CMIS Evaluation Fiction Focus

How does Shaun Tan do it? With The Arrival still winning accolades around the world, his new title, Tales from Outer Suburbia is officially released in Australia and New Zealand this weekend.

Shaun gave a glimpse at the recent CBCA Conference, when he shared the story of Eric, the overseas exchange student.

This is no wordless picture book. Far from it. Shaun might surprise many people - he is as adept with words as he is with art. And just as quirky. The fifteen stories are funny, whimsical, poignant, moving and touch on contemporary themes in very strange Tan-like settings with homages to suburban Perth thrown in. It’s hard not to be just a tad parochial as we collectively rejoice in Shaun’s success.

Tales from Outer Suburbia is a treat. Publication in the US is scheduled for later in the year. No British date in sight at this stage.

Sonya Hartnett received the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award from Crown Princess Victoria in Stockholm on Wednesday night. You might be interested in this interview with her on Radio Sweden, given shortly before the presentation.

Her Australian-ness shines through.

The sad news has come through that the Endicott Studio Journal of the Mythic Arts is to close. We last referred to this site in relation to Neil Gaiman’s poetry following the CBCA conference at the beginning of May.

The farewell issue will be published in July.

An interesting debate has been occurring on the Read Roger blog, the Horn Book editor’s ‘rants and raves’ as he puts it.

The Horn Book Journal has for a long time listed C. S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia not in the order they were published but in reading order, thus putting The Magician’s Nephew at the head of the list. Many other sources do the same.

But protests from readers have forced a change - The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (1950) now leads the charge, with The Magician’s Nephew (1955) sitting where it was published, between The Horse and His Boy (1954) and The Last Battle (1956).

The comments that have led to the change in Horn Book’s policy make interesting reading.

With Prince Caspian about to hit cinema sceens, some readers will be finding this series for the first time. But in what order?

The Guardian longlist for 2008 contains seven titles, of which Julia Eccleshare says:

Individual choice is a key issue in the seven books longlisted this year. Whether the setting is historical, futuristic or contemporary, these brave and ambitious books portray the journey from child to adult as complicated, hazardous and unpredictable. In doing so they encourage readers to wonder and to explore; above all, to think about the kinds of ’selves’ they may be or like to be.

Longlist:
• Frank Cottrell Boyce Cosmic
• Siobhan Dowd Bog Child
• Jenny Downham Before I Die
• Tanya Landman The Goldsmith’s Daughter
• Rhiannon Lassiter Bad Blood
• Anthony McGowan The Knife that Killed Me
• Patrick Ness The Knife of Never Letting Go

Winners will be announced in September.

It’s good to see two YA books popping up on the nomination list for the Ned Kelly Awards for Crime Writing, awarded by the Crime Writers Association. The stories don’t have to be about Ned, but the two YA contenders certainly cast a nod in his direction.

Under consideration are:

• Game as Ned, by Tim Pegler, which is also a CBCA Notable Book for Older Readers this year
• Ned Kelly’s Jerilderie Letter, edited by Carole Wilkinson, also shortlisted for the Eve Pownall Award for Information Books

Another terrific little book from last year, Crime Seen by Jenny Pausacker, seems to have missed out.

As well as being in outer space, intreprid hero Hal Spacejock has gone into cyberspace. To coincide with the launch of Book 4 in the series, Hal Spacejock : No Free Lunch, the eponymous title, published in 2005, is now freely available online from the Fremantle Press website.

Many Australian readers know and love Hal, the bumbling, none-too-bright but well-meaning space pilot, but Perth author Simon Haynes is hoping that by making him Internet-accessible, he will reach a far wider audience.

It’s a great opportunity for teachers to plan a lesson around humour in writing and in viewing. Comparison with zany television space shows, such as Red Dwarf, could lead to some fun in the classroom with scriptwriting or drama activities based on Hal’s adventures.

Other titles in the series are Hal Spacejock : Second Course (2006) and Hal Spacejock : Just Desserts (2007).

Centre for Youth Literature Professional Learning, Part 2

After Dr Pam Macintyre and Dr Susan La Marca spoke about books for Years 5 and 6, the Fiction Focus team sprang into action to let the 150 participants know about some new titles for Years 7 and 8 that would work well in the classroom as well as for wide reading. Some are so new that there are no Fiction Focus reviews yet, but we will link to our reviews in the Resource Bank when they are available.

We had prepared an extensive list to hand out, and we will put this up on the CMIS website as soon as we can make it happen.

It was a frenzied book promotion session - just like being back in the classroom really. Some of the new titles we spoke about were:

• Trust Me (compiled by Paul Collins, Ford Street Publishing) and Short (compiled by Lili Wilkinson, Black Dog Books) - two anthologies that offer a rich selection of writing styles and text types with myriad classroom uses. Both come with teachers’ notes.
• Verse novels, including Hugging the Rock, Susan Taylor Brown’s moving story about father-daughter relationships, mother loss and mental illness.
• Click, a great multi-author work that weaves a narrative from the contributions of many well-known writers, including David Almond, Roddy Doyle and Eoin Colfer.
• Graphic novels, such as Sophie Masson’s The Secret Army, which has so much to unravel including the 1936 Berlin Olympics, British Nazi sympathisers (the Mitford sisters spring to mind), Norse mythology and mystic mediaeval figures such as Nicholas Flamel.
• A brief look at dystopia with The Declaration and Fearless.
• Libby Gleeson’s new title, Mahtab’s Story, which would complement Parvana very nicely.
• Some historical novels, including the Newbery-award winning Good Masters! Sweet Ladies : Voices from a Medieval Village.
• New picture books including Colin Thompson’s ’shaggy lost dog with a lost leg’ tale, The Big Little Book of Happy Sadness.

The afternoon sessions saw Lili and Mike talk on Books for Years 9 and 10, and we forgot that it was late on a Friday afternoon as Maria Boyd talked so inspiringly about her classroom practice and using texts with boys, including her own first novel, Will.

Throughout the day, there was much talk about responding to texts, but that’s for another blog, another day.

There’s no need to call us Ishmael - we didn’t faint on Friday at Novel Ideas, the fantastic professional learning day organised by the State Library of Victoria’s Centre for Youth Literature. The brief was to talk about new titles for Years 7 and 8, so the suitcases were heavier than usual for the long trip.

Morris Gleitzman started the day by talking about his books and his writing rationale. A first person narrative enables readers to empathise with the main characters; the curve balls keep readers engaged and have them asking questions. And the three essential questions he believes all young readers should be asking in any text are:

• Who is telling us?
• Why are they telling us?
• What does what they are telling us really mean?

In the course of their stories, all of Morris’s characters undergo a process that he believes is a recipe for anyone’s successful life journey:

• When a problem or obstacle confronts them, they know how to find the information they need to look for a solution
• They take responsibility for the tasks, challenges and problems in their lives
• They know what questions to ask and to question everything they are told
• They are creative thinkers
• They know what moral choices to make, but these are not always clear-cut, and they understand that the choices they make could have negative consequences for others

Morris started the day with a thought-provoking talk that offered a useful context for looking at any of his books. His latest title Then, due to be published soon, is a sequel to the tough Holocaust story, Once.

More about Novel Ideas soon.

Maurice Gee’s latest title Salt, is this year’s winner of the prestigious New Zealand Post Award for Young Adult Fiction. An excellent article about Gee is available on the New Zealand Book Council website.

The winners for the 2008 New Zealand Post Book Awards were announced at an awards ceremony on Wednesday 21 May at the Wellington Town Hall.

View the press release, the judges’ report and the 2008 winning titles.