he never turns down an assignment if the money is good. Also, even when he comes up with his own idea for a book, he will only continue writing it once a publisher makes a commitment to it.

True Story

I think Sherman Alexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian would make a great Christmas present. The bloke I've asked to review the book isn't as impressed as this old woman though. Look out for his review, due out in StarTwo in the next few weeks.

But it's not the end

Terry Pratchett, author of the Discworld novels, has announced that he has a rare form of early-onset Alzheimer's.

Just Read It

The Star never reviewed any of the books in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials Trilogy so it decided to correct this oversight by running a review of Northern Lights to coincide with the 6th December release of the  New Line Cinema film based on the book (renamed in the States as The Golden Compass to avoid confusing it with Jennifer Donnelly's A Northern Light, this is also the name of the movie).

The reviewer, who loves the books, was not impressed with the film, saying, amongst other things, "they turned it into a cliched good-vs-evil thing, which is NOT what the story is about, and eliminated Pullman's technique of slowly giving out answers - instead they spent pretty much every moment explaining things!!! [It was] so dull and the dialogue was so cliched and completely missed out the variety of voices Pullman has."

I have yet to watch The Golden Compass and I think that even if I decide to, I can wait til it's released on DVD.

Philip Pullman told Roger Sutton, in a Horn Book podcast that, "To be truly happy with [a film adaption of a book] you have to be the director as well as the scriptwriter and the star and the composer and the producer and everything else because the whole nature of the film obviously is collaborative. It’s the work of many, many people and the writer, even of the script, is not at the centre of it. The director is at the centre of it, and the writer of the original book on which the film is based is a long way away from the centre of the action. So inevitably there are things that, as writers, we always think we’d have done that  differently, or “I wouldn’t have put the camera here, I’d have put it there."

You can read the entire transcript of the interview here and listen to it here.

A Puff of Magic

By DAPHNE LEE

Tots to Teens

PARENTS, do you remember the song Puff, the Magic Dragon by folk group Peter, Paul and Mary? It was released in 1963 and reached the number two spot on the American pop charts. The song was banned in Singapore and Hong Kong because of its supposed references to drugs, particularly marijuana, but lyricist Peter Yarrow insists that Puff is simply a song about the passing pf childhood and the loss of innocence.