Malorie Blackman the New Children's Laureate of the United Kingdom

Parents can be put off buying a book if it has a black character on the front cover, the new Children's Laureate of the United Kingdom has said.

Malorie Blackman, the 51-year-old author of dozens of books including the award-winning Noughts & Crosses series for teenagers, has said there was still a need for 'more ethnically diverse literature in this country'.

The author, from London, has said she will use her two-year tenure to 'bang the drum' for diversity.
She said there was a lack of black and Asian children in picture books and described feeling 'totally invisible' when she was younger due to never reading a book that featured a black child, The Telegraph has reported.

Children will go with any story as long as it's good but white adults sometimes think that if a black child's on the cover it is perhaps not for them.
'Books teach children to see the world through the eyes of others and empathise with others. It's about the story.

She also told the paper she wanted to spend her time as laureate focusing on older children and teenagers.

The mother-of-one, who worked as a computer programmer before becoming a full-time writer 23 years ago, said she will use her position to be an 'advocate' for public libraries and campaign against 'short-sighted' closures.

She said she owed her success to her local libraries when she was growing up in Lewisham, south-east London.

I will do everything I can to ensure our library service is maintained or improved especially when you look at other countries like South Korea which in 2012 initiated a programme to actually build 180 libraries and Russia are building libraries and we seem to be closing them and I just think its a very short-sighted move.

The author, whose novel Pig-Heart Boy was shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal and made into a BBC series, said it was 'a real honour' to be chosen for the role and that children's books needed a champion.

Elementary School Kids Exchange Toys for Books

In Hayward, California, an elementary school had kids exchange their toy guns for a book during “Strobridge Elementary Safety Day.”

According to Mercury News:

Strobridge Elementary Principal Charles Hill maintains that children who play with toy guns may not take real guns seriously.  He has devised a way to help kids think seriously about gun control in their own way:

All youngsters attending will be given a ticket to exchange for a book.

The event has drawn criticism from conservative corners, but nobody seems to be talking about the book part of the day. 

 No matter what one thinks about the political statement behind the event, remember that reading books over the summer can help kids of all backgrounds beat the summer slide that can be so devastating to a young reader.

A Tiger Baby Strikes Back!

Author Kim Wong Keltner writes about why she won't be a Tiger Mom to her daughter, Lucy.

Photo: Kim Wong Kelt …

 In her controversial memoir, "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother," Yale law professor Amy Chua defended her parenting methods, explaining how being a controlling "Chinese-style" parent drives Asian-American children to succeed in ways that permissive "Western-style" parenting does not.  But a recently released decade-long study of 444 Chinese-American families shows that the effect tiger parents have on their kids is almost exactly the opposite.

When Chua's book came out in 2011, Su Yeong Kim, an associate professor of human development and family sciences at the University of Texas, had already been studying the effects of tiger parenting on hundreds of Chinese-American families for more than a decade. Her report, "Does Tiger Parenting Exist? Parenting Profiles of Chinese Americans and Adolescent Developmental Outcomes," was recently published in the Asian American Journal of Psychology.

Compared with the supportive parenting profile, a tiger parenting profile was associated with lower GPA and educational attainment, as well as less of a sense of family obligation," Kim explained in her report. "It was also associated with more academic pressure, more depressive symptoms, and a greater sense of alienation.


"I don't have scientific hard evidence," Keltner told Yahoo! Shine in an interview. (Her book, which came out April 30, is based on her own experiences.) "But I'm 43 years old and my entire life I've met Asian kids who were under so much pressure or were so ashamed that they got a B, because no matter how hard they tried they felt they could never measure up."

The tiger-parenting style espoused by Chua has caused more problems in the Asian-American community than it has prevented, Keltner says. "Everything bad that is happening in American society as a whole is also present in the Asian-American community," she points out. "Date rapes, drug use, cheating in school, political embezzlement, and on." Other studies have shown that high-achieving, tiger-parented Chinese-American students experience higher levels of stress, depression, and anxiety than their less-intensely controlled peers.

But don't expect authoritarian parents to embrace the Kim's findings or change their extreme parenting style, Keltner cautions:

Chinese people don't want to hear that tiger parenting produces 'messed up losers,' " Keltner tells Yahoo! Shine. "Shame and saving face are so important in Chinese culture. No one in my culture is talking about this.

