CMIS Evaluation Fiction Focus » literature promotion http://cmisevalff.edublogs.org Tue, 01 Dec 2009 00:01:02 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.2 en hourly 1 Trailer Tuesday: One Whole and Perfect Day http://cmisevalff.edublogs.org/2009/12/01/trailer-tuesday-one-whole-and-perfect-day/ http://cmisevalff.edublogs.org/2009/12/01/trailer-tuesday-one-whole-and-perfect-day/#comments Mon, 30 Nov 2009 22:34:24 +0000 judij http://cmisevalff.edublogs.org/?p=2419 Is Judith Clarke the most reclusive of our Australian authors? She’s a multi-award winner and yet we don’t really know much about her. Nor is she known for appearing at conferences and other literary events. It’s rare to hear her talking about her work, so we are happy to have found her on YouTube telling us about One Whole and Perfect Day (2006), a gem of a novel that has been recognised in awards both here and overseas.

Having struggled to find much supporting material for either Judith Clarke or the book, we are starting to wonder if ‘under-appreciated’ is a relevant descriptor?

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The author

The text

Reviews

Interviews and articles

  • None that we can locate – please let us know of anything you are aware of. Even Trove, a terrific new Australian search tool, failed us.

Awards (ah, that’s better)

* Information from publisher’s website

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Judith Clarke and One Whole and Perfect Day have been on our Trailer Tuesday radar for a while, but the lack of supporting material kept it a low profile project. Having completed the task, however, it now appears that it’s precisely the lack of supporting material that makes it so important to have highlighted this book before it fades away.

This is the last Trailer Tuesday for the year. Next week, a recap.

]]> http://cmisevalff.edublogs.org/2009/12/01/trailer-tuesday-one-whole-and-perfect-day/feed/ 0 Mmmm Melbourne http://cmisevalff.edublogs.org/2009/11/26/2412/ http://cmisevalff.edublogs.org/2009/11/26/2412/#comments Thu, 26 Nov 2009 02:05:48 +0000 judij http://cmisevalff.edublogs.org/?p=2412 logoIt’s all happening in Melbourne today.

The Inkys winners will be announced a little later (we’ll let you know) have been announced* and The Wheeler Centre has been launched. You’ll be familiar with the name Wheeler in a Lonely Planet context, but now it lives for posterity as the renamed Melbourne Centre for Books, Writing and Ideas after generous funding by Maureen and Tony Wheeler.

You can follow the Centre’s activities on twitter or subscribe to an e-newsletter from the website.

Exciting stuff – trips to Melbourne need to be longer and longer to fit all the culture in.  Lucky Melburnians.

* Silver Inky: The Hunger Games (Suzanne Collins)

Gold Inky – Where the Streets had a Name (Randa Abdel-Fattah).  More here.

]]> http://cmisevalff.edublogs.org/2009/11/26/2412/feed/ 2 Tip Top Trailer http://cmisevalff.edublogs.org/2009/11/24/2393/ http://cmisevalff.edublogs.org/2009/11/24/2393/#comments Tue, 24 Nov 2009 03:59:10 +0000 judij http://cmisevalff.edublogs.org/?p=2393 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

]]> http://cmisevalff.edublogs.org/2009/11/24/2393/feed/ 0 Trailer Tuesday: American Born Chinese http://cmisevalff.edublogs.org/2009/11/24/trailer-tuesday-american-born-chinese/ http://cmisevalff.edublogs.org/2009/11/24/trailer-tuesday-american-born-chinese/#comments Mon, 23 Nov 2009 22:30:20 +0000 judij http://cmisevalff.edublogs.org/?p=2349 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.

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The creator

The text

Reviews

Interviews with Gene Yang

Awards

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]]> http://cmisevalff.edublogs.org/2009/11/24/trailer-tuesday-american-born-chinese/feed/ 0 Oxford: city of stories http://cmisevalff.edublogs.org/2009/11/20/oxford-city-of-stories/ http://cmisevalff.edublogs.org/2009/11/20/oxford-city-of-stories/#comments Fri, 20 Nov 2009 01:08:10 +0000 judij http://cmisevalff.edublogs.org/?p=2340 From Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll, with illustrations by John Tenniel. Macmillan and Co, London, 1898.

