CMIS Evaluation Fiction Focus

What think you?

Both ask questions, but is one more likely to be picked up at random than the other?

The US cover of Tales from Outer Suburbia

or the Australian and British one?

With an Honorary Degree of Doctor of Letters. The full citation (in both Latin and English) is here (found via the ubiquitous Guardian book pages) and well worth reading, but before you go there, spot the children’s literature references in this Latin extract:

Tamesis prope ripam Grahameius ventum inter salices susurrantem audivit; qui etiam hac in urbe est sepultus. Oxoniae Alicia terram mirabilium intravit; Oxoniae gens hobbitorum nata est; Oxoniae porta ad Narniam est aperta. At hic quem nunc produco hunc ipsum locum vel maioribus laudibus ornavit, quippe qui in suis fabulis Oxoniam lepide descripserit et, ut ita dicam, dramatis sui personam fecerit.

Image of the City of Dreaming Spires used under a Creative Commons Licence

The current issue of Newsweek has another of those lists - you know, the best 100 books. Best. Books. Ever. Always good for a debate.

If you check the links on the right hand side of the page, you’ll note that nine authors are commenting on their favourite books:

We asked nine authors to tell us the essential books in their chosen areas of expertise.

Patricia Cornwell on True Crime, Bob Woodward on Political Scandal - you get the drift. So far, so good.

Children’s literature gets a mention, too. The expert here? None other than the former First Daughter, Jenna Bush. Well, she has written a book. And her mum was a school librarian, so that’s OK.

The Child_Lit listserv brought this one to our attention. We share their incredulity.

Flickr image used under Creative Commons licence.

Hurry over to the UK Booktrust site, for there you will find Patrick Ness and an exclusive Chaos Walking story set before the events of The Knife of Never Letting Go.

What’s more, you have a choice of reading it online in 15 parts, or downloading a PDF for later enjoyment.

Ness hints that he has dropped a few clues about what might happen in Book 3 of the series, due to be published in 2010.

The story is one outcome of Ness’s residency on the Booktrust site, one that is dedicated to the promotion of reading.

On ABC Radio National Life Matters. Here.

YALSA, the Young Adult Library Services Association of the ALA, has released its 2009 selection of the best books of the year for young adult readers (BBYA).

Although weighted towards North American titles, there is a smattering of authors from other places, including our own Margo Lanagan for Tender Morsels, Melina Marchetta for [On the] Jellicoe Road and Juliet Marillier for Cybele’s Secret.

This list is always a useful guide to help develop a YA fiction collection.

The late Siobhan Dowd has won the 2009 Carnegie Medal for Bog Child. This is the first posthumous medal in the history of the UK’s most prestigious children’s literature award.

The book is “an absolutely astonishing piece of writing”, said the librarian Joy Court, chair of the judging panel (the Carnegie medal winner is selected by 13 librarians from around the UK). “To be able to write like that when she was going through what she was going through is just astonishing – the sheer beauty of the language, the descriptions of the environment; she has such an amazing sense of place.”

More from The Guardian here.

And put twenty minutes aside to view the acceptance speeches from Siobhan’s sister and an impassioned David Fickling.

Remember this? It’s where we pondered on the nature of YA in the context of Into White Silence.

The author has added to the discussion in a long and well-considered post on his Goodreads blog. For which we thank him. Let’s keep talking, folks. This is an important one.

I can say this: When I wrote Into White Silence, I never for a moment doubted that it would be published as ‘young adult fiction.’ This belief was, in part, because of the realities of the publishing world and the joys of having a profile as a ‘young adult’ author, but also, to a large degree, because it was the sort of story I’d have connected with at 15 or 16 years of age. I didn’t write it for teenagers, though. Nor did I write it for adults. I wrote it for myself, purely and simply.

Thanks Anthony.

Buffy is way more interesting than Bella. Six clever remix minutes:

Sell it to your discerning readers.

That’s the Australian Book Industry Awards. Gala event from all accounts with the twitterverse tweeting and RTing as myriad awards were announced. We were there (in a virtual sense) and sent some results through @cmisevalff, but in case you weren’t, here are some of particular YA interest:

• We are running out of fingers and toes to count how many awards Melina Marchetta is garnering for Finnikin of the Rock. Here’s another one - ABIA’s Book of the Year for Older Children.
• Shaun Tan is on the winner’s podium again. Tales from Outer Suburbia is ABIA’s Illustrated Book of the Year. How many is that for this creative and weird (in a good way) title?
• And because these are industry awards, we have to mention Penguin’s International Success Award because it has been won for publishing Sonya Hartnett around the world.

At the time of writing ABIA had not posted results on its website, but there is a summary here. Congratulations to all winners.