Raised by a strict and emotionally distant tiger mom, Keltner has chosen to bring up her own daughter, Lucy, 9, in a more intuitive, more "Western" way. In "Tiger Babies Strike Back," she writes about the loneliness and anxiety she says was caused by her tiger childhood; harsh words from her mother still resonate, more than 30 years later.

"These incidents from my childhood really influence how I'm raising my daughter," Keltner tells Yahoo! Shine. "I never want her to feel rotten inside. I knew that I wanted something different for my daughter.  We Chinese-American offspring of authoritative parents are all falsely imprisoned by our elders expectations and fears," she explains. "Our cultural tradition of 'not making trouble' keeps us from seeking help for mental illness, suicide rates are high, and still we live in denial."

"Not every Asian kid can be number one," she adds. "What happens to the rest of us?"

Boston Globe-Horn Book Winners Announced-2013

The winners of the 2013 Boston Globe-Horn Book Awards were revealed, honoring the best children’s picture book, fiction and and nonfiction for the year.

Building our House written and illustrated by Jonathan Bean won the picture book award.  Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell won the fiction award. Electric Ben: The Amazing Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin written and illustrated by Robert Byrd won the nonfiction award.
We’ve included all the honor winners below. The judges included Horn Book reviewer Sarah Ellis, children’s librarian Pamela Yosca and retired school librarian Karen Kosko.


The Horn Book’s editor in chief Roger Sutton had this comment:

The Boston Globe-Horn Book awards have always had an independent spirit and this year is no different … Each of the judges brings a unique perspective on children’s literature, which combined always makes for a wonderful variety and high quality of winners and honor books and almost always provides us with a few surprises as well.

PICTURE BOOK HONOR WINNERS:

Open this Little Book by Jesse Klausmeier, illustrated by Suzy Lee (Chronicle Books)
Black Dog written and illustrated by Levi Pinfold (Templar Books, an imprint of Candlewick Press)
FICTION HONOR WINNERS:
Seraphina by Rachel Hartman (Random House Books for Young Readers)
A Corner of White by Jaclyn Moriarty (Arthur A. Levine Books, an imprint of Scholastic Inc.)

 NONFICTION HONOR WINNERS:

Dreaming Up: A Celebration of Building written and illustrated by Christy Hale (Lee & Low Books)
Hand in Hand: Ten Black Men Who Changed America by Andrea Davis Pinkney and illustrated by Brian Pinkney (Disney/Jump at the Sun Books, an imprint of Disney Book Group.)

Ernest Hemingway's List of Books to Read

Jason Boog, editor of GalleyCat and managing editor of AppNewser, has written an interesting piece on Hemingway's list of books to read.

In 1934, the great novelist Ernest Hemingway made a list of books that all aspiring writers should read. Below, we’ve linked to free copies of most of the books on his massive list.

Open Culture has an article about how a young hobo and aspiring writer named Arnold Samuelson ended up getting writing advice from Hemingway himself. Check it out:

Hemingway advised Samuelson to avoid contemporary writers and compete only with the dead ones whose works have stood the test of time: “When you pass them up you know you’re going good.” He asked Samuelson what writers he liked. Samuelson said he enjoyed Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped and Henry David Thoreau’s Walden. “Ever read War and Peace?” Hemingway asked. Samuelson said he had not. “That’s a damned good book. You ought to read it. We’ll go up to my workshop and I’ll make out a list you ought to read.”

Free Books Recommended By Ernest Hemingway Himself:
 
The Blue Hotel by Stephen Crane (Part of The Monster & Other Stories collection)
The Open Boat by Stephen Crane (Part of Men, Women & Boats Collection)
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
Dubliners by James Joyce
Of Human Bondage by Somerset Maugham
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The Enormous Room by E.E. Cummings
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
Far Away and Long Ago by W.H. Hudson
The American by Henry James

If you want to get a real glimpse into the literary life of Ernest Hemingway, find a book or two in this list.  Be a Hemingway voyeur of sorts, and have fun!

Peter Rabbit and the Tale of a Rogue Publisher

Many of us enjoyed the film, Miss Potter, and the rise of Beatrix Potter to fame and glory.  We watched Warne Publishers take her from virtual unknown to super star of the literary world. Today brings a different slant to the Warne victory. 

The tale of consumer culture is an interesting and sad one, indeed. This is true especially in the children’s market, where the almost unimaginable monetary value of derivative merchandise, sequels, and spinoffs, and the control and manipulation of original creations through copyright and trademark, can degrade the very characteristics that distinguished the work in the first place.