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

]]> http://cmisevalff.edublogs.org/2009/11/20/oxford-city-of-stories/feed/ 0 Butterfly http://cmisevalff.edublogs.org/2009/11/17/butterfly-2/ http://cmisevalff.edublogs.org/2009/11/17/butterfly-2/#comments Tue, 17 Nov 2009 04:10:04 +0000 judij http://cmisevalff.edublogs.org/?p=2289 9780241015421Perry 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.

]]> http://cmisevalff.edublogs.org/2009/11/17/butterfly-2/feed/ 0 Trailer Tuesday: Bog Child http://cmisevalff.edublogs.org/2009/11/17/trailer-tuesday-bog-child/ http://cmisevalff.edublogs.org/2009/11/17/trailer-tuesday-bog-child/#comments Mon, 16 Nov 2009 23:21:30 +0000 judij http://cmisevalff.edublogs.org/?p=2153 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.

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Reviews

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Awards for Bog Child

The other books and their awards

A Swift Pure Cry (2006)

The London Eye Mystery (2007)

Solace of the Road (2009)

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

11 November 2009

]]> http://cmisevalff.edublogs.org/2009/11/17/trailer-tuesday-bog-child/feed/ 0 On reviewing http://cmisevalff.edublogs.org/2009/11/16/on-reviewing/ http://cmisevalff.edublogs.org/2009/11/16/on-reviewing/#comments Mon, 16 Nov 2009 07:01:57 +0000 judij http://cmisevalff.edublogs.org/?p=2262 There’s a terrific conversation happening right now over at the ccbc-net listserv about reviewing. Audience, rationale, the whys and wherefores. And while we don’t have the permission of the contributors to quote them verbatim, here are some ABCs arising out of the thread:

  • Audience. To whom is the reviewer accountable? Author?  Publisher? Readers? All of the above? None of the above? If for a print journal, then the scope of the publication will be clear, but the rise of reviewing blogs has made the water murky.
  • Balance. Negativity for its own sake or to show how clever the reviewer is for noticing a problem is not helpful.  As one person said if only a small proportion of the book is unsatisfactory for whatever reason but the majority of the review is about pointing this out, that’s unfair to the book.
  • Close reading. Some reviewers read a book three or four times before submitting a review and only then after rereading and revising it.  The author deserves slow, considered engagement: (paraphrased) ‘a fast food opinion isn’t fair to a slowly cooked book’.

And, we are urged to remember, it’s much harder to write a book than review one.

It feels as if this thread has arisen spontaneously so it might not be archived on the website as one of its formal discussion topics, but you can certainly access the email discussion if you sign up to receive posts. Posts from ccbc-net are generally considered and therefore worth receiving.

]]> http://cmisevalff.edublogs.org/2009/11/16/on-reviewing/feed/ 0 Trailer Tuesday: Nation http://cmisevalff.edublogs.org/2009/11/10/trailer-tuesday-nation/ http://cmisevalff.edublogs.org/2009/11/10/trailer-tuesday-nation/#comments Tue, 10 Nov 2009 00:00:16 +0000 judij http://cmisevalff.edublogs.org/?p=2003 After ten years of Discworld, Terry Pratchett (Sir Terence Pratchett) has created a very different world in Nation (2008). Set in n a parallel universe rather like our 19th century South Pacific this is a multi-faceted disaster-survival / coming-of-age story that explores many themes.  There is no book trailer as such for this title, so here is Terry Pratchett talking about how Nation came to be  (the US cover is featured):

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Read more disaster fiction

  • A list from the CMIS database
]]> http://cmisevalff.edublogs.org/2009/11/10/trailer-tuesday-nation/feed/ 0 Literary Festivals 2010 http://cmisevalff.edublogs.org/2009/11/09/literary-festivals-2010/ http://cmisevalff.edublogs.org/2009/11/09/literary-festivals-2010/#comments Mon, 09 Nov 2009 01:00:40 +0000 judij http://cmisevalff.edublogs.org/?p=2110 175-the-bookman-q85-359x499Dreaming, as one does, of travel and always thinking about books and reading, Fiction Focus has compiled a  far-from-complete list of 2010 literary festivals that bring together two of life’s most rewarding pursuits. Happy to add others if you bring them to our attention.

Please note that not all of the above websites contain 2010 content, although the dates are correct at the time of publication.

Oh for the Lotto life!

Image of The Bookman from The Gnome King of Oz (1927) used under Creative Commons licence

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