The Places You Will Go

JK Rowling wins Hans Christian Andersen literature award | Books | guardian.co.uk

Cash in hand ... JK Rowling receives the Hans Christian Andersen literature award in Odense. Photograph: Kim Rune/Empics Entertainment

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JK Rowling has become the first winner of a new Danish award, the Hans Christian Andersen literature prize. The author accepted the 500,000 kroner (£60,000) award yesterday at a ceremony in Odense, Denmark, the birthplace of the fairy tale writer.

Michelle Paver wins Guardian children's fiction prize | Books | guardian.co.uk

Michelle Paver, winner of the Guardian children's fiction prize.

Photograph: Sarah Lee for the Guardian

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The writer Michelle Paver has won the 2010 Guardian children's fiction prize for the concluding volume of her bestselling Chronicles of Ancient Darkness series, Ghost Hunter. Set in an imagined prehistory, the series follows a young boy called Torak, who finds he can communicate with a wolf cub, and becomes his companion.

The Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award 2011

The nominees (175 candidates representing 62 different countries) of the 2011 award have been announced and can be viewed as a pdf. The list comprises authors, illustrators, oral storytellers and promoters of reading from around the world.

The winner will be announced on 29th March, 2011 in Vimmerby, Sweden (the birthplace of Astrid Lindgren) and at the Bologna Book Fair.

 

Animal passions: David Sedaris's modern fables | Books | The Observer

The vigilant rabbit is appointed security guard by the anxious creatures of the forest. Illustration: Ian Falconer

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The award-winning writer David Sedaris has given Aesop's Fables a modern twist in his latest book, Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk. Here, we publish two exclusive extracts featuring Rabbit, a psychopathic security guard, and a judgmental hairdresser.

The Guardian Children's Fiction Prize Shortlist

Now by Morris Gleitzman (Puffin)

Unhooking the Moon by Gregory Hughes (Quercus)

The Ogre of Oglefort by Eva Ibbotson (Macmillan)

Ghost Hunter by Michelle Paver (Orion)

The winner will be announced on October 8.

Editor: Kaye Webb

By DAPHNE LEE

 

From Tots to Teens, StarMag

 

WHEN I was a child growing up in the 70s and 80s in Segamat and Batu Pahat, Johore, I often received books as gifts. Many of them were Puffins, but I don’t think the publisher’s name was something I was really conscious of then. What I did notice, after a while, was the name Kaye Webb. It appeared on the synopsis page, above the book’s title – Editor: Kaye Webb.

 

I didn’t then know what an editor was or did, but I supposed she must be quite important to have her name appear even before the author’s own. Somehow, I decided that Kaye Webb was the name that guaranteed a good read – not Puffin Books, but Kaye Webb.

Ronnie's War by Bernard Ashley | Book review | Books | The Guardian

I have mentioned before in these pages that we live now in a publishing world which frequently seems to equate size with merit; the big fuss is aimed at the (literally) big books. In such a world, the short book is often overlooked, on the mistaken principle, I believe, that you can't say anything weighty if you don't use enough words to require the felling of half an acre of woodland. The truth is that a few words in the hands of a skilful writer can be worth a few paragraphs from someone apparently holding shares in Scandinavian paper mills.

Five Get Updated

From Tots to Teens, StarMag

SO you must have heard by now that Enid Blyton’s Famous Five books will be revised in order to make them more accessible to 21^stcentury readers.

No, the five young detectives will not be carrying iPhones and Tweeting about their adventures: “Something fishy’s going on at the abandoned mill”, “High tea at Cherry Tree Farm was simply delicious and now I can’t button my jeans”; “I hate doing the dishes. I wish I were a boy L”; “Woof … wooooof .. grrr!”), but certain expressions will be updated because research has shown that phrases like “mercy me”, “awful swotter” and “very peculiar” are keeping children from truly understanding and enjoying the books. Those phrases will be changed to “oh no”, “bookworm” and “very strange” respectively.

Well, I don’t buy it for a moment. After all, Malaysians have enjoyed Blyton’s books for decades and had no problems with the “queer” language. If children can cope with specially and newly invented words like muggles and apparate (in Harry Potter), why shouldn’t they be able to make sense, from context, of terms like “school tunic” and “school mistress”?

  It’s all very peculiar … I mean, strange.

Not Your Typical Kid

From Tots to Teens, StarMag

THERE is a scene in The Mozart Season when the main character, Allegra, starts getting stressed about not being like other children her age. Her brother who is by no means your average teenager either, starts taking the piss, teasing her about the tragedy of not wanting to hang out at malls all day and obsess about boys and clothes.

 

Allegra does worry about her appearance and is starting to feel prickly about the opposite sex, but what she’s mostly concerned about is playing Mozart’s 4^th violin concerto just right.

 

If she did spend all her time doing her nails and styling her hair, Allegra would of course be in another book, perhaps by Cecily von Ziegesar or Zoey Dean. However, like most of the young protagonists in critically acclaimed, award-winning children’s and YA novels, Allegra is not a typical kid.

 

Usually, these characters so beloved of award committees are complex and eccentric individuals who think deeply and feel intensely, and are prone to bouts of melancholy. They also usually love to read.

 

Perhaps they are created in the image of the writers who remember only too well their youth, buried in books while their peers sunned themselves in barely-there bikinis. Perhaps the award committee members are wishful thinkers, wanting to believe that these kids do exist outside the pages of the books they are in. However, I doubt they reflect the reality of most American or British or (name any nationality) children.

 

That’s why I love them though. I love the quirky characters, the unusual love of words, the over-active imagination, the overwrought emotions. Thing is, these characters escape being and sounding like every melodramatic, emo teen you’ve ever known because they usually really do have something serious to deal with. (Note to emo teens: Please stop talking about and posting on Facebok and Twitter every minor detail in your life as though it’s a major catastrophe. It’s just embarrassing.)

 

The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner by Stephenie Meyer | Books | guardian.co.uk

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The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner by Stephenie Meyer

Stephenie Meyer promises a 'monster' in her latest Twilight tale, The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner, but doesn't deliver, says Imogen Russell Williams.

Photograph: AP Photo / David Stone / Little, Brown and Company

In Stephenie Meyer's introduction to her latest Twilight tale, The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner, she whets her fans' appetites by suggesting that in this novel she's "stepped into the shoes of … a 'real' vampire – a hunter, a monster". Any readers frustrated by the mundane suburban detail of Meyer's previous Twilight books – vampires who play baseball, drive Volvos and give each other tasteful, thoughtful gifts – might be tempted to perk up. Sadly, it's a folorn hope. One of Meyer's notable weaknesses is that she can't bear any of her narrators to have pasts or morals blacker than dove-grey. We're promised a wild, amoral, bloodthirsty teen protagonist, but what we get is Bree. Despite a few gritty touches, there's never any danger she's going to get into real trouble after running away from an abusive father in her early life. While starving on the streets she carefully avoids becoming a "junkie ho" before getting suckered by the promise of a cheeseburger, and subsequently being turned into a vampire. OK, she exsanguinates a prostitute here and there, but she spends most of the novella offering her new vamp boyfriend, Diego, high fives and double-wrapping the books with which she whiles away the daylight hours, because she "hates water-damaged pages". In fact, Bree is a thinly-disguised, bloodsucking version of Meyer's first Twilight heroine, Bella Swan – geeky, dependent on males to protect her and think for her, and utterly devoid of black-hearted, kick-ass joie-de-vivre.