The Places You Will Go

Big Bird and Soup at the Costas

I'm terrible at keeping up with awards!

On the same day the National Book Awards were given out, the Costa Book Awards 2008 nominees were announced.

The children's books in the running are ...

Ostrich Boys by Keith Gray
The Carbon Diaries by Saci Lloyd
Just Henry by Michelle Magorian
Broken Soup by Jenny Valentine

The results will be announced on 6th January 2008.

Room to Write

I keep meaning to write about this wonderful series on The Guardian Unlimited site. It's called Writers' Rooms and is about where authors' write. Usually there's a picture of the room and (if the author is alive) some words from him/her explaining what's what.

Here's a picture of Judith Kerr's room. She wrote and illustrated the Mog books, and it was her Tiger Who Came to Tea that started my love affair with picture books.

She wrote about the room: "The original Mog used to come up here. She would sit on my lap and nudge the brush with her nose. She lived to be nearly 20."

Space to Read

From Tots to Teens, StarMag

LAST Sunday I visited the public library in my neighbourhood. I like libraries - I used them a lot when I was a poor student in Singapore and England - and I think they and librarians play an important role in encouraging children to read, and nurturing those who already love books. I'd heard both good and bad things about the neighbourhood library and wanted to see for myself. I'm still finding my way with the library I've set up and I wanted to check out this library's collection, and the way it is run.

Who Wrote That?

From StarMag

Review by DAPHNE LEE

ANONYMITY
By John Mullan
Publisher: Faber and Faber, 374 pages
(ISBN: 978-0571195145)

AS a journalist (lately a freelance one) I have never published work anonymously but have done so using various pseudonyms. My reasons have included the desire to disassociate myself from what I consider hack jobs, and to avoid trouble in instances when the subject matter might be deemed controversial. Pseudonimity may be as effective as anonymity when used to hide the identity of the author.

Many classic works of literature were first published without their author's names or under false names. It was so common to publish anonymously or puedonymously in the 18th and 19th century that a Dictionary of the Anonymous and Pseudonymous Literature of Great Britain was published in 1882 - begun in the 1850s, it ran to four volumes when finally completed. In 1934, additional volumes were published and in 1962, the final edition numbered nine volumes in all. Even so, the book does not list works whose authors' identities have not been revealed - and a quick search online will reveal that there are many famous quotes that remain anonymous.

In Anonymity, John Mullan explores why many authors of English literature chose to publish anonymously. He looks at the different circumstances and motives behind authors' decisions to hide who they were; the effect an author's anonymity had on his or her readers; and the reaction of the public and press when the author's identity was finally revealed.

Hot Men of Children's Literature II: Brian Selznick

I started this in January this year and then forgot all about it!

So, after nearly a year, my next pick is Brian Selznick, American illustrator and author.

Selznick won the 2008 Carnegie Medal for The Invention of Hugo Cabret, an illustrated novel that functions like a picture book: the story is told equally with words and pictures.

Oliver!

I found out on Monday that Oliver Jeffers will be coming to KL for the British Council's Animating Literature conference in February 2009. I'm so excited!

Love his books especially Lost and Found. Really looking forward to his latest book, The Great Paper Caper. Have looked it up on Amazon and it looks like it'll probably be on my column's Christmas recommendations list.

I'm hoping Jeffers will do a workshop at the library, and at least one reading at a bookstore.

Jeffers was this blog's first (and, so far, only) Hot Man of Children's Literature back in January this year!

His books, so far:

Lost and Found

How to Catch a Star

The Incredible Book Eating Boy

The Way Back Home

The Great Paper Caper

A Winning Sight

The National Book Award for Young People's Literature was awarded to What I Saw and How I Lied by Judy Blundell. You can read a short interview with Blundell here, and more about the winners in the other categories here.

The Widening of Elesh's Reading Horizons

My 11-year-old, Elesh, who loves Mister Midnight, the Chronicles of Narnia and encyclopaedias, is now also a fan of Lois Lowry. He finished The Giver last week and is now reading Number the Stars.

It started as a form of punishment. He was being a whiny pre-teen so I said that he would have to read a book of my choice. He was supposed to read one chapter a day, at bedtime, and he began reluctantly, but soon got into it. After a couple of nights, he was enthusiastically discussing the chapters with me and he would often read an extra one or two.

When he finished The Giver he asked me to choose him another book and I picked Number the Stars because I'd just read and enjoyed it myself.

You know, I wasn't fussed about him liking gory and disgusting (and silly) fiction as I do think he's entitled to choose what he wants to read, but I'm thrilled that he likes Lowry. He says he will try the Famous Five next. I'm recommending Five Go on a Hike Together, my favourite book in the series.

Puffin Pleasure

By DAPHNE LEE

From Tots to Teens, StarMag

WHEN I was little, I used to turn to the back of my Puffins (books published my Penguin's children's literature imprint) and sadly read the ads for the Puffin Club. "If you have enjoyed reading this book and would like to know about others which we publish, why not join the Puffin Club?"

Why not indeed? Well, because I didn't live in the UK or the Republic of Ireland, that's why. If I did, membership would have cost me 5 shillings (25 pence/RM1.40) and I would have received a magazine, the Puffin Post four times a year, a badge and a membership card. And I'd have been able to enter competitions and win prizes, including books.

Some Puffins (depending on when they were published) included information on how you could join the club if you lived in Australia. Alas, I lived in Malaysia and joining the Puffin Club was something I could only dream of. By the way, back when I was a child, the Puffin imprint was, to me, a guarantee of excellence.

I longed for a bookcase filled with Puffins - my books had synopses of other Puffins in their end pages and I longed to read them. Just a couple of years ago I came across a copy of The Dolls' House, by Rumer Godden, in a bookstore and remembered that I'd read a synopsis of it at the back of my Puffin edition of Ted Hughes' How the Whale Became and Other Stories! The memory of reading and re-reading about those elusive Puffins is still a powerful one, even after more than 30 years have passed.

No Confusion

By DAPHNE LEE

From Tots to Teens, StarMag

PROFESSOR Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion, announced two weeks ago that he would be leaving his post as professor of science and understanding at Oxford. One of the things Dawkins plans to do during his retirement is to write "a children's book on how to think about the world - critical thinking contrasted with mythical thinking."

Dawkins wishes to warn children about the dangers of believing in "anti-scientific" fairytales, including fantasy and science fiction. He was quoted in several British papers saying, "I would like to know whether there is any evidence that bringing children up to believe in spells and wizards has a pernicious effect. So many of the stories I read allowed the possibility of frogs turning into princes and I'm not sure whether that has a sort of insidious affect on rationality. Perhaps it's something for research."