Beatrix Potter’s The Tale of Peter Rabbit, has brought out the worst in companies trying to make as profit out of it.  Born in London in 1866, Potter was an assiduous student of animal anatomy and behavior from childhood on. She and her younger brother Bertram furnished their nursery with exotic pets, wild and domestic, bringing home mice, lizards, bats, frogs, birds, and, of course, rabbits. The children became determined amateur naturalists, documenting their finds in sketchbooks, never squeamish about studying dead specimens.

Potter first told the story of Peter Rabbit in 1893 in a picture-letter sent to the bedridden son of her former governess. Its simple line drawings introduce the principals — Peter and his siblings; his mother; and his nemesis, Mr. McGregor — while its tiny tale of temptation and trial in an English garden unfolds in simple perfection. She quickly secured a contract with publisher Frederick Warne, agreeing to redo the illustrations in color.

The book proved an immediate success on publication in October 1902, rapidly selling out a first printing of eight thousand copies.To her dismay, the firm failed to register copyright in the United States, leading to piracies and loss of revenue. Although she helped save the company in 1917, after embezzlement by another Warne brother nearly bankrupted it, she scolded them on quality, condemning a copy of Peter Rabbit’s Almanac for 1929 as “wretched.”

After Potter died in 1943 at the age of seventy-seven, Warne cast itself as the guardian of her legacy. But eventually the guardian began behaving badly, seeking to wring profits from its most famous long-eared property. In 1983, Warne was acquired by Penguin, itself owned by the international conglomerate Pearson, the largest book publisher in the world. 

Warne has applied for trademarks here and in the EU for every imaginable Peter Rabbit–related item that might feasibly be sold, from “books and texts in all media” to “toilet seat covers” and “meat extracts.”

Warne’s zealous pursuit of its rights has not deterred it from crass acts of its own. In 1987, the same year it published its painstakingly remade edition, the firm allowed Ladybird Books, a purveyor of cheap paperbacks owned by the parent company, Pearson, to market The Tale of Peter Rabbit with bowdlerized text, eliminating Potter’s dry wit, and replacing her illustrations with photos of stuffed animals.

 Warne was excoriated in The Times of London, which condemned the new edition as “Hamlet without the ghost, Othello without the handkerchief.” Undaunted, a few years later Warne took out an advertisement in The Bookseller — “Peter Rabbit™ Packs a Powerful Punch” — threatening those who wandered into its garden with “expensive legal action."  Have a look below:

 

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Coming to London West End!

Look what's coming to the London stage!

Have a look at the trailer teaser at the bottom of the post.

Get ready to sing with Oompa Loompas, fight for golden tickets, and eat a lot of chocolate! A musical adaptation of Charlie & the Chocolate Factory is currently playing preview shows in London.

Award-winning actor Douglas Hodge stars as the genius, eccentric, confectioner Willy Wonka. The play officially opens on June 25, 2013. We’ve embedded the show’s trailer above–what do you think? Here’s more from the UK production’s official site:

Roald Dahl‘s deliciously dark tale of young Charlie Bucket and the mysterious confectioner Willy Wonka comes to life in a brand new West End musical directed by Academy Award® winner Sam Mendes…the wonder of the original story that has captivated the world for almost 50 years is brought to life with music by Marc Shaiman, and lyrics by Scott Wittman and Marc Shaiman (Grammy® winners for Hairspray; Smash), a book by award-winning playwright and adaptor David Greig (The Bacchae; Tintin In Tibet.

If you're in London after June 25 and have the opportunity, see it!  There is nothing like a blockbuster west end production.  They do it so well!

Newly Discovered Pearl S. Buck Novel to be Published

A 40-year-old unpublished Pearl S. Buck manuscript was recently discovered in storage.  The people who found the book sent it back to the Buck family, and now the world will enjoy it. Open Road Integrated Media and InkWell Management will team up to publish the book.

Pearl S. Buck

The Eternal Wonder will be published on October 22, bringing the Pulitzer & Nobel Prize-winning author’s newly discovered work as a digital book and paperback. Open Road already publishes 28 backlist books by Buck, including The Big Wave and The Good Earth. Here’s more about the book, from the release:

The Eternal Wonder  is a personal and passionate fictional exploration of the themes that meant so much to Buck in her life. It tells the coming-of-age story of Randolph Colfax, an extraordinarily gifted young man whose search for meaning and purpose leads him to New York, England, Paris, a mission patrolling the demilitarized zone in Korea that will change his life forever—and, ultimately, to love.

