The Places You Will Go

Cost Vs Quality

from Tots to Teens, Star2 on Sunday, 18th September, 2011

I’VE been exchanging emails for the last couple of months with Deborah Ahenkorah, the young Ghanaian who co-founded the Golden Baobab Prize, a literary award that aims to inspire African writers to create African literature for African children.

Ahenkorah grew up reading British and American books and this made her sensitive to the lack of African children’s books. Malaysian readers can surely relate to that. Did any of us grow up reading Malaysian children’s books of good quality?

Annabel Pitcher: 'Nobody wants to write about a perfect family' | Children's books | guardian.co.uk

The first agent Annabel Pitcher approached with her debut novel, My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece, may well be kicking herself now. "Commercially disastrous" was her crisp rejection of the novel that went on to be the subject of an auction war between publishers in both the UK and the US, a crossover sales success and is in the running for the Guardian children's fiction prize, among other awards.

Salman Rushdie's Luka fires up animation imaginations | Children's books | guardian.co.uk

A children's novel by Booker prize-winning author Sir Salman Rushdie has inspired animation students at London's Kingston University to create short films based on the book.

Luka and the Fire of Life tells the story of 12-year-old Luka Khalifa who, along with his two loyal companions, a bear called Dog and a dog called Bear, is on a quest to steal the fire of life to revive his beloved storyteller father Rashid who has fallen into a deep sleep. The book was written by Rushdie as a gift for his son Milan on his 12th birthday.

It inspired students Han Byul Lee, Sam Falconer, Irsiz Heathershaw, So Hewi Lee and Dawn Smit to create this short film, which was judged the winner.

The Child in Tomi Ungerer Remains Undimmed - NYTimes.com

An Author Embodies His Books’ Childlike Spirit

Christopher Capozziello for The New York Times

The illustrator and author Tomi Ungerer is experienceing a career renaissance. Several of his children’s books have been reissued and a documentary about his life will be released this fall. More Photos »

By PAMELA PAUL

Published: June 28, 2011

Book Review: The Rescuers | Hornbooks and Inkwells | The Great Bear

By MEGHAN COX GURDON

View Full Image

S.D. Schlinder

An illustration by S.D. Schindler from Hornbooks and Inkwells.

Margery Sharp's mouse-centric 1959 adventure, The Rescuers, has only been out of print for a decade, but it is well worth revisiting. For one thing, it has just been reissued in handsome hardback as part of the New York Review Children's Collection, with drawings by Garth Williams. For another, this new incarnation (149 pages, $14.95) prov des an excuse to rescue the story for a generation of children who might otherwise know only the animated 1977 Disney movie of the same name. As with most children's classics, Ms. Sharp's original work is much funnier and more interestingly textured than the high-fructose movie version.

Monstrously Wonderful

By DAPHNE LEE

From Tots to Teens, StarMag, 3rd July 2011

IN a radio interview, Patrick Ness said that he wept during the writing of A Monster Calls (Walker Books, 215 pages, ISBN: 978-1406334906). “If I’m writing anything that’s this difficult and I’m not upset, then I’m not doing it right,” he said. “If I’m not crying why would I think anybody else will be moved?”

When I received my review copy of the book, I read the last couple of pages and found myself simply blubbing. I then read the book all the way through and, at the end, I cried again. Ness has obviously done it right.

A Monster Calls was a book that the Irish author Siobhan Dowd wanted to write. She had made notes, had imagined the characters, planned the premise, written a beginning. But Dowd died before she could write the book. She had cancer and she was only 47.

Stories that are the Cat's Whiskers

By DAPHNE LEE

From Tots to Teens, 19th June, 2011

So, I hope you’re eager to learn of more fictional felines this week.

One of my favourite novels about cats is Jennie by Paul Gallico. Unfortunately, it is no longer in print. However, you can find secondhand copies online.

It’s about a boy, Peter, who is transformed into a cat and is cared for by a cat, called Jennie, who
has been abandoned by her owners. If you’re familiar with the way cats behave, you will realise that
Gallico was obviously very fond of and familiar with cats. In fact, he also wrote The Silent Miaow
which is a manual, supposedly written by a cat (translated from the feline into English by Gallico),
that “instructs stray kittens and homeless cats in how to obtain, captivate, and dominate the families of their choice.”

There’s also The Three Lives of Thomasina (readers of a certain age may remember the 1960s Disney adaptation) and Honourable Cat, a collection of poems and essays about cats.

Furry Muses

From Tots to Teens, The Star

12th June 2011

ABOUT three weeks ago, we adopted a cat (left). His name is Igor and he is four years old, which makes him about 32 in human years – a bachelor in his prime, although, as he’s been “fixed”, he won’t be fighting other Toms for the love of the neighbourhood she-cats.

Igor is beautiful – large and muscular, with white fur, touched with cream, and ice-blue eyes. He has a mean stare and I have this theory that he amuses himself by thinking of ways to kill us in our sleep. However, I don’t think he will act on his fantasies just yet as I feel he is rather pleased with his success in training us to scratch his back and tickle his chin and toss his catnip-filled mouse in the air.

Igor is a great source of amusement and joy to the whole family. I think it’s only a matter of time before he sneaks into my writing. Already, during my evening walk the other day, I was thinking him into a book. The things he gets up to – he got very excited over the unrolling of my yoga mat – and even his expressions, which range from dreamy to scathing, are all begging to be made into stories and turned into illustrations.

Guardian children's fiction prize | Books | The Guardian

Guardian children's fiction prize

Julia Eccleshare introduces the longlist of eight titles

David Almond at his home in Humshaugh, Northumberland. Photograph: Mark Pinder for the Guardian

There are eight books on the longlist for this year's prize. Established in 1967, the award has an outstanding list of previous winners, including Leon Garfield, who won the inaugural prize for Devil-in-the-Fog, Alan Garner, Joan Aiken, Ted Hughes, Philip Pullman, Jacqueline Wilson, Meg Rosoff, Patrick Ness and, last year, Michelle Paver. It is the only children's prize to be judged by writers; I was chair of this year's judges Michelle Paver, Julia Golding and Marcus Sedgwick.

Different Seasons

 

From Tots to Teens, 17th April 2011

By DAPHNE LEE

ALLEGRA (Ally to her friends and family) Katz has been playing the piano since she was four. She’s now 13 and belongs to a pre-college music programme at the Juilliard Music School. Her dad is a violinist with a famous quartet, and her mother trained in opera and now sings the blues in jazz bars in Manhattan’s Alphabet City.

Ally’s life revolves around music. She has to practice six hours a day and spends practically the whole of every Saturday at Juilliard, attending various music workshops and classes – theory, chamber, composition, solfege, master class, and her piano lesson proper with the relentlessly demanding and unsympathetic Miss Pringle.

“It felt like the world was passing me by,” says Ally when she can’t make it to her best friend, Opal’s art exhibition. Slumber parties, just hanging out eating hotdogs or watching movies, dating, all the things that most teenagers take for granted have to take a back seat to her music career, or rather making sure that she has music career to look forward to – “How do you get to Carnegie Hall?” “Practice.”