CMIS Evaluation Fiction Focus

The game has been lifted with book trailers. Check out this professional offering from the New Zealand Book Council for Maurice Gee’s Going West (1993), which just goes to show that a book doesn’t have to be freshly published to get top trailer treatment.

Via twitter and numerous RTs – it came to us from @misrule_au

American Born Chinese broke new ground when it became the first graphic novel be nominated for the US National Book Award and also the first to win the Michael L. Printz Award in 2007.

It skilfully intertwines the legend of the Monkey King with a story of immigration and cultural heritage, and speaks to all who have struggled with identity and belonging with a relevance far beyond just the US experience. The contribution of colourist Lark Pien to the extrardinary look and feel of this book should not be overlooked.

Dig deeper

The creator

• Humble Comics, the website of Gene Luen Yang
• Gene Luen Yan’s blog
• Biography (Wikipedia)
• Author profile (by Dr Agatha Taomina, Northern Virginia Community College)

The text

• Some pages from the novel (FirstSecond website)
• Wikipedia article (like the others we have use for TrailerTuesday, this needs work)
• Gene Luen Yang and others talk about the novel (YouTube)

Reviews

• Fiction Focus
• Publishers Weekly (scroll right down to Comics)
• New York Times
• A collation of reviews from FirstSecond

Interviews with Gene Yang

• Origins of American Born Chinese (FirstSecond)
• School Library Journal
• Audio slideshow interview from National Public Radio (with images from the text)
• Asia Pacific Arts : The Second Life of Gene Yang
• Kartika
• The Trades
• The Daily Cross-Hatch interview, Part One and Part Two
• Speech and reading at Penn State University (February 2009) as part of the university’s Graphic Novelists series (YouTube)
• Sandbox
• Asian-American Graphic Novelist Turns Life into Comics (America.gov)

Awards

• Winner – Michael L. Printz Award 2007
• Winner – Best Graphic Album, Eisner Awards 2007
• Finalist – National Book Awards 2007
• Winner – Best Colorist to Lark Pien, Harvey Awards 2007
• American Library Association Best Books for Young Adults Top Ten List 2007
• YALSA Great Graphic Novel for Teens, Top Ten List 2007
• New York Public Library Books for the Teen Age, 2007
• Winner – Graphic Novel. Cybils Awards 2006
• Publishers Weekly Best Books of the Year: Graphic Novels 2006
• School Library Journal Best Books of the Year 2006

Read More

• Grappling with Graphic Novels. Special Feature, Fiction Focus Vol 19 (2), 2005
• Not Just for Kids, Not Just for Fun : Graphic Novel Update. Feature Article, Fiction Focus, vol. 22 (3), 2008
• An annotated list of graphic novels from the CMIS Resource Bank
• Enticing Teenagers into the Library (Clare Snowball’s PhD research project on graphic novels)
• Monkey Kingdom – Gene Yang’s dedication to the Monkey King
• Comics in Education – Gene Yang’s online version of his MEd proposal at California State University
• Scott McCloud’s blog, Good Morning, Comics
• Comics in the Classroom (University of North Carolina)

From Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll, with illustrations by John Tenniel. Macmillan and Co, London, 1898.

The roll call is impressive – Lewis Carroll, Kenneth Grahame, J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, William Horwood, Mary Hoffman, Philip Pullman, all writers who have lived (or are living) in Oxford and all of whom have brought us great literary treasure.

So it’s fitting then that Oxford is to become the home to a new museum of story and storytelling, to open in 2014.

The virtual Story Museum is to become tangible, thanks to an anonymous benefactor and £2.5 million.

Pullman, along with Michael Morpurgo and Jacqueline Wilson, will become patron of the new Museum:

The Story Museum will be a wonderful gift from Oxford, where so many stories have begun, to the whole world,” Pullman said. “The whole atmosphere of the city is rich with fantasy. Indeed, the very idea of having a museum devoted to story is itself such a fantastical notion than no other city in the world could have given birth to it.

More here.

Image used under Creative Commons licence

Claudette Colvin

The winners of the National Book Awards (US) were announced earlier today, with the winner for Young People’s Literature going to Phillip Hoose for Claudette Colvin: Twice Towards Justice.

We may or may not see this important, true story published here in Australia, but let’s hope we do. It tells of a little-known teenager who stood up for what she believed in during the dark days of the 1950s and the fledgling Civil Rights movement.

A week or so ago, Monica Edinger posted in her blog about a book event where Phillip Hoose spoke about the making of the book and where Claudette Colvin also told her story.  She was reminded of her father’s brush with Rosa Parks, a more famous Civil Rights figure of the time, in Montgomery, Alabama. Here is his story.

Image of Claudette Colvin used under Creative Commons licence

Must admit to feeling a tad confused about how the whole YALSA BBYA (Best Books for Young Adults) process works.

Earlier this month, in this post, we congratulated all the Australian authors who had been nominated. The list that these were extrapolated from is here. Nominations only. That was clear enough and reason enough to rejoice. There was no Margo, no Melina.  We did wonder, but ours is not to reason why.

Now this undated list has popped up, which appears to be the final goods, and yea, both appear on it. Good news indeed. So does Juliet Marillier, but we’ve lost all the other Aussies we were so warmly applauding only 10 days ago. No Michelle Cooper, no Alison Goodman, no Steven Herrick, no Catherine Jinks, no Justine Larbalestier, no Shaun Tan.