Buck’s son Edgar S. Walsh, who is also in charge of her literary estate, said her family is baffled as to how the manuscript made its way to Texas.
“After my mother died in Vermont, her personal possessions were not carefully controlled,” he told the New York Times. “The family didn’t have access. Various things were stolen. Somebody in Vermont ran off with this thing, and it eventually ended up in Texas.”

 So who was this woman?  Alas, not much is known today about her, only her name in a rather oblique way.  Let me say a bit about her.  Pearl S. Buck  was born Pearl Comfort Sydenstricker on June 26, 1892, in Hillsboro, West Virginia. Her parents, both Presbyterian missionaries, decided to go back to the Chinese village of Chinkiang with 5-month-old Pearl in tow.  She lived there for 20 years before returning to the US permanently.  “The Good Earth” was published in 1931.

She was the first female writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, securing the award in 1938. In addition, her novel “The Good Earth” won the Pulitzer Prize in 1938.  She died in 1973. An amazing force in American Letters, Pearl S. Buck was a role model for so many people on so many levels.

J.K. Rowling Sets Record with Sale of Harry Potter First Edition--All for Charity

For fans of the boy wizard, this could be the most coveted copy of all the Harry Potter books in the world.

A first edition copy of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone that contains author JK Rowling's notes and 22 original illustrations fetched STG150,000 ($A234,815) at a London auction recently. - a new record for a printed book by the author.

Sotheby's said the work, offered as part of a charity book sale jointly organized with the English PEN writers' association, was sold to an anonymous bidder by telephone.  Two bidders ratcheted up the price for the book before the hammer finally came down, triggering a round of applause at the Sotheby's auction house.

 

Rowling wrote many personal annotations, including editorial decisions, comments on the process of writing and a note on how she came to create the game of Quidditch.  She also drew about two dozen illustrations in the copy, including a sleeping baby Harry on a door step and an Albus Dumbledore Chocolate Frog card.

As part of the fundraising event, Rowling and dozens of other best-selling author were asked to "scribble second thoughts, marginalia or drawings" on a first-edition copy of one of their books. 

J.K. Rrowling

A copy of Roald Dahl's best-selling children's book Matilda containing new drawings by illustrator Quentin Blake fetched STG30,000 pounds, while an annotated copy of Kazuo Ishiguro's acclaimed novel The Remains of the Day was sold for STG18,000 pounds.  Other participating authors in the charity sale included Ian McEwan, Seamus Heaney, Lionel Shriver and Yann Martel.

In all, the sale raised a total of STG439,200 pounds.  Certainly a good day in the charity business!

Beware of the White's Journey to Publication by Kai Strand

I am so delighted to have as my guest today, Kai Strand, a friend, colleague and fellow author at Guardian Angel Publishing.  Welcome, Kai.  I know the readers will enjoy your post!

At the beginning of my tour – on Mayra Calvani’s blog  – I explained the inspiration behind BEWARE OF THE WHITE. But that was only a small part of the story. This book has taken a long and arduous NINE years to make it to publication. Here’s why.

BotW was the first novel I wrote. The inspiration and the story flowed out quickly, but most unfortunately not very cleanly! The first draft of the book topped out over 85K words! After some research I learned that first time authors don’t have a lot of luck selling middle grade works with such high word counts. Every single one of those words was a masterpiece in and of itself, but alas, I had to cut. And cut. And cut.

After I thought I’d whittled and tweaked enough, I started querying. And querying. And querying. Nothing. This was back in the day when I had to print the cover letter and first chapter or ten pages or whatever the publisher or agent requested and physically mail it and then wait. And wait. And wait. I submitted to agents first, but didn’t see any interest and then I submitted direct to publishers and was encouraged by at least some positive feedback and the occasional request for more. However, I didn’t find any takers and eventually I tucked the manuscript in for a long rest.

A really long rest, actually. Years long rest. The interesting thing is, as I toured my other books, hosts often asked about my other works-in-progress and I often bragged about this book. I loved this adventure and knew that I needed to wake it up and rework it. And you know what? This time around, after having written more books and after having gone through the editing process with a couple publishers, I came at it with a more experienced eye and I could see what wasn’t quite working. So I worked really hard on a very major rewrite.

