CMIS Evaluation Fiction Focus

Imagine Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman in the one room! This is as close as we are likely to get as Neil talks to Terry in this penetrating interview that honours the 25 years of Discworld and the 24-year friendship of the two. It does not shy away from talking about Terry’s recent diagnosis with Alzheimer’s disease, nor would Terry Pratchett want it to - his advocacy has created enormous media interest in the condition, and therefore public awareness. The good news is that he still has books to write.

The July/August 2008 Horn Book magazine has been published and some of the articles are already available online. The profiles of Newbery and  Caldecott awards winners Brian Selznick and Laura Amy Schlitz will interest Australian readers.

Remember Zoe? The young girl who dreams of playing piano at the Sydney Opera House. Or Carnegie Hall, depending on which continent you read the book.

Author of Kind of Perfect, Linda Urban, has responded quickly to our enquiry and has generously given permission to be quoted:

I’m not exactly sure why ABC thought that my book would be less appealing to Australian kids if it retained its original American setting — but they did and my US publisher encouraged me to trust that they know the market.  After reading their suggested changes, I felt that the essential story remained the same and other than swapping Michigan for New South Wales and changing biscuit for cookie, there really weren’t many differences.

What was important to me was that Zoe’s story — her real dreams, desires, emotions, frustrations — stay true and I think that the ABC editors were able to accomplish this.  If changing the locale and a few details meant that the story would be more accessible for readers, then I was fine with that.

I certainly didn’t give any thought to the notion that this might be misleading.  I’m not exactly sure how the book is otherwise being marketed, so perhaps you are aware of something in the positioning of the title in shops that I am not?

Please thank your reviewer for recommending my book.  I’d love to see the review if ever it is made public.

Another long email to Linda followed - saying in part:

You are right. Zoe’s story does hold true, and this is precisely why there was no need for the ABC to change anything. Kids will identify with her whether she lives in Detroit, Sydney of Timbuktu. I think the ABC has underestimated their intelligence big time! We are always amazed that Australian titles have changes made when they get to the States. Readers are perfectly capable of making linguistic leaps and as I say, this is the first example I have encountered here. Not keen for it to become a trend!

We also commented that:

It seems … utterly patronising to readers [for publishers] to do this … Australian kids are so used to reading books in other settings that a book will always stand on its own merits as originally written. Kids learn so much incidentally when reading books that have settings other than their own. They need a variety of voices and experiences and there are plenty of Australian writers to tell Australian stories.

Linda agrees and says she will be thinking ‘longer and harder’ should she be lucky enough to have her next novel published here as well. And let’s hope she does, for her voice is fresh and funny.

Oh dear. After our puzzled query about possible trends in global publishing (see Zoe’s remarkable international adaptability in Kind of Perfect) comes this report from the Guardian. A taste …

Last year, Tom Becker won the Waterstone’s prize for children’s fiction with his first novel, Darkside; last week he won another award, the Calderdale children’s book prize. The talk among agents and publishers has been about his suspenseful prose, his great potential. But few people have been talking about a more salient fact: that the book’s concept and story was generated not by Becker, but by focus groups.

Focus groups?

Emma John poses the question: Focus groups are muscling their way into the arts. Are they a useful tool - or a death blow to creativity?

Implications? Thoughts? Comments? And is this happening here in Australia? We’d love some discussion.

Unlike Zoe in the previous post, this performance will be happening at the Sydney Opera House - on 20 July. And elsewhere in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, too, throughout the month.

Shaun Tan’s The Red Tree has been realised in performance at last. The Australian Chamber Orchestra and youth choir Gondwana Voices are on tour to those cities with this new production that also has the powerful combination of Shostakovich and The Arrival on the program.  Tour dates and venues here and you can also watch Richard Tognetti talk about the production and view stills from the book.

Shaun’s latest nominations for The Arrival are for two Hugo Awards: Best Related Book and Best Professional Artist. These Science Fiction awards will be presented in Denver, Colorado early next month.

We have just received a warm review for a new title, Kind of Perfect, by Linda Urban. The review will appear in the next edition of Fiction Focus, which should be in schools at the end of the month.  The reviewer really enjoyed the title and warmed to the young protagonist, Zoe, who dreams of playing piano at the Sydney Opera House one day.  So far, so good.

Published in Sydney by ABC Books and with several other Australian allusions, such as NRMA,  scattered throughout the text you would be forgiven for thinking that this is an Australian book.

But look more closely. The only hint that all is not as it seems are are the words on the verso of the title page :

‘A Crooked Kind of Perfect’ by Linda Urban. Copyright (c) 2007. Published by arrangement with Harcourt, Inc.

Not ‘First published as ‘A Crooked Kind of Perfect’ because, well, it wasn’t technically the same book. In the US edition, Zoe yearns to play at Carnegie Hall and the setting is distinctly American. But nowhere in this Australian edition is this clear. Is this just clever marketing, or is it actually misleading to readers?

BTW, the local cover isn’t a patch on the original, so why have they bothered?

And it begs the question: Do readers in the UK have Zoe playing at the Royal Festival Hall? If we were cynical, we’d start to think that this might be the beginning of a globalisation trend, with copy editors trawling pages of texts published in one country to change all original references to local ones. Surely not.

We have written to Linda Urban for her thoughts. We’ll keep you posted.

Libby Gleeson talks about the story behind Mahtab’s Story, her latest work, in this Radio National podcast, which will be available for a week.

The dedicated Allen & Unwin site has teacher’s notes and additional information.

Neil Gaiman was the guest on the Radio National’s Book Show yesterday. In conversation with Michael Sherrifs, he talks about graphic novels, his two-decade-long collaboration with Dave McKean and classic YA literature.

It is for online listening only, but the transcript is also available.

Speaking of books of a bygone era, the Fine Lines blog revisits some loved titles of the ’70s and ’80s with a more critical eye. The latest post is about Paul Zindel’s The Pigman, now an astonishing 39 years old! This weekly blog is worth a nostalgic visit.

After taking the Bronze Medal at the (now defunct) Nestle Awards and being shortlisted for the Booktrust Teenage Prize for Here Lies Arthur, Philip Reeve has at last won a big award -  the 2008 Carnegie Medal, announced in London last night.

Emily Gravett won the Kate Greenaway medal for Little Mouse’s Big Book of Fears. Emily’s technique in the making of this book was rather unorthodox.

Derek Landy’s Skulduggery Pleasant recently won the Red House Children’s Book Award - the longest running children’s choice award in the world. The popularity of this charming, although skeletal, detective and his adventures with Stephanie Edgley is as great in Australia and the United States as it is in Landy’s native Ireland.

Now, the second book, Playing with Fire, is out, and to celebrate , the dedicated website has the audio of Book 1 available online for free listening (but not downloading) for a limited time. The narration by Rupert Degas retains the Irishness of the tale and he is able to inject just the right amount of dark humour.

Skulduggery’s many fans should take advantage of the offer while it lasts.