CMIS Evaluation Fiction Focus

The winners of the US National Book Awards have been announced, as has Canada’s Governor General’s Literary Award. The latter has spared itself from criticism by awarding the Children’s Literature – Text prize to John Ibbitsen for The Landing.

Winner of the National Book Award in Young People’s Literature is Judy Blundell for What I Saw and How I Lied.

There is growing controversy in Canada about the Governor General’s Awards. Mariko Tamaki has been shortlisted for SKIM, a graphic novel. Fair enough – it’s the first in the genre to have been nominated for these awards and by all accounts it’s an outstanding work that has received many accolades. The problem is that the illustrator, Mariko’s cousin Jillian, has been snubbed. Not listed for the award, not invited to the ceremony next week. And people have noticed. Canada’s leading graphic novelists, Chester Brown and Seth, have written an open letter in support of Jillian’s role. It seems the judges have looked at the literary merit of SKIM’s text in isolation from the illustrations.

We’re guessing that the jury who read SKIM saw it as an illustrated novel.  It’s not;  it’s a graphic novel.  In illustrated novels, the words carry the burden of telling the story, and the illustrations serve as a form of visual reinforcement. But in graphic novels, the words and pictures BOTH tell the story, and there are often sequences (sometimes whole graphic novels) where the images alone convey the narrative.  The text of a graphic novel cannot be separated from its illustrations because the words and the pictures together ARE the text.  Try to imagine evaluating SKIM if you couldn’t see the drawings.  Jillian’s contribution to the book goes beyond mere illustration:  she was as responsible for telling the story as Mariko was.

Tough call for Jillian, and a bittersweet success for Mariko should she win the Children’s Literature category when the awards are announced on Tuesday.

As has been commented before, we don’t see as much children’s and YA literature from Canada as we would like, so we won’t be too familiar with the category finalists in the Governor General’s Awards announced yesterday.  However, if any of these titles are released in Australia they will be worth following up (annotations are from the Awards site):

Alma Fullerton. Libertad.
From the dumps in Guatemala, from the tragic death of a mother rise two boys: Libertad and his little brother, Julio. With only an address on a piece of paper, the boys embark on an incredible journey to find their father in America. Alma Fullerton weaves a story of warmth and caring, dogged determination and the generosity of strangers.

John Ibbitson. The Landing.
Ben Mercer first experiences live classical music as a young boy sitting on his father’s shoulders. From then on, he is hooked, bringing us along on his struggle to play violin. At times the instrument does not
co-operate. There are too many notes on the music sheet. The Landing is a superbly-crafted story by a writer who understands the many stages of an artistic dream.

Dianne Linden. Shimmerdogs.
Mike Hopkins is a boy with his own way of dealing with the world around him – one not always understood or appreciated, even by those who love him dearly. Author Dianne Linden inhabits Mike’s world in a story that is life-affirming without ever being sentimental, that is in equal measures tragic, funny and poignant.

Shenaaz Nanji. Child of Dandelions.
This is a gripping drama about a fascinating fragment of time in history – the expulsion of Indians from Uganda in 1972. Fifteen-year-old Sabine poignantly straddles two worlds – those of the landed Indian gentry and of the native Ugandans amid wrenching turmoil. Quietly and crisply written, all of Nanji’s characters are beautifully realized, morally nuanced and compellingly crafted.

Mariko Tamaki. Skim.
Skim is an audacious and original graphic novel set in a girls’ private school. Skim, a slightly lumpy Kimberly Cameron, stumbles around the edges of cliques, depression, sexuality, suicide, crushes and an achingly ambiguous love. The story is heart-breakingly fresh and, in the end, a small celebration of life.

It’s great to be able to report news from Canada – a country whose YA literature doesn’t reach Australia as often as we would like. The finalists have been announced in the Canadian Children’s Literature Awards, and as one criterion for the award is that the books must be targeted towards an age group up to 12, we are happy to note that three titles at the lower end of the YA spectrum have been nominated.

Kenneth Oppel’s Darkwing is the latest in his amazing series about prehistoric bats. We don’t have a review of Darkwing, but the book’s website gives a great sense of what it is all about.

Also on the short list fitting the YA tag is Elijah of Buxton by Christopher Curtis, which was also a Newbery Honor Book this year and Shane Peacock’s Eye of the Crow (the Boy Sherlock Holmes)

There’s more information about the Canadian Children’s Literature Awards on the Canadian Children’s Book Centre site.

The winner will be announced in Toronto on November 6.