By this point, I had developed a dramatic love/hate relationship with the story. As much as I loved the story, I hated the amount of work it was. The rework was probably the hardest I’ve ever worked as a writer and I was feeling like a big hater, but I had a publisher in mind and that helped to keep me focused. After I finished with the extensive edits, I read the book out loud to the kids and when I finished reading, I was back in love. Thank goodness. So with a big deep breath and while blowing kisses I hit the send button on my submission. THREE days later I got an email of acceptance.

You know those stories of ‘overnight sensation’? That’s what it felt like. After all those years and all that hard work, it felt like it happened overnight. At that point, I was truly in love with my story.

If you’d like to know how my relationship with my book faired through edits, be sure to join me when I visit the Pen & Ink blog on June 3^rd.  My complete tour schedule can be found here.

About BEWARE OF THE WHITE

As is tradition, Terra learns on the Saturday past her twelfth birthday that she is a Natures Spirit. It is her legacy to serve in the peaceful underground city of Concord. Learning she is named in a prophecy and being threatened by the leader of the death tribe…that part breaks tradition.

The Trepidus are the death janitors of the Underworld, responsible for delivering fatalities with a smile and cleaning up after themselves until Blanco, recent leader of the Trepidus, decides the day of reckoning for his species is coming. He begins organizing the creatures and leads them toward an uprising. The prophecy says there is one person who can stop him. Terra.

With Spirit of Security, Frank, protecting her, Terra attempts to complete her training and discover her Spirit talents. Together, they go on a rogue investigation to learn how to defeat Blanco. In the end, it comes down to a battle of the minds. The future of Concord is at stake. Will Blanco, the older, more experienced being win? Or will Terra, the young, new Spirit earn back the peace of the city?

SPONTANEOUS GIVEAWAY!

As if the big book related prize packages giveaway wasn’t enough, I’m going to choose one lucky reader to win this beautiful bookmark made by my amazing friends at Broken Top Digitizing & Stitching. Just leave a comment telling Nancy and me the hardest work you’ve ever done (physical, mental, boring, exciting – there are no wrong answers here) and include your email address. I’ll choose one random name from comments left BEFORE May 25.

About the author:

Kai Strand writes fiction for kids and teens. Her debut novel, The Weaver, was a finalist in the 2012 EPIC eBook Awards. She is a (very lucky) wife and the mother of four amazing kids. The most common sound in her household is laughter. The second most common is, "Do your dishes!" She and her family hike, geocache, and canoe in beautiful Central Oregon, where they call home.

To find out more about Kai’s books, download companion documents, find links to her published short stories and discover all the places to find Kai both virtually and in person, visit her website: www.kaistrand.com. She loves to hear from readers, so feel free to send her an email or visit her facebook page, Kai Strand, Author.  Beware of the White may be purchased at:

MuseItUp

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

Kobo

Or look for it on iTunes

 

New Kids’ Books Help Define Toronto

Seeing Canadians portrayed in books and art helps us understand who they are and why their homeland is important. where and how they live and why these places matter.

Two fresh books, In Lucia’s Neighbourhood and ABC of Toronto, are to be released soon.

The former, written by Pat Shewchuk and Marek Colek, and based on their animated film Montrose Avenue, is being launched Friday May 10 at Type Books on Queen St. W.

 It is about a 7-year-old girl, Lucia, who shows readers through her neighborhood in West-end Toronto. The story begins with a quote from urban thinker Jane Jacobs and features scenes that symbolize life in the old city of Toronto, where leafy residential streets lead to main avenues with streetcars rolling along them. It’s very much the Toronto version of Sesame Street.

The second book, ABC of Toronto is also from Kids Can Press, which will mark 40 years of publishing with a party at Harbourfront Centre May 16.  ABC of Toronto is an A to Z exploration of the city by Kingston author Per-Henrik Gürth, with a cast of anthropomorphized woodland creatures hanging out at various Toronto destinations.

Through the alphabetized pages the reader will discover a moose and calf walking the “B-for-Beach(es)” boardwalk as a beaver jogs by (the author is unwilling to take sides in the great Beach vs. Beaches naming controversy). There are a moose and fox dressed as British Redcoat soldiers firing the cannon at F is for Fort York. There’s an M for Maple Leafs; S is for Streetcar; Y is for Yonge St. lit up at night; and so on.

These books sound charming and will, I hope, do well in the Canadian market as well as abroad!