CMIS Evaluation Fiction Focus

Patrick Ness, Kate De Goldi, Angie Sage, Morris Gleitzman, Garth Nix, Andy Griffiths and Mark Walden … some of the writers for young people we will enjoy at the 2010 Perth Writers Festival.

The full Arts Festival (PIAF) program was unveiled yesterday. Earmark Friday 26 February to Monday 1 March for the literature component, with the traditional free Family Fun Day taking place on Sunday 28 February. This is a long weekend in WA.

PIAF runs from 5 February to 1 March.

The ever-reliable PaperTigers blog has published a list of international children’s literature events being held this month. There’s no point in reinventing the wheel. Here they are.

Thanks PaperTigers.

The US National Book Festival, that is. It’s in full swing in Washington right now, and the tweets are flying.

To attend in a virtual sort of way, the Twitter hashtag is #nbf. Works well in Twitter clients such as Tweetdeck.

Here’s the children’s and YA lineup and webcasts will be happening, too.

Came across the brochure for Word Play, the youth segment of the soon-to-be Brisbane Writers Festival (9-13 September).

The lineup is impressive:

Andy Griffiths – Brian Falkner – Belinda Jeffrey – Colin Thompson – Charlotte McConaghy – Carole Wilkinson -  Melaina Faranda – Pat Flynn – Jackie French – Tristan Bancks – Tempany Deckert – Richard Newsome – Jack Heath – James Roy – James Moloney – Michael Gerard Bauer – Pamela Rushby – Sherryl Clark – Peter Carnavas and Scott Monk.

so if you are in the vicinity, check it out. There is a related online literature festival happening as we type for students and teachers across Australia. This one finishes on 18 September.

Have you caught up with the debate in the UK sparked by comments this week by Anne Fine at the Edinburgh International Book Festival? We have tweeted some of the links, but to recap, the former Children’s Laureate ‘deplored’ the gritty realism of many books today:

…cosy tales in which children’s characters looked forward to future adventures had been replaced by gritty stories that offered no hope for their weary protagonists.Contemporary literature is dauntingly bleak, with depressing endings that do little to inspire.

As someone pointed out The Road of Bones is hardly the cheeriest of reads.

But this is an argument that pops up regularly. We blogged about it a couple of months ago in a US context. Anne Fine must have known that the battle lines would be drawn.

And indeed they have. Arguments are being tossed around but not too many support her point of view. Some Welsh authors appear to, though.

Children can handle the realism, says one commentator. The horror is necessary, says another. And while we are at it,  let’s cheer up the classics.

Darkness in children’s literature has a long tradition. And the debates will continue to rage.

It’s soon the turn of the City of Literature to host a Writers Festival. Dates: August 21-30.

Here’s the lineup of writers for young people. Something of a Who’s Who for a Book Week crossover event.

From the Hay Festival. Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams.

You can find God in Eliot, Austen and even Philip Pullman:

He talked about the idea of the ­”daemon” – the human soul manifested in animal form in Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy.

“What’s fascinating about Pullman is the way the health of human beings rests on relationship with daemons … that’s almost a way of saying that a whole human being, is one in which the internal conversation is going on, the internal criticism, the internal challenges … I feel that awareness of inner conversation has to be part of sensible modern discourse about God.”

English summer and the Hay Festival – oh, to be in England. But we can’t be right now, so the podcasts will have to do.

Patrick Ness, Philip Ardagh and Tanya Landman are among the speakers today. Not sure how long the files will be available for downloading though.

From the White House:

President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama will serve as Honorary Chairs of the 2009 National Book Festival, organized and sponsored by the Library of Congress. Now in its ninth year, this popular event celebrating the joys of reading and lifelong literacy …

Read on and sigh.

The heads-up came from the Joy of Childen’s Literature, for which we are both grateful and envious of our US cousins. A new slogan? ‘All the way with BO and M). C’mon Aussie, C’mon’. (Overseas readers will almost certainly need the hyperlinks here for the popular culture references).

What do Tohby Riddle, Randa Abdel-Fattah, James Roy and Mark McLeod have in common? Not to mention Garth Nix, Isobelle Carmody, David Hill, Mal Peet (there goes the Aussie authors theory), Tristan Bancks, Morris Gleitzman, Danny Katz and Mitch Vane. (All but David Hill write/illustrate for YA and younger, although even his book is of relevance to teenage readers).

It was James Roy, on his blog head vs desk, who alerted us to the good news that Writers Talk 2009 is up and running. The first four authors are already on the site; the others will be added in coming weeks.

This terrific resource, an initiative of the Centre for Learning and Innovation in the NSW DET, is a spinoff from the forthcoming 2009 Sydney Writers Festival. Each author video is supported by additional resources including a bibliography and teaching notes.

And if you want more, WT 2008 and WT 2007 are also still online and well worth investigating.