So congratulations Margo, Melina and Juliet – wonderful news, but why weren’t you on the original list of nominations? And commiserations to all who didn’t make the final cut.

Ah, awards. Can’t please everyone.

No surprise that it’s The Graveyard Book. The award is The Booktrust Teenage Prize, announced last night.

Have you read it yet? No? Really, you must.

Here’s our Trailer Tuesday feature from a few weeks ago. Add the Booktrust to the list of awards. As The Guardian says, Gaiman is now buried under awards.

And while we are on things Gaiman, here’s two-for-the price-of one, with Terry Pratchett thrown in for good measure. Alas the free audio download is not for us down under, but the interviews with the voices behind the Gaiman / Pratchett audio readings give us a different perspective on their work.

Here is the last of the Printz Award speeches, and the biggie: Melina Marchetta’s acceptance speech for winning the 2009 Michael L. Printz Award for [On the] Jellicoe Road, courtesy of BookList Online and YALSA.

Our other posts about this award, including links to other 2009 acceptance speeches, can be found here.

EBay is being used more and more often for the forces of good. Recently a Shaun Tan drawing raised big money for War Child, via Kids Night In 3 anthology.

Now Amra Pajalic, author of The Good Daughter, is auctioning her services to assess an unpublished manuscript, with a starting bid of $250.  All proceeds will go to the Indigenous Literacy Project.

Here’s why Amra has decided to do this.

It’s probably too early to have any NaNoWriMo manuscripts looked at, but if you have something else tucked away, or know someone who does, please spread the word. It’s for a good cause.

The auction closes on 27 November.

And thanks to Simmone Howell for letting us know.

Perry Middlemiss over at the Matilda blog has collated reviews, comments and interviews about Sonya Hartnett’s Butterfly.

The publishers have tagged this one ‘adult’ so it hasn’t been marketed to teens, although it has lots of YA-relevant themes. Here is the Fiction Focus review, too.

Four books. Only four, yet all have been on the awards radar and some have received great honours indeed.  We can but speculate what else the late Siobhan Dowd might have written had her life been longer. But we can celebrate these four marvellous books and the richness that her writing has brought to young adult literature. The first Carnegie Medal to be awarded posthumously was for this week’s featured title, Bog Child (2007), which was finished three months before Siobhan Dowd’s death.

Dig deeper

The author

• The Siobhan Dowd Trust
• Background on Siobhan Dowd, from the CILIP Carnegie Medal website
• Wikipedia article, with further work required, especially the verification of citations
• Timeline including published works, from NY State Literary Tree
• Obituary – The Guardian
• Obituary – The Independent
• Obituary – The Telegraph

The text

• Extract – Chapter One
• Book Talk (mp3) from Nancy Keane’s Book Talks Quick and Simple blog
• Teacher’s pack (57 pages) by Claire Austin-Macrae, from Oxford University Press. [Word Document]
• Reading notes from Children’s Books Ireland
• Summary and ideas for the classroom from Bright Hub
• Wikipedia entry for Bog Child

Reviews

• Fiction Focus
• The Guardian
• Times Online
• Booktrust UK
• Scottish Book Trust

Articles and interviews

• Guardian article on winning the Carnegie Medal posthumously for Bog Child
• Interview with Siobhan Dowd after winning the Branford Boase award for A Swift Pure Cry (WriteAway)
• Booktrust interview (also after winning Branford Boase award)
• A 1991 interview in which Siobhan Dowd talks about her work with PEN, the writer’s organisation that speaks out for human rights

Awards for Bog Child

• Winner CILIP Carnegie Medal 2009 (UK). Acceptance speech by Siobhan Dowd’s sisters and publisher David Fickling (video)
• Winner CBI Bisto Book of the Year 2009 (Ireland)
• Nominee – Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best YA Novel 2008 (Mystery Writers of America)
• Kirkus Review Best YA Books List 2008
• Publishers Weekly Best Children’s Books of the Year list 2008
• Shortlist Guardian Children’s Fiction Book of the Year 2008
• Longlist Manchester Book Award 2008

The other books and their awards

A Swift Pure Cry (2006)

• Winner Eilís Dillon Award for first-time children’s author 2006/2007
• Winner Branford Boase Award 2007
• Shortlist Carnegie Medal 2007
• Shortlist Booktrust Teenage Prize 2006
• Shortlist Waterstone’s Children’s Book Prize 2007
• Longlist Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize 2006

The London Eye Mystery (2007)

• Winner NASEN/TES Special Educational Needs Children’s Book Award 2007
• Winner CBI Bisto Book of the Year 2008
• Longlist Carnegie Medal 2008
• Shortlist Red House Children’s Book Award 2008
• Shortlist Sheffield Children’s Book Award 2008

Solace of the Road (2009)

• Shortlist Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize 2009

Read more

• The Troubles : Timeline from History on the Net
• Hunger Strikes. 25 years after the events, the BBC reviews the issues, the people and the Maze Prison
• The diary of Bobby Sands
• Bodies of the Bogs (from the Archaeological Society of America)

In memory of Alison Lawrence: friend, colleague and valued Fiction Focus reviewer

11 